vcdimension

9 mesi fadiscuss

Furthermore, there is no evidence that anyone else had the idea of using thermionic valves to greatly increase the speed of the code breaking computer, so if Tommy Flowers didn't exist it probably wouldn't have been discovered until much later (i.e. too late to help the war effort). Of course CEO's such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have made important individual contributions to society, but they were not as pivotal as that of Tommy Flowers, and furthermore they have been rewarded in money (many would say too much), whereas Tommy Flowers has received very little reward or recognition for his achievement.

vcdimension

9 mesi fadiscuss

Exactly, in your words: "being built by a lot of people", i.e. not just Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. If Bill Gates & Steve Jobs didn't exist those employees would be working for different computer companies such as IBM, Olivetti, Apricot, Xerox (who invented the point & click windows system) or one of many others, and we would have similar products under different names.

The geopolitical achievement of winning the war (and the consequences of that) was the whole purpose of building the machine, so it doesn't make sense to dismiss it as you did.

vcdimension

9 mesi fadiscuss

The value that companies such as Microsoft & Apple provide is supplied by all their thousands of employees, not just their CEO's. So its not a fair comparison to compare the output of Microsoft & Apple with the output of a single person (Tommy Flowers). Furthermore there are plenty of alternatives to Microsoft & Apple: if Bill Gates & Steve Jobs didn't exist we'd be probably be running Unix, Linux or one of the many other operating systems that lost out to Windows & MacOS for market share. If Tommy Flowers didn't exist we might have lost the war.

vcdimension

11 mesi fadiscuss

Here's another tutorial for creating zsh completers using the built-in functions: https://github.com/vapniks/zsh-completions/blob/master/zsh-c...

vcdimension

11 mesi fadiscuss

In zsh you can use the _gnu_generic function for simple completion of commands with a --help flag. Just put a line like this somewhere in your startup file: compdef _gnu_generic <CMD>

vcdimension

anno scorsodiscuss

I've forked the repo and created a zsh version: https://github.com/vapniks/shell-secrets

vcdimension

anno scorsodiscuss

Yes, you need a good tutor to help you navigate through such a complex topic.

vcdimension

anno scorsodiscuss

and if anyone is interested in delving more deeply into the statistical concepts & results referenced in the paper of this post (e.g. VC-dimension, PAC-learning, etc), I can recommend this book: https://amzn.eu/d/7Zwe6jw

vcdimension

anno scorsodiscuss

I had a look at Eric Stansifer's write-up of his decision, but I didn't read all of it (83 pages!). He does seem to have a good understanding of Bayesian decision making and hypothesis testing.

What confuses me however, is his dismissal of two pieces of evidence in table 2 which he says should be ignored "following the presumption that HSM is the first SSE", and yet earlier, in footnote 24, he states "We are very specifically NOT conditioning on that place being HSM" (talking about the first SSE location). Can anyone enlighten me about this seeming contradiction?

Another point: while both judges are qualified scientists, their expertise is in microbiology/virology not epidemiology, but it is the epidemiological aspect of the situation that is the most contentious part of the analysis, and AFAIK the part that swung the decision in favour of zoonotic origins for both judges. Without prior assumptions they both agree that the DNA evidence favours the lab leak theory.

vcdimension

anno scorsodiscuss

Which means this; it gives further weight to the lab leak theory, and shows the reasoning behind it.

I don't have time to watch the 3hr debate or read all of that article (which makes some misrepresentative statements, and like your response, is rather venomous in tone), but here is the response from rootclaim about the debate outcome: https://blog.rootclaim.com/covid-origins-debate-response-to-...

I also know from experience that scientists, and people in general, are often not well trained in the kind of probabilistic reasoning that is required for combining and weighing up multiple sources of evidence.

vcdimension

anno scorsodiscuss

rootclaim gave the lab leak theory an 87% probability using Bayesian analysis back in 2020: https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV...

vcdimension

2 anni fadiscuss

Does anyone have any tips on how to persuade non-techy friends & family to switch from WhatsApp to element-x?

vcdimension

2 anni fadiscuss

Someone should train an LLM on all the kernel documentation, code, mailing lists, etc.

vcdimension

2 anni fadiscuss

but what if H0 = Hewlett Packard did not plan to eliminate Mike Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain...

vcdimension

2 anni fadiscuss

So I guess we'll never know the p-value of that event...

vcdimension

2 anni fadiscuss

Yes, it would be nice to know how things change for different weightings of the null and alternative priors.

vcdimension

2 anni fadiscuss

This article is very interesting and informative, however it's a bit ironic that an article about misinterpretations of the meaning of the p-value, misinterprets the misinterpretation; in the first blue box it's clear that Bernstein is interpreting the p-value as the probability of randomly rejecting the null (which is what you do when you get something statistically significant) yet in the text following that they say he's interpreting it as the probability of the null. Bernsteins mistake is that he appears to interpret it as an unconditional probability rather than a conditional one (correct interpretation; p-value = Prob(rejecting the null when the null is true)).

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