[FRIAM] Posts from the Scotts

[uǝlƃ ☣]

It was pointed out to me awhile back that I'd been relatively quiet. So, here's an excuse to post! 2 posts by my favorite Scotts:

1) Against Lie Inflation
   https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/16/against-lie-inflation/

2) On two blog posts of Jerry Coyne
   https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4253

(1) is all about artificial discretization and ends with the very nice command: "don’t set thresholds for category membership so far outside a distribution that they stop conveying useful information." And (2) is a lesson in how fuzzy the line can be between quackery and authority (or woo and science, or the unjustified worship of fancy-talkin' folk >8^D). In particular, I like the question: "supposing, hypothetically, that I’d met Epstein around 2002 or so—without, of course, knowing about his crimes—would I have been as taken with him as many other academics seem to have been? (Would you have been? How sure are you?)"

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☣ uǝlƃ