7 ms·

Hanlon'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 10y ago
That reminds me of this cartoon: http://i.imgur.com/aI80YDO.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aI80YDO.jpg
exolymph 10y ago
Of 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 10y ago
  No. 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 10y ago
That'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 10y ago
  It'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 10y ago
    Ok 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.

IIIIIIIIIIII 10y ago

That reminds me of this cartoon: http://i.imgur.com/aI80YDO.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aI80YDO.jpg

exolymph 10y ago

Of 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 10y ago
No. 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 10y ago

That'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 10y ago
It'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 10y ago
  Ok 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.