mrow84

27 ms·

211.
by mrow84 10y ago
>> You know it's posts like this that give climate science a VERY bad reputation. I've got a degree in statistics, so I read your post and immediately 3 alarm bells go off. You've got a degree in statistics, and I have
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by mrow84 10y ago
This figure [0], which you can read more about in this summary [1] compares the predictions from the IPCC third assessment report with satellite observations. It shows that the observations track the upper end of the predicted range from th
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by mrow84 10y ago
So, just to be clear, you're saying that the attribution of reduced Antarctic sea ice extent to global warming is unclear, and not that the phenomenon referred to as global warming is itself somehow brought into doubt by the lack of cl
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by mrow84 10y ago
My understanding of the issue is framed along the lines of these three statements: 1. Modern farming practices have increased productivity to the point where it is possible to avoid serious food shortages. 2. A significant percentage of the
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by mrow84 10y ago
When you go north, and more generally away from population centres, the houses do seem to be quite a bit larger. There, of course, there are other limiting factors, most often wages.
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by mrow84 10y ago
How do you propose working out whether each country is investing an appropriate amount in the change?
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by mrow84 10y ago
I think it is considered problematic because ability in the modern world (at the very least) is largely correlated with "mental attributes", and, in a meritocratic society, a group which was less able would be afforded less power.
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by mrow84 10y ago
I'm no expert on US politics, but wasn't he hidebound by a Republican house and senate?
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by mrow84 10y ago
I went digging for the paper that was the source for your first case, which I believe is "The Future of Arctic Sea Ice", finally published in 2012 [0]. Looking online for other media reports I found this [1], which includes the ch
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by mrow84 10y ago
Could you substantiate your claim that climate researchers have made hundreds of testable predictions over the past several decades by citing peer-reviewed literature making the kinds of statements you describe? Just to be clear, I am not a
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by mrow84 10y ago
I think it is an allusion to the story of Cinderella [0], some versions of which have her carriage transforming (back) into a pumpkin at midnight. I see the implication being that when all is said and done, functional programs are really ju
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by mrow84 10y ago
(2013)
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by mrow84 10y ago
Shouldn't the expression be more like P(probes) = 1 - P(no probes) = 1 - (1 - (P(civ launches one probe)*P(probe reaches Earth)))**Nciv You can then simply argue that P(probe reaches Earth) is small, because you don&
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by mrow84 10y ago
To remain with the example in your blog post, your model fixed things because the implicit bias model was correct (linear dependance on race), and the data were available, either directly (via the race variable) in the "What if measure
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by mrow84 10y ago
I don't really understand that claim. You are explicitly adding a bias that is linearly dependant on your race variable, and then allowing your regression to recover that bias by introducing noisy measurements of race (which you as the
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by mrow84 10y ago
To correct biased measurements (in a careful way) you need 1. Enough knowledge about the structure of the bias to be able to devise a model for it. 2. Some measurements from which to fit the model, with errors that are uncorrelated with the
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by mrow84 10y ago
The first bullet point in your second link is: "Public investment in infrastructure sits at its lowest level since records have been kept because of underfunding across all levels of government." And the lead into the second graph
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by mrow84 10y ago
mods: this story is marked as [dupe], but I don't seem to be able to find another version of it. Has someone abused that mechanism, for whatever reason? It might be good if one is required to provide a url in order to mark a story as d
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by mrow84 10y ago
Socialism just advocates for collective ownership, without specifying the scale or scope of that collective. It does not have to be the state government, and could, for example, be a group of football fans.
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by mrow84 10y ago
I understood that quote as meaning that you couldn't attempt to explain away the racial bias by saying that black people lived in higher-crime areas, and thus were more likely to be shot as a consequence of more intense policing. Perha
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by mrow84 10y ago
I'm not sure I have an absolute "definition" of sovereignty, but I think it is approximately a measure of how much power an individual or group have over their own affairs. A failure to recognise that power can be restricted
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by mrow84 10y ago
Yes, I agree that it devolves into an argument over semantics, but is difficult to have a conversation about individual rights without discussing the structures of power which afford those rights. I'm not sure, however, that a discussi
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by mrow84 10y ago
But by your definition, you maximise sovereignty by declaring yourself entirely independent. That makes no sense. If you are wholly unwilling to enter into agreements with other people then you will find it very difficult to achieve anythin
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by mrow84 10y ago
How about if the UK had some democratic control over regulations in China, and then gave that control up. Would that be ceding sovereignty? Given that sovereignty is fairly synonymous with control, it seems difficult to argue that giving up
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by mrow84 10y ago
What is your definition for "explanatory", in this context? I agree with your second sentence - the key question is indeed whether the model is explanatory rather than merely predictive. I offered a definition for explanatory as b
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by mrow84 10y ago
To your first point - as you increase the number of parameters in a model you (quickly) begin to suffer from the curse of dimensionality. In a crude sense, the data requirement for a similar level of confidence is exponential in the number
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by mrow84 10y ago
For the purposes of this discussion, Norvig has defined a statistical model as: "a mathematical model which is modified or trained by the input of data points." He then illustrates how what would be considered a "scientific&q
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by mrow84 10y ago
I think that Norvig hits the nail on the head near the beginning of his piece: "I believe that Chomsky has no objection to this kind of statistical model [the Newtonian model of gravitational attraction]. Rather, he seems to reserve hi
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by mrow84 10y ago
Non-western countries also take large numbers of refugees: "Turkey hosts 2.5 million refugees from Syria, more than any other country worldwide Lebanon hosts approximately 1.1 million refugees from Syria which amounts to around one in
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by mrow84 10y ago
I'm afraid I am less utopian. To me it seems more likely that we will eventually overreach our productive capacity by wasting time on the "unhelpful" problems I mentioned above, and then enter a period of decline. The best we

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