A little background I first heard about the False Confidence Theorem (FCT) a number of years ago, although at the time I did not understand why it was meaningful. I later returned to it, and the second time around, with a little more experience (and finding a more useful exposition),...
(Or: sometimes heuristics are no substitute for a deep dive into all of the available information). This post is a response to Roko's recent series of posts (Brute Force Manufactured Consensus is Hiding the Crime of the Century, The Math of Suspicious Coincidences, and A Back-Of-The-Envelope Calculation On How Unlikely...
(The following are our suggestions for what kind of information is best to include in the welcome post of your group, feel free to replace them with whatever you think is best) What kind of events does your group usually run? What does it usually do? How frequently does your...
Maybe this is obvious to you, but a lot of the content on this site is about explicating common errors of logic and statistics that people might fall for. I think it’s valuable.
Thank you. Maybe I over-indexed on using the satellite example, but I thought it made for a better didactic example in part because it was so obvious. I provided the other examples to point to cases where I thought the error was less clear.
The lesson to draw from the false confidence theorem is “be careful,” not “abandon all the laws of ordinary statistics in favor of an alternative conception of uncertainty.”
This is also true. Like I said (maybe not very... (read more)
I didn't look for, and so was not aware of, any larger community. I found the 2 linked papers and, once I realized what was going on, recognized the apparent error in a few places. I agree that "decreasing the quality of your data should not make you more confident" is obvious when stated that way, but like with many "obvious" insights, the problem often comes in recognizing it when it comes up. I attempted to point this out to Micheal Weissman in one of the ACX threads (he did a Bayesian analysis of lab leak, similar to Rootclaim's) and he repeatedly defended arguments of this form even after I pointed out... (read more)
I first heard about the False Confidence Theorem (FCT) a number of years ago, although at the time I did not understand why it was meaningful. I later returned to it, and the second time around, with a little more experience (and finding a more useful exposition), its importance was much easier to grasp. I now believe that this result is incredibly central to the use of Bayesian reasoning in a wide range of practical contexts, and yet seems to not be very well known (I was not able to find any mention of it on LessWrong). I think it is at the heart of some common confusions, where seemingly... (read 1734 more words →)
Or explain why the NYT does use the chosen name of other people, like musicians' stage names.
Brand new account, reposting old arguments? Not suspicious at all.
Stoyan and Chiu (2024)
"Just because the market was the epicenter doesn't mean the pandemic started there," while technically true, is fairly meaningless. If the center were at the lab every lab leak proponent would be shouting at the top of their lungs this conclusively proves the lab leak theory. Debating one particular statistical analysis doesn't disprove the very elementary technique of "look at the data, it's obvious" aka https://xkcd.com/2400/.
The multiple spillover theory might be wrong. But then again, so might all of the analyses that Roko cited in his initial post, including the paper about genetic engineering, the Richard Ebright tweet, the RTK... (read more)
They're not equally unlikely. You haven't provided any actual evidence for this claim.
Also, why on Earth would we just take the ratio of distances or areas as the probability factor? That's not how pandemics work.
ICUs were overwhelmed because Covid spread so much. Its hospitalization rate is a few percent and its fatality rate is 1% or so. This is in contrast to diseases like SARS 1 (9.5% fatality rate) or MERS (34% fatality rate). Sure, it's not mild compared to seasonal flu, but it is much more mild than the obvious things you would compare it to.
The second thing would be surprising as if the virus can so often jump to humans from animals it will happen closer to its origin in Laos.
Spillover events probably did happen elsewhere, but not all spillover events lead to a pandemic, and covid is usually so mild that it's not surprising we can't find any such cases. (I also don't know if some final important mutation didn't happen until much closer to the actual pandemic start).
Alternative explanation is following: as the market is one of the most crowded place in the city
This is discussed in the Rootclaim debate. There are many different types of places which served as superspreader events early on,... (read more)
What would the disjunctive fallacy be? Failing to account for the fact that P(A or B) >= P(A) and P(B)?
(Or: sometimes heuristics are no substitute for a deep dive into all of the available information).
This post is a response to Roko's recent series of posts (Brute Force Manufactured Consensus is Hiding the Crime of the Century, The Math of Suspicious Coincidences, and A Back-Of-The-Envelope Calculation On How Unlikely The Circumstantial Evidence Around Covid-19 Is); however, I made a separate post for a few reasons.
Additional note: Much of this... (read 4045 more words →)
(The following are our suggestions for what kind of information is best to include in the welcome post of your group, feel free to replace them with whatever you think is best)
What kind of events does your group usually run? What does it usually do?
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I think this is essentially the solution mentioned in the paper.