11 Comments

"Mathematical magic."

Same as in most areas of Current Year Science:

"Mythematics"

Expand full comment

Here's a few alternatives for "Research Shows":

• Evidence suggests

• Findings demonstrate

• Data reveal

• Analysis confirms

• Empirical evidence points to

• Scholarly work highlights

• Research suggests

• Investigations reveal

• Studies support the idea that

• The evidence highlights

• Observations suggest

• Studies have found

• Research backs up

• Findings point out

• The data show

• Studies Indicate

All of these will return equivelent "research" or "studies' loaded with the same garbage Briggs has shown above. I've personnally read hundreds of research papers and rare is the incidence of analysis that deviates from the above outline. What I have found is that papers written in the mid 1960's and prior were done more thoughtfully and were less inclined to depend on wee p's. Some of the best research in medicine occured prior to WWII.

Expand full comment

Yes Matt hypothesis testing is nonsense. Students think it’s some kind of magic and means “proof”. What’s really important about your lecture is the part about all the other possibilities. These are never addressed and actually do reduce H back towards zero. Modern statistical software should be programmed to force the user to input some kind of adjustment for this. Unless, you’ve come up with some math for this?

Expand full comment

The first thing I look at in evaluating claims like "long covid" is the motive of the proponent(s), the second thing being the quality of the data, and whether they (that's you Pfizer) may be lying about the data...

If it's a claim in the physical sciences, like room temperature superconductors, I look at whether it violates entropy, the 2d law of Thermodynamics...It usually does, and is therefore bogus...

Expand full comment

Ah. I understand. Jaded comes to mind. We've been conned so many times it's become a requirement.

Expand full comment

You're right, I don't need to understand the math to get the point. To someone who's been reading "nutrition" studies for 15 years, this is all very familiar.

Expand full comment

In the COVID epidemic, millions of laves were lost because the builders of epidemiological models built models whose predictions failed to replicate if and when they were tested. This disaster would have been avoided had an available technology been employed in the construction of these models. This technology was developed by the late theoretical physicist Ronald Arlie Christensen who presents it in the seven volume treatise that is titled "The Entropy Minimax Sourcebook." The term "Entropy Minimax" refers to The Principles of Reasoning that are the solution to the ancient, previously unsolved "Problem of Induction, where the problem is of how, in a logically permissible way to select the inferences that will be made by the model from a larger set of possibilities.

Ater being published by Christensen, The Principles of Reasoning failed to catch on. Instead, with rare exceptions the builders of models of physical systems selected these inferences, as they had done in the past, through usage of the intuitive rules of thumb called "heuristics." However, on each occasion in which a particular heuristic selected a particular set of interferences for being made by the model, a different heuristic selected a different heuristic selected a different set of inferences for being made by this model. In this way, the heuristics method violated the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). The LNC was amongst Aristotle's three Laws of Thought. Today, this habit is costing us dearly.

Expand full comment

Just wanted to check in at my favorite watering hole to say I have not the vaguest idea what any of this means. Haven't lost my touch ....

Expand full comment

We watched https://citiesofthefuturefilm.com/ yesterday.

Brutally bad, but discussion provoking on why it was so offensive.

To make matters worse, the 3D projection was offline, so it was only in 2D

The best part, was there were kids sitting behind us commenting on every scene. It seemed to me, they recognized they were being led around by the nose.

Expand full comment

I've only watched the trailer, but it appears to be an advertisement for solar power.

Still no sign of the promised jet packs from the last century.

Expand full comment

Mostly a travel guide of a few scenic locations; LA (future), Singapore (current), Amsterdam (current). Initial drone shots are cool, but they trail off to lazy cgi.

Set over top of a junior high science fair, with many if not all scenes being staged.

They had the Joby flying car, but none others. Followed by a dumb scene showing the levels of the future LA.

Singapore has some kind of central air system, I wouldn't mind seeing more about.

Expand full comment