Objective: Learn to read the game and make smart predictions. Reaction times are overrated; perception and prediction rule .
Watching film is a good way of training my mental basketball model. has a couple.
Offensive Playmaking and Scoring tracks the following play types: transition, isolation, pick & roll ball handler, pick & roll roll man, post up, spot up, handoff, cut, off screen and putbacks....
Harden, a liberal behavior geneticist, is publishing a book, “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality”. Watch this space as it casts doubt on prevailing social justice thesis that environmental factors, and not genetics, influence behavior or social outcomes.
Check back in Sept 2022 (one year from now).
Faster Human Trials In 1986, AZT (AIDS treatment) showed 1/145 deaths compared to the placebo’s 16/137. 6,000 AIDS patients were offered AZT, helping it get to the public much faster....
From my vantage point, it seems there are two camps. But reality is often a shade of grey. Interested in various arguments that frequently arise in this area. I have my opinions/biases, but nothing that I can defend rigorously.
Some (most?) of these claims are supported by anecdotal evidence, which is an avenue for belief fixation, and therefore makes it hard to come to a resolution .
I don’t know if it’s because anti-PC material is more viral, but most of the prominent publications are either anti-PC, or anti-anti-PC....
State Surveillance In the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection, FBI was contacting people whose cellphones pinged cell towers near the Capitol during the riots.
A powered mobile phone always sends signals to one of the closest base stations. Given multiple base stations, the angle and time of arrival, and location signatures of each cell location can be used to locate a mobile device. The higher the density of cell towers, the more precise the calculated location....
Motivation: Why are politics so contentious? How can I relate better with people that hold opposing political beliefs?
Why People Are Irrational About Politics. Michael Huemer. Philosophy, Politics and Economics. 2015. Salient features of political disagreements: widespread (many people disagree on many issues), strong conviction/confidence, and persistent (difficult to resolve).
Political Disputes Are Not Explained by Miscalculation or Ignorance Miscalculation Theory: Political issues are difficult and partisans make mistakes in their reasoning....
So You Want to Reform Democracy If there was an idea that could ‘fix’ democracy, it would have been thought-up already. If you don’t see your idea out there, it’s because it didn’t work the hundreds of other times someone tried it.
Let’s tell representatives what their constituents think. Then they HAVE to vote with us!
They don’t necessarily want to know what their constituents are thinking. When they do, they have no trouble finding out Only a small fraction of citizens will ever participate in a poll, and that causes selection biases....
Incomplete List of Information Privacy Properties Control/consent, e.g. Cambridge Analytica exfiltrating FB users' data Discussion on Cambridge Analytica Anonymity, e.g. Snowden leaking NSA docs without revealing his identity
Limits on data collection, e.g. laws restricting government surveillance
Limits on data use, e.g. US Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008
Under GINA, health insurers must not use genetic information of the clients (or clients family) to inform their policy....
The human genome has sequences of nucleotide base pairs that are repeated over and over again. At each locus of interest, a person has two sets of repeats inherited from each parent. Each possible difference at a locus is an allele. The combinations of the possible differences at multiple loci form a DNA profile that can be used to tie suspects to a crime scene.
The Accuracy of DNA Testing is Wanting 74/108 crime labs erroneously incriminated a suspect during a mock study....
Programmable Money South Korea’s COVID-19 stimulus payments were programmed to expire in Aug 2020, and could only be spent at qualifying shops. Australia’s cashless welfare card [currently in pilot stages] cannot be withdrawn as cash, nor used at alcohol, tobacco and gambling joints.
Monzo, a UK-based digital-first mobile baking app, supports IFTTT recipes. This enables budgeting logic, “If I spend at KFC, then move $5 to my penalty pot”....
Contact Tracing “Apps” in this context means contact tracing apps released by public health authorities to do contact tracing. The APIs are limited to them.
Big Picture Release APIs to enable apps to interoperate between Android and iOS devices. Bluetooth-based contact tracing baked into Android and iOS, such that no app is needed for broadcasting/listening. This ensures broad adoption, but will be on an opt-in basis....
Medical care is like the opposite of moving fast and breaking things. If it’s so taboo to admit error, then that could make errors more common because fewer people are learning from past errors.
Norms for Scientific Activity and the Sources of Error “Science” is taken to mean “Natural Science”.
Internal norms derive from a cognitive pursuit of science. They are:
Focus on the central rather than the peripheral problems of the science in in question....
How Dentists Rip Us Off. William Ecenbarger. https://digitalsmiledesign.com/files/Old-Website-Assets/PDF/How-Dentists-Rip-Us-Off.pdf . Feb 1, 1997. This piece was brought up in “Is Dentistry a Science?" ( summary ). Looks like this piece has done its rounds in dentist online spaces.
Ecenbarger pitch: moving into the area; had done gum surgery; had a direct-reimbursement program to cover expenses; interested in good oral health; no desire for cosmetic improvements...
Method of Definition: Prototype Semantics There is a cognitive science view of categorization that says:
Category members need not necessarily share a single set of distinguishing features, and may exhibit features to greater/lesser degrees Some category members are more typical than others This reasoning goes against how I mentally picture a category.
Although lies may have identifiable features such as misrepresentation of belief, intent to deceive, falseness and reprehensible motives, not all features are always present, and not all features are equally prominent in every instance....
How Doctors Die. Ken Murray. https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die/ideas/nexus/ . Nov 30, 2011. Doctors tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. They go gently into that good night - no heroics; no CPR.
Sometimes, a family really means ‘do everything’, but often they mean ‘do everything that’s reasonable.’ But they may not know what’s reasonable.
People have unrealistic expectations of what doctors can accomplish....
10,000 Hours, YMMV 10,000 hours introduced here 10,000 hours has been lauded by popular authors, e.g. Malcolm Gladwel’s Outliers, and Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated. Notably, Ericsson has dismissed the “10,000 hours rule” as misconstruing his positions: genetics play a role; 10,000-hours of deliberate practice is not all that counts.
Most data in support of the 10,000-hours rule has been cross-sectional and retrospective.
A cross-sectional study is a type of observational study that analyzes data from a population (or a representative subset) at a specific point in time....
The Parable of the Talents. Scott Alexander. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/ . Jan 31, 2015. Overweight people, depressed people, and poor people aren’t fully to blame for their situation – and neither are unintelligent people. It’s accidents of birth all the way down.
Srinivasa Ramanujan:
Grew up in poverty in a one-room house in small-town India. But a lot of poor people in the US had better conditions/opportunities Either, a lot of intelligence is innate Or, those poor people are just not trying hard enough....
Rationality: From AI to Zombies: Letting Go. Eliezer Yudkowsky. Feb 1, 2015. Learn when to admit failure It’s important to have a watershed moment and acknowledge a fundamental problem, instead of dividing it into palatable bite-size mistakes.
LTCM were exploiting market inefficiencies. Other people learned of the tricks. LTCM didn’t lose hope. They borrowed more and more leverage to exploit tinier and tinier margins.
And their math probably said the leverage was okay....
No Clarity Around Growth Mindset. Scott Alexander. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/08/no-clarity-around-growth-mindset-yet/ . Apr 8, 2015. Growth mindset: people who believe effort - and not ability - determines success are more resilient, skillful, hard-working, perseverant in the face of failure.
Most of the growth mindset experiments prime their subjects, but recent priming experiments have famously failed to replicate. Dweck’s experiment:
Group A: easy test (success) -> final bound-to-fail test Group B: hard test (told they’re not working hard enough) -> final bound-to-fail test Group B outperformed Group A....
The Trade of the Century: When George Soros Broke the British Pound. Rohin Dhar. https://priceonomics.com/the-trade-of-the-century-when-george-soros-broke/ . Jun 17, 2016. Before the EU, Europe had the ERM to fix their exchange rates with the Deutschmark within 6% of the agreed upon rate.
Keeping the exchange rate fixed requires governments to nudge the rate, e.g.
Use reserves of foreign currency to buy up their own currency Set high interest rates to entice lenders to buy their currency Margaret Thatcher (PM) opposed the fixed exchange rates but lost the vote to Major, an ERM proponent....