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zooko
@zooko
, 5 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
Occam's Razor is good for epistemological reasons not metaphysical. It's not that the universe always magically fits the simplest explanation. It's that trying to disprove the simplest surviving explanation, over and over, will teach you the most. ...
Even though the more complex explanation sometimes turns out to be the correct one. ...
The same goes for conspiracy theories (subtweet). It's not that the universe is free from conspiracies — far from it! But pursuing conspiracy theories, like pursuing elaborate scientific hypotheses, sends you down a rabbit hole from which you may never return. ...
The advantage of simple scientific hypotheses and non-conspiracy explanations is not that they are always true, it's that you can be forced to relinquish those beliefs by new evidence. ...
The disadvantage of complex hypotheses and conspiracy theories is not that they are always false, it's that you can't easily be forced to relinquish them, so you may never get a chance to move on to a better belief. ៚
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zooko
@zooko
When I disclosed CVE-2019-7167 to John Dobbertin, he told me: “People will have three questions: 1. Is my money safe? 2. Why did it take you so long to tell us? 3. How do we know that it won’t happen again?” Here are the answers in three tweets.
1. “Is my money safe?” We have seen no evidence that the issue was exploited before it was fixed. However, even if it was—or in case of any other such problem—this will not inflate the monetary base because of turnstiling (z.cash/blog/defense-a…).
2. “Why did it take you so long to tell us?” We were protecting both Zcash users and the users of other coins. This wasn’t complete until a few days ago: blog.zencash.com/shielded-trans…
Read 4 tweets
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zooko
@zooko
All the bad things about the Internet—I don't think they come from people being free to communicate with one another. I think they come from the advertising revenue model.
Incentives matter. In the long run, they may be the only thing that matters. It's taken 20 years since the advertising model swept the Internet.
What are the incentives baked into the advertising model? Seems to me that all of the worst problems that we attribute to "the Internet" are traceable precisely to those incentives.
Read 6 tweets
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zooko
@zooko
0/ Thread about The Great Cybercoin Bear Market of 2018: …
1/ There are basically three narratives that I've been hearing about the cybercoin market: “new bull run”, “tulip bulb crash”, and “dotcom-style winter”. Plus there's a fourth perspective I'd like to throw in. …
2/ First up, the bulls. They say that the good times are about to come roaring back, in 2019. Their main narrative at this point is that the institutional/legacy-financial-system money is about to start flowing in. …
Read 22 tweets

Related threads

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Jsinclair
@Jsincla43477730
In 2014, Bill Craig invited me and Robin Collins (he of the Cosmic Design Fine-Tuning argument) to be part of a debate team. The location was the Greer-Heard point-counterpoint forum at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Our opponents were one of the foremost cosmologists, Sean Carroll, one of the foremost philosophers of time, Tim Maudlin, and one of the foremost philosophers of religion Alex Rosenberg. This was quite something! I had been to Greer-Heard in 2007, when Bill was . . .
. . . 2nd man on the debate team that year. As I recall, it was on "The Future of Atheism", and the primaries were Alister McGrath & Daniel Dennett. That year I presented a paper for the Evangelical Philosophical Society on my topic of cosmological models and . . .
Read 148 tweets
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Leah McElrath
@leahmcelrath
Occam’s Razor FTW
Nothing about the torture and assassination of Jamal Khashoggi is a “win.”

My implication is everyone knew MbS had to have okayed this op.

With any other WH, that presumption would have been acted upon while the IC investigated/confirmed.

Not this one.
Read this important thread by my friend @iyad_elbaghdadi with additional context about just how premeditated the assassination was:

Read 3 tweets
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Jsinclair
@Jsincla43477730
This resource is a good popular level of William Lane Craig's defense regarding the philosophy of time. Why is this important? Because, (putting on my Feynman hat), the philosophy of time is the best place to attack Kalam.

amazon.com/Time-Eternity-…
At an academic level, the proper sources are these:

amazon.com/Tensed-Theory-…

amazon.com/Tenseless-Theo…
And this set of essays by advocates and critics both:

amazon.com/Relativity-Sim…
Read 76 tweets
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Leah McElrath
@leahmcelrath
Occam's Razor folks.

OF COURSE Putin has kompromat on Trump. It might "just" be monetary/financial in nature. It might be sexual in nature (although I highly doubt it is just "golden showers" because Trump would and has already laughed off that idea). It might be both.
Here is Trump in JANUARY 2017, just weeks before taking (and I mean taking) office, laughing off the "pee tape" report by saying he's a "germaphobe" (listen to the journalists also laugh):

I don't mean there isn't a tape of him watching women urinate on one another while in a bed that Obama slept in. There might be.

I am saying that I do not believe such a tape would be sufficient to constitute "kompromat" on Trump, given his personality.

Read 3 tweets
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Dr. Zubin Damania
@ZDoggMD
Empathy (narrowly FEELING another's pain) prompts us to care deeply about a dozen Thai kids trapped in a cave...#good. Compassion (love, understanding, & concern in the face of suffering) causes us to care about them AND the tragic flooding of 1000's in Japan...#better (cont.)
Empathy shines a narrow spotlight on the few, and can cause us to overreact and act short-term to relieve pain. You can't empathize with 100's or with a statistical abstraction like massive flooding. You empathize with one story at a time, and you FEEL it personally. (cont.)
Compassion involves understanding, concern, and love in response to suffering wherever it's found. You don't assume the suffering as your own, but you act sustainably to try and relieve it. This may involve "tough love..." say, with addiction (cont.)
Read 4 tweets
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Juan Lopez-Mattei, MD
@onco_cardiology
Artifacts in a nutshell 👽👾

A Tweetorial...
Dedicated to @bcostelloMD, @RezaEmaminia & all the great #FITs stressed out by #EchoBoards @ASE360 #carrotsquad
Images and some of the content from Bertrand, et al. JASE 2016;29:381-91. onlinejase.com/article/S0894-…
Ultrasound waves need a media to travel. Our tissues are that media. All tissues have different acoustic impedances. Air, fat, water, blood, muscle, bone listed in increasing impedance. Always there will be reflected & refracted waves as it traverses different tissue layers.
Remember that the way the US distributes the waves in a phased array probe is similar to a folding fan, so reflection (rebound) & refraction (change in direction) occurs across the sector width (Triangle area where you see the images) look at panel B of above figure.
Read 14 tweets

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