4 ms·

You don't know if something is true if you can't measure or test it.

by BubRoss 7y ago

ajuc 7y ago
When you throw dice 1000 times without looking you don't know when you got a 6 but you know you did.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  Too bad we don't have 1000 societies to randomly try things on. Also you don't know that you rolled a six, the probability is high that you did, that's very different. If you don't know where you rolled the number you wanted, how can you repeat it? If you can't repeat it how can you build on top of that?
  - ajuc 7y ago
    > Also you don't know that you rolled a six, the probability is high that you did, that's very different. By that standard you don't know anything about the world at all - gravity may stop working the next minute - it's unlikely but not impossible. We don't have a proof it won't - we only have assumptions(models) supported by statistics. For me the standards that physics use is good enough - I say I know gravity works and I know I rolled a 6 when I rolled 1000 d6. You might call that differently but I'm pretty sure you won't jump out of a cliff and you won't bet money on NOT rolling a 6 in 1000 tries. > Too bad we don't have 1000 societies to randomly try things on. That's exactly why we shouldn't wait for results. We have data from 1000s of people though and several countries that tried various strategies. Social isolation works best so we should do that, immediately. With exponential growth doing the right thing NOW is more important than making sure you're doing it in an optimal way but a week later. > If you don't know where you rolled the number you wanted, how can you repeat it? If you can't repeat it how can you build on top of that? In the case of this disease we know how to prevent it overwhelming our healthcare systems so that less than 1% of population dies instead of over 5%. That's the most important thing, producing the vaccine and drugs, calculating the exact number of people sick, discovering the exact properties of the sickness - these things come after the fact. We won't have a vaccine nor drugs in time anyway. People arguing to measure and then act in case of a disease that infects 1000 times more people every month are insane. In 3 months the whole world population would be sick and most of it AT ONCE. Who will treat the 5-10% of patients that need help? Nobody - that's who. So they will die.
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      Testing and understanding the past is not the same as predicting the future. Our physical world has been extensively tested, which how we learned about it. If you want to treat gravity stopping in the future as a probability you can, but once but the more you understand the more you would realize that it is astronomically low. This is not the same as saying that from some technical extreme semantic definition that something can be improved without testing results. In a complex system you need to know your results to inform your path forward. Trying to come up with some super narrow, reductive, irrelevant definition on your own is worthless in this context.

You don't know if something is true if you can't measure or test it.

ajuc 7y ago

When you throw dice 1000 times without looking you don't know when you got a 6 but you know you did.

BubRoss 7y ago
Too bad we don't have 1000 societies to randomly try things on. Also you don't know that you rolled a six, the probability is high that you did, that's very different. If you don't know where you rolled the number you wanted, how can you repeat it? If you can't repeat it how can you build on top of that?
- ajuc 7y ago
  > Also you don't know that you rolled a six, the probability is high that you did, that's very different. By that standard you don't know anything about the world at all - gravity may stop working the next minute - it's unlikely but not impossible. We don't have a proof it won't - we only have assumptions(models) supported by statistics. For me the standards that physics use is good enough - I say I know gravity works and I know I rolled a 6 when I rolled 1000 d6. You might call that differently but I'm pretty sure you won't jump out of a cliff and you won't bet money on NOT rolling a 6 in 1000 tries. > Too bad we don't have 1000 societies to randomly try things on. That's exactly why we shouldn't wait for results. We have data from 1000s of people though and several countries that tried various strategies. Social isolation works best so we should do that, immediately. With exponential growth doing the right thing NOW is more important than making sure you're doing it in an optimal way but a week later. > If you don't know where you rolled the number you wanted, how can you repeat it? If you can't repeat it how can you build on top of that? In the case of this disease we know how to prevent it overwhelming our healthcare systems so that less than 1% of population dies instead of over 5%. That's the most important thing, producing the vaccine and drugs, calculating the exact number of people sick, discovering the exact properties of the sickness - these things come after the fact. We won't have a vaccine nor drugs in time anyway. People arguing to measure and then act in case of a disease that infects 1000 times more people every month are insane. In 3 months the whole world population would be sick and most of it AT ONCE. Who will treat the 5-10% of patients that need help? Nobody - that's who. So they will die.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    Testing and understanding the past is not the same as predicting the future. Our physical world has been extensively tested, which how we learned about it. If you want to treat gravity stopping in the future as a probability you can, but once but the more you understand the more you would realize that it is astronomically low. This is not the same as saying that from some technical extreme semantic definition that something can be improved without testing results. In a complex system you need to know your results to inform your path forward. Trying to come up with some super narrow, reductive, irrelevant definition on your own is worthless in this context.