5 ms·
Not likely because of Hanlon's razor: "don't attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon
by pps43 9y ago
Not likely because of Hanlon's razor: "don't attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
- tantalor 9y agoThis takes precedence: "Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moscow_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moscow_rules
- nefitty 9y agoThe rule you quoted is not on the list there.
- v64 9y agoI think you meant to link to this [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_(novel)
- pps43 9y agoLike with birthday paradox, denominator is important. Considering how many large cities and days there are, this might not be an unusual coincidence.
- yequalsx 9y agoHanlon's Razor is not an established law of reasoning or of philosophy. Quoting it is not a valid counter argument without additional reasoning given.
- IIIIIIIIIIII 9y agoThat reminds me of this cartoon: http://i.imgur.com/aI80YDO.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aI80YDO.jpg
- exolymph 9y agoOf course not, it's a colloquial heuristic. Do you disagree with this comment though? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14168483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14168483
- yequalsx 9y agoNo. But it does not apply in this case. It may turn out to be coincidence or stupidity but claiming that it is likely to be thus because of Hanlons Razor is wrong and bad thinking.
- pps43 9y agoThat's why I said "not likely" rather than "impossible". It's just conservative Bayesian prior. Remember last time nefarious hackers infecting computers at power plants were in the news, that later turned out to be antivirus finding some spam on completely unrelated computer?
- yequalsx 9y agoIt's hard to imagine you really understand Bayesian statistics when you mention what happened the last time as support for your point. It is quite hard to believe that you know with reasonable degree of accuracy the probabilities involved.
- pps43 9y agoOk I'll bite. Let's back of the envelope the probability. In the past 17 years I experienced 5 blackouts, so return period is about 1,241 days. Among the cities that were mentioned, San Francisco is the smallest, with population about 865,000. Let's look at all US cities with population above 500,000. There are 34 of those. The probability of having simultaneous blackout in 3 of 34 cities during 1,241 days is 1-exp(-C(34,3)/1241^2)=0.4%, or about 2% for the same 17 year period. The above calculation assumes independence, but in reality probability is much higher because independence assumption rarely holds in real life. For example, we already observed multiple large cities in the Northeast having simultaneous blackouts in 2003.
- rdiddly 9y agoAt best Hanlon's razor is a bet on the odds that most cases are stupidity and not malice (probably true). It doesn't mean there is no malice in the world and only stupidity.