4 ms·
> When presented with this tradeoff, the path of least resistance is to say “Let’s just keep the threshold lower. We’d rather get woken up when there’s nothing
by yamtaddle 4y ago
> When presented with this tradeoff, the path of least resistance is to say “Let’s just keep the threshold lower. We’d rather get woken up when there’s nothing broken than sleep through a real problem.” And I can sympathize with that attitude. Undetected outages are embarrassing and harmful to your reputation. Surely it’s preferable to deal with a few late-night fire drills.
> It’s a trap.
> In the long run, false positives can — and will often — hurt you more than false negatives. Let’s learn about the base rate fallacy.
Not sure about anyone else, but speaking of alarms, this style of writing trips my "self-promoting snake-oil Internet bullshitter" alarm. It's like nails on a damn chalkboard, and if you're writing like this, you've already lost me; however, maybe I ought not be pointing that out, since signals are nice to have.
Incidentally, I wasn't sure which way the author was gonna go with the core analogy. My smoke alarms have false-alarmed probably 10x as much as my car alarm, even counting times one of us has hit the alarm button on the fob by accident. I've certainly never been so annoyed by my car alarm that I've ripped it out and stuck it in a freezer, as I have with a smoke alarm.
(If I were writing like the author I suppose that last part would have read:
"I've certainly never been so annoyed by my car alarm that I've ripped it out and stuck it in a chest freezer.
I have, with a smoke alarm."
Except also I'd have found a way to use "we" and "you" a bunch.)
- raldi 4y agoWhat do you mean by "this style of writing"? What aspects of the quote do you object to?
- jacquesm 4y agoAt a guess the bit 'let's learn about the base rate fallacy'.
- yamtaddle 4y agoShort, choppy sentences, lots of second-person, dropping a "punch-line" sentence to its own paragraph like they're a fucking magician revealing the card you pulled earlier. It's some kind of cross between transparent rapport-building sales-psychology crap and setting off a fireworks display to celebrate your successfully assembling a PB&J. Like listening to a used car salesman tell a mundane story about their morning commute. But full of unearned and over-the-top dramatic pauses.
- ftxbro 4y agoIt sucks to say, but it drives engagement in a way that keeps getting clicks and reposts to a blog from 2012, in a way that one written like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity wouldn't. EDIT: I tried here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35533897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35533897 but hacker news filtered my title so its not as clickbaity as I wanted anymore.
- quickthrower2 4y agoI see a lot of this style of writing in articles submitted on HN. I think they are just trying to make the writing more lively, not trying to BS. A trope of this style is “{interesting half story} but more on that later”. I don’t think it is a big deal and I don’t see much self promotion here other than vanilla blogging, i.e. sounds like this person is knowledgeable let’s check their bio.
- burnished 4y agoIm not sure what you are responding to in the quoted text but after reading the article I think I can assure you that the author isnt selling you anything more salacious than you would find in a more interesting introduction to probability and statistics lecture.