4 ms·
Does it even make sense to describe it as a "threshold" in that case? A threshold implies the existence of some kind of vertex, but what you're describing just
by jgwil2 6y ago
Does it even make sense to describe it as a "threshold" in that case? A threshold implies the existence of some kind of vertex, but what you're describing just sounds more or less like a straight line.
- timr 6y agoWell, sure, but you have to have some instinct for the difference between theory and practice (particularly when the theory is naive, as it is here). The concept is broadly supported, but the uncertainty for any particular measurement is wide -- like most things in biology. Engineers have a poor sense of the level of slop in biology and medicine. I can tell you with near 100% confidence how PCR works, but if I set out to run PCR in the real world (which is actually one of the most repeatable things in biology, btw), it's just going to fail some of the time, even if I've done the same exact reaction many times before. The biological world is noisy. Remember the old physics joke about "assume a frictionless spherical horse"? This is a "spherical horse" of the pandemic. It's one of those things that armchair biologists take way too literally, because it's in a textbook. Obviously, first-year mechanics isn't wrong...it's just not all there is.