I’ve found it very helpful in the same vein as RFC 2119 terminology (MUST, SHOULD, MAY, etc.); when you need your meanings to be understood by a counterparty and can agree on a common language to use.
Also, what likelihood can we assign to claims that the virus was deliberately modified at the furin cleavage site as part of a gain-of-function research program aimed at assessing the risks of species-jumping behavior in bat coronaviruses? This is a separate question from the lab escape issue, which dould have involved either a collected wild-type virus or one that had been experimentally modified.
Perhaps experts in the field 'misinterpreted the evidence' back in the early months of the pandemic, much as happened with the CIA and its 'intelligence on Iraq'?
https://interestingengineering.com/health/us-doe-says-covid-...
I’ll never forgot old World of Warcraft discussions about crit probability. If a particular sequence is “one in a million” and there are 10 million players and each player encounters hundreds or thousands of sequences per day then “one in a million” is pretty effing common!
I'd argue that it doesn't depend on that at all; its meaning is the same whether you're performing the trial once, a million times, ten million times, or whatever. It's just whether its implication is "the possibility may be disregarded" or "this should be expected to happen a few times" that depends on how many times you're performing the trial.
[I]n my affidavit, I wrote that SQL schemas would provide “only marginal value” to an attacker. Big mistake. Chicago jumped on those words and said “see, you yourself agree that a schema is of some value to an attacker.” Of course, I don’t really believe that; “only marginal value” is just self-important message-board hedging. I also claimed on the stand that “only an incompetently built application” could be attacked with nothing but it’s schema. Even I don’t know what I meant by that.
Not really.
>I wrote that SQL schemas would provide “only marginal value” to an attacker. Big mistake. Chicago jumped on those words and said “see, you yourself agree that a schema is of some value to an attacker.”
The City of Chicago's argument was that something of ANY value, no matter how insignificant, would help an attacker exploit their system, and was therefore possible to keep secret under the FOIA law.
So obviously there must be some threshold for the value to an attacker. He attempted to communicate that schemas are clearly below such a threshold and they used his wording to attempt to argue the opposite.
I’m glad that argument lost, since it totally subverts the purpose and intention of the FOIA. Any piece of information could be of value to some attacker, but that doesn’t outweigh the need for transparency.
> “see, you yourself agree that a schema is of some value to an attacker.”
IANAL, it appears justice systems universally interpret this type of "technically yes if that makes you happy but honestly unlikely" statements as "yes with technical bonus", not a "no with extra steps" at all, and it has to be shortened as just "unlikely from my professional perspective" or something lawyer approved for intended effect. Courts are weird.
While I laud the gracious application of Hanlon's Razor here, I also think that, for at least some actors, the imprecision was the feature they needed, rather than the bug they mistakenly implemented.
I spun up a quick survey[1] that I sent out to friends and family to try to get some numbers on these sorts of phrases. Results so far are inconclusive.
You're right (technically correct, which is the best etc.)! That is why "almost all" can mean everything except rational numbers.
I am a mathematician, but, even so, I think that this is one of those instances where we have to admit that we have mangled everyday terminology when appropriating it, and so non-measure theoretic users should just ignore our definition. (Similarly with "group," where, at the risk of sounding tongue-in-cheek because it's so obvious, if I were trying to analyze how people usually understand its everyday meaning I wouldn't include the requirement that every element have an inverse.)
If there's a finite subset of an infinite set, almost all members of the infinite set are not in the finite set. E.g. Almost all integers are not 5: the set of integers equal to five is finite and the set of integers not equal to five is countably infinite.
Likewise for two infinite sets of different size: Almost all real numbers are not integers.
Etc.
if you're a teacher and one student per class does the same thing - it's common. Even though it's only 1/25 or 1/30 of all students
1. It’s generally difficult to quantify such risks in any meaningful manner
2. Provision of any number adds liability, and puts you in a damned-if-does, damned-if-it-doesn’t-work-out situation
3. The operating surgeon is not the best to quantify these risks - the surgeon owns the operation, and the anaesthesiologist owns the patient / theatre
4. Gamblers quantify risk because they make money from accurate assessment of risk. Doctors are in no way incentivised to do so
5. The returned chance of 1/3 probably had an error margin of +/-33% itself
According to the literature 33 out of 100 patients who underwent this operation in the US within the past 10 years died. 90% of those had complicating factors. You [ do / do not ] have such a factor.
Who knows if any given layman will appreciate the particular quantification you provide but I'm fairly certain that data exists for the vast majority of serious procedures at this point.
I've actually had this exact issue with the veterinarian. I've worked in biomed. I pulled the literature for the condition. I had lots of different numbers but I knew that I didn't have the full picture. I'm trying to quantify the possible outcomes between different options being presented to me. When I asked the specialist, who handles multiple such cases every day, I got back (approximately) "oh I couldn't say" and "it varies". The latter is obviously true but the entire attitude is just uncooperative bullshit.
> puts you in a damned-if-does, damned-if-it-doesn’t-work-out situation
Not really. Don't get me wrong, I understand that a litigious person could use just about anything to go after you and so I appreciate that it might be sensible to simply refuse to answer. But from an academic standpoint the future outcome of a single sample does not change the rigor of your risk assessment.
> Doctors are in no way incentivised to do so
Don't they use quantifications of risk to determine treatment plans to at least some extent? What's the alternative? Blindly following a flowchart? (Honest question.)
> The returned chance of 1/3 probably had an error margin of +/-33% itself
What do you mean by this? Surely there's some error margin on the assessment itself but I don't see how any of us commenting could have any idea what it might have been.
"So...you're telling me there is a chance!"
Partial HTML: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1951v04p2/...
Full text PDF scan: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79R01012A0007000...
mempko•3h ago
throwaway81523•3h ago
I haven't tried this myself and haven't run across a situation to apply it to lately, but I thought it was interesting.
andrewflnr•3h ago
I kind of see how this might be useful, but what I've actually seen is an illusion of certainty from looking at numbers and thinking that means you're being quantitative instead of, you know, pulling things out of your butt. Garbage in, garbage out still applies.
throwaway81523•2h ago
plorkyeran•2h ago
widforss•1h ago
chrisweekly•1h ago
JadeNB•56m ago
I remember an appealing description of the difference being that a precise archer might sink all their arrows at the same spot on the edge of the target, whereas an accurate archer might sink all their arrows near the bull's eye without always hitting the same spot.
Muromec•3h ago
csours•2h ago
layer8•1h ago
konstantinua00•1h ago
3 months have passed, 9 to go :)