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Discussion: The NYT Spelling Bee Thread

jimmurphy said:

Just got QB, too.

QB for me too and agree that it was pretty easy today, though i did struggle a bit to get the final word  :bz

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Discussion: The NYT Spelling Bee Thread

Got it today too :-)

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Discussion: We built a bridge today.

Jaytee said:

Sounds like a real trek to carry lumber that far. Hopefully you guys have younger strong guys to help, that’s a project. And you 4x4’s for the support? Using a sledgehammer? 

Younger guys --- I am 80. Steve is 76. Dennis is 27.  We are there every Friday.We all carry the lumber. 

There will be 15 - 20 people on Friday to carry the stuff.  Several corporations buy lumber and materials for us and donate their staff for 1/2 or full day. That happens a few times a year.On those day, the four of us mostly supervise.

4 x 4, two on one.  They are heavy. Pounding will begin with a sledgehammer. Then finish with a pole pounder that will use two people on it.

Sometimes, we get high school kids. It's easy to get the guys to carry the lumber. We wait until the guys are next to the girls.

" These pieces are heavy. I don't know if you can carry it by yourselves." You never see lumber move so quickly.

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Discussion: What is the best choice — Ipad or Ipad air?

If you have Wi-Fi, your new iPad will transfer the contents of the old one to the new one as long they stay close enough to each other.

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Discussion: What does Putin want (and whatabout it)

I have zero military training, but a couple of thoughts occur 1.   Russia is reported to recently be building up its number of ships in the Black Sea in international waters.  This is very bad since the ships can launch missiles and they may be harder to strike back against since they are moving targets.  A possible scenario is that Russia will launch a totally massive missile strike against Ukraine that will disable Ukraine's defense.  2.  I am thinking that Ukraine needs weapons to fight off these ships.  

I agree with Paul that war is a God-awful thing and is to be avoided if at all possible.   But, it is clear that Russia has unjustifiably attacked Ukraine.   So, the question becomes, "Is fighting for the freedom of your country against an aggressor country that has historically devasted your land and starved and killed millions of people worth fighting for?"   The answer is yes.   

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Discussion: The Rose Garden and White House happenings: What does 2024 portend?

Smedley said:

yes, which is what I just did here.

https://twitter.com/washburnealex/status/1636004126873251840?s=61&t=9PvlxwW1YMphxP54kUQl-A

What are your thoughts on this information? Do you give it any credibility at all as far as circumstantial evidence for the lab leak theory? If not, why not? 

DS's response is largely mine here. I'll also venture into trying to make a broader point. A simultaneous strength and weakness of humans is that we are very good and finding patterns. It's a strength that's allowed us to develop culture and technology, from figuring out how to control fire and shape stone into tools to building AI chatbots, but also the same thing that shows us faces in our toast and which make us vulnerable to con men and demagogues.

If you spend any time at all looking at large data sets, one thing you'll notice is that they are very "noisy." Coincidences, far from being rare, are super common, and its possible to tell nearly any story one wishes by choosing which coincidences to pick out and arrange into a neat little story. That's our impressive pattern-recognition skills at work, but being unhelpful or even actively harmful here.

So how do we go about separating signal from noise? Since the arrival of the internet era, this is increasingly not just a question for data scientists, but for all of us, now that we're bombarded with an ever-increasing flood of "data." What's true but irrelevant? What's not true at all but pure b.s.?

I find two things helpful. One, to try and determine relevancy, asking what, if anything, would change if a claim were true or not true. If nothing much changes, then the claim is just noise. For instance, the claim that "WIV switches from civ-->military control." Let's run some scenarios:
- This claim is true, covid starts in the market, how does China behave?
- This claim is false, covid starts in the market, how does China behave?
- This claim is true, covid starts in the lab, how does China behave?
- This claim is false, covid starts in the lab, how does China behave?

I can't see China behaving different in any of those four scenarios. So it doesn't seem relevant. Noise, we can ignore it.

Ok, after throwing out noise, then what? Look at actual fact claims, as opposed to opinions or coincidences of timing. IOW, things that can be falsifiable. For instance, claims about the Furin cleavage site on the virus. There's actual scientists publishing research around this that can be looked at. So that's something one can actually look into (spoiler, no legitimate research supports the idea that anything here suggests lab manipulation).

It's a bit fractal too. For instance, on the furin cleavage site, diving in there one will again be faced with a lot of noise one must first filter out before getting to actual fact claims one can evaluate.

There's a third, important point -- accepting uncertainty. After doing all that, it's still often the case that there's a lot one simply cannot, and will never, know. And I'd argue that this is the fundamental difference between scientific and conspiracy thinking. Conspiracies are a claim that, in fact, there is ultimately someone, somewhere, who not only knows, but is controlling things, and that with enough work you, the intrepid research, can uncover the schemes. It's a rejection of uncertainty. The world may be controlled by a shadowy conspiracy, but there's a certain comfort in knowing that at least someone is controlling it. And it has its appeal. If the pandemic started as a result of Chinese communists cooking up bioweapons, we have villains to rage against and actions we can take. But if the pandemic is the result of random mutations by something that isn't even really alive, that neither wants to help or hurt us because it simply doesn't care about us at all, that in fact can't even care about us at all -- what are we supposed to do with that? An indifferent universe can be far more terrifying than a hostile one. Better to talk to the face in our toast, right? 
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Discussion: What does Putin want (and whatabout it)

paulsurovell said:

Brusque 2:

This is fun.

force: to compel by physical, moral or intellectual means

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Discussion: What is the best choice — Ipad or Ipad air?

All done! typing this on the ipad air. Got $150 off,  $15 off the pencil, all transferring done while we waited (thank God I had it done for me). Now, to get the hang of it! Was going to buy a case for it, but decided to go on Amazon since Apple’s case is $75!

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Discussion: The Trump Indictments

Leeked mugshot.

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Discussion: The Rose Garden and White House happenings: What does 2024 portend?

Smedley said:

so you don't want to fight a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine? I think Paul should know that. 

Oh, not you, too.

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