Sunday, May 30, 2021
WWCF: First Contact
Saturday, May 29, 2021
Trust Is a Fragile Fabric
Monday, May 17, 2021
Two Methods of Improvement
- Truncating the left tail so as to eliminate the undesired portion of the distribution
- Increasing the distribution so as to grow (fatten) the right tail and therefore increase the desired portion of the distribution.
Notice how this distribution is truncated and non normal (there is a minimum at 70 and the distribution has a right skew). No one is below some level of actual wealth (even debtors and prisoners get a meal and a place to sleep). So in some sense I am assuming some of the first strategy--a social safety net of some kind. I wanted to make it more realistically skewed, but time didn't permit. However, we should be careful how easily we succumb to the notion that there are people with true wealth at the far, far reaches of the distribution. Just how rich is Jeff Bezos compared to you or me really, seriously?
Monday, May 10, 2021
WWCF: Sensors in Football or AI Calling Balls/Strikes in Baseball?
- Football - in the least having sensors used to determine touchdowns when the officials on the field are in doubt. It would qualified if these are used to overrule upon challenge or if the officials can use them similar to how every score is reviewed by rule.
- Baseball - in the least the calling of balls and strikes by an autonomous system. To be clear this is not overruling the umpire but autonomously determining in the first place.
Sunday, May 9, 2021
Does Ranked-Choice Voting Really Work?
an electoral system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. First-preference votes cast for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the second-preference choices indicated on those ballots. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won a majority of the adjusted votes. The process is repeated until a candidate wins an outright majority.
- Jesus
- Almost The Devil
- A Goofball
- The Devil
- Jesus - 38%
- Almost The Devil - 30%
- A Goofball - 20%
- The Devil - 12%
Under RCV we don't yet have a winner because no candidate has a majority. So, we eliminate the lowest first-place vote getter and give his second-place votes to the remaining candidates. Presumably in this hypothetical everyone who voted for The Devil, who has now been eliminated, put Almost The Devil as second place. Therefore, the new results are:
- Almost The Devil - 42%
- Jesus - 38%
- A Goofball - 20%
- Almost The Devil - 52%
- Jesus - 48%
- In repeated experience voters should get better and better at using the new system. This is similar to rejecting the argument that a simple one-time experiment in a classroom "proving" prisoner dilemma problems mean people will fail at coordination ... therefore, government force is required to make them make the right choices.
- Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If this is a 90% solution to known problems with elections and democracy, it might be worth this hypothetical, unlikely risk.
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Winkler's Wager
Probability a supernatural being(s) (aka, God) exists?
— Steve Winkler (@swinkler78) March 6, 2021
- Ask a believer to convince you that their belief is genuine as opposed to something that makes them feel good.
- Ask a disbeliever to explain why their expectation that their car will get them to work tomorrow morning is not predicated on faith or many small faiths they themselves cannot prove.
Monday, March 8, 2021
A Greater Sage Theory
Sunday, March 7, 2021
A Hypothetical SARS-CoV-2 Study
- 20-day trailing average humidity
- 20-day trailing average temperature
- Latitude
- Population density
- Stringency measure (government-mandated restrictions)
- Mobility measure during COVID relative to the same mobility measure average value for 2019
- Median income
- Proportion of population 65+
- Percentage of elderly in LTC facilities
- Population proportion by ethnic/race ancestry (hypothesizing that prior immunities are associated different geographies)
- Date of first case within y-hundred miles (adjusting for treatments, interventions, etc. changing over the timeline)
- I would like to see the cross sectional results of confirmed COVID deaths by standardized timeline (from date of first case; from date of first death; from x days past first case within y-hundred miles).
- I would also like to see the time series analysis in total and by various cohorts for confirmed COVID deaths.
Thursday, February 18, 2021
It Depends . . .
Considering this: | One-dimensional thinking concludes: | Deeper-level thinking concludes: |
To arrive at a destinations sooner one should drive… | Faster | Slower |
A risk-averse investor should consider taking on… | Less market risk | More market risk |
A successful salesperson… | Knows how to get what she wants | Knows how to satisfy peoples’ needs |
To increase revenues... | Increase prices | Lower prices or offer coupons |
To reduce the damages of a dangerous vice... | Prohibit it | Normalize it |
To better preserve competitive balance in sports leagues... | Restrict player compensation | Liberalize player compensation |
To reduce the risk of gun violence there should be... | More gun restriction | Less gun restriction |
To change minds... | Speak more | Listen more |
To increase the income of low-skilled workers... | Enforce high minimum wages laws | Lower or eliminate minimum wage laws |
A satisfied restaurant customer... | Cleans his plate | Leaves some food uneaten |
Basketball teams who shoot poorly (have a low percentage of shots that go in) should... | Be highly selective with their shots | Shoot the ball a lot more |
To help the children who toil in child-labor manufacturing we should... | Ban and boycott their products | Buy and enjoy their products |
Sunday, December 13, 2020
I Was Desperate. Honestly Afraid. And Completely Helpless.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Breaking Professions Down Into Three Essential Roles
I think one can categorize most professions into a small number of distinct roles--let's explore this idea and arbitrarily limit the number of roles to three in each case. It is my contention that few of the people practicing these professions are good at more than one role, and many are not very good at any of the roles. Consider:
- Lawyers: navigator, firefighter, bodyguard
- Financial advisors: tour guide, travel agent, psychologist
- Medical doctors: band-aids, antibiotics, placebo
- College professors: inspirational speaker, revealer of truth (model explainer), advancer of truth (researcher)
- Elementary school teachers: babysitter, basic skills tutor, etiquette shaper
- Catholic priests: moral consigliere, charity executive director, art museum curator
No One I Know Committed Voter Fraud
Sunday, October 11, 2020
The Electoral College by Private Land Mass
Thursday, October 8, 2020
What Explains Country Variation in COVID Deaths?
I see a lot of vague or implied speculation on why there are such large differences in COVID-19 death rates (et al.) among various countries and regions. But many of these have internal tensions once we think a little deeply about the arguments being hinted at. Biases are leading to a lot of lies of omission if not just outright bad reasoning.
Why is Sweden different than Finland? What explains Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea versus France, Italy, and Spain? Germany versus Belgium? USA NE versus Texas versus Florida versus USA Midwest?
Here is a partial list of the usual and some unusual suspects:
- General health in the population
- Partial immunity including from prior coronavirus exposures
- Climate including ability to comfortably be outdoors and in open-air environments (definitely relative to when the virus struck)
- Prior and continued use of various drugs and treatments
- Proportion of at-risk people especially elderly
- Quality of procedures for protecting the vulnerable
- Quality of testing
- Quality of tracing
- Population density (within cities and otherwise relative to where people actually live; e.g., excluding most of Canada when measuring for Canada)
- Government NPIs including lockdowns and other policies but not test and/or trace
- Degree of movement within and among various communities (city to city, within a city, cross sociodemographic, in and out of country, et al.)
- Strain(s) of C-19 virus affecting country and timing of the infection
Sunday, August 30, 2020
If You Are Up To Your Neck in Piss, and ...
The title and lead in for this post is from something my grandpa used to ask me often when I was young. He was full of pithy little sayings, questions, and aphorisms that were his way of teaching a lesson or making a point. He was a down-to-earth person with a keen ability to see through bullshit. Perhaps years on the road in his profession as a long-haul truck driver gave him this perspective. Incidentally, my one-time non de plume for this blog, Fonzy Shazam, is based partially on his CB handle, "Shazam".
- Your vote will signal ever so slightly support for a candidate. As we'll see, this will have a lot more value for some than others.
- We could consider this from the standpoint of voting as if your vote would determine the outcome.