PROBABILITY DU JOUR
You can see with the naked eye that the data in the Ariely paper was fabricated: for annual miles driven, STDEV ~ ½ mean. For a one-tailed distribution, this MUST be Uniform, flat frequ. in [a,b].
Miles per annum CANNOT be uniform SINCE they are a sum: CLT! Image
2) Here is the story (softly) retracted from PNAS. Someone cheated in the food chain, and there was no need for the graphs below to figure it out.

economist.com/graphic-detail… Image
3) The Ariely paper (cont):
This very very short video explains why ~ NO sum can be uniform.

Note: I used "~" because the uniform is decomposable, but into a weird combination of Bernouilli + uniform. The discrete uniform, I believe, can be indecomposable.
Note: the "MUST" is ~MUST since there are other candidate distributions (gamma, lognormal) but then must be monstrously skewed for STD to be uninformative under v. Large summation.
An interesting point concerning the scaling of noise: if the daily mean is twice the standard deviation, the annual mean must be ~ 38 times the annual standard deviation. Image

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More from @nntaleb

12 Sep
Before we delve into the statistics in the paper, please note an R^2 of .03. It means more than 99% can be explained by randomness.
Please note that I have a technical blog, largely focused on uses and misuses of probability in #Medicine. But one can get some entertainments from psycholophasters.

fooledbyrandomnessdotcom.wordpress.com/2021/09/07/est…
Basically, Mr Grant, can you explain to us who you are bullshitting ?
Where is the class of people who buy this crap?

@AdamMGrant
cc:@marissa_sharif @cmogilner @HalHershfield
Read 5 tweets
27 Aug
I am all for freedom.
But then hospital staff MUST also have the freedom to treat you last, give priority of resources to people who promote safety for themselves and others, no?
Freedom!
[Texas Anti-Mask 'Freedom Rally' Organizer Fighting For His Life With COVID-19]
2) Freedom must come with consequences and reciprocity.
[Being smoker/obese or having a risk factor is not in your control and is not MULTIPLICATIVE. Asking for freedom to SPREAD Covid is something different.]
3) For idiots not getting it, an obese person is only harming herself or himself. Someone who wants to spread Covid is actively harming others, and so in a multiplicative way.

Libertarianism is FIRST about non-aggression.

#Scaling
Read 5 tweets
18 Aug
Four Ethical pts.
1) Honor commitments when you offer protection!
2) He is running for elections in the US & Afghans don't vote
3) For Nation States, noncitizens' lives don't count, no more than roaches
4) Has "Christian" in bio & Xtianity goes beyond nations!

#PrincipiaPolitica
2) You can build ethical arguments along the point:

If the Captain of the ship is American and the passengers are ALL Afghans, can the captain leave first & let them drown, or is he or she FIRST a captain & must shoulder he Captain responsibility ?
3) Basically it is NOT of the interest of the U.S. to dump people & run away as nobody will eventually accept your promises of protection.
Read 4 tweets
16 Aug
The gym of the Presidential Palace in Kabul.
Not a single Taliban tried to deadlift. One of them pressed ~50 lbs. Tells you something about the strength of the other side.
2) Look at what absence of bitcoin does to you!
#BitcoinFixesThis
#BitcoinFixesEverything
They are now ready for the U.N.
Read 7 tweets
10 Aug
It turns out that Mr @Snowden is not willing (or not able) to debate me.

Incidentaly, his repertoire includes tricks used by charlatans (pathologization):as Karl Popper said, when you question psychoanalysts, they accuse you of having problems with your father.
Incidentally...
PROBABILITY DU JOUR
People misanalyze the way Mr @Snowden presence in Russia dramatically changes probabilities (misestimation of probability in FBR). I fell for it myself.
Exercise: Now add his intellectual dishonesty and rederive!
Read 4 tweets
10 Aug
PHILOLOGY DU JOUR
Friends, in Modern Greek, καιρός means both TIME and WEATHER. Same with Romance languages (temps, tiempo, tempo).

Any other languages?
In Persian, روزگار maybe. Interestingly Persian uses the Semitic هوا while Arabic uses the Greek طقس.
So an interesting flipping of roots: Arabic uses, for weather, IndoEuropean (Greek) τάξης (order, εν τάξει) طقس, while I-E Urdu uses the Arabic mawsam موسم, an agricultural term linked to seasonality of crops.
Coastal Levantine vs farming Central Asia?

Read 4 tweets

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