jmh

• jmh 14 Jan 2022 5:05 UTC

  4 points

  on: Omicron Post #14

  Curious on the testing note. Should I be inferring that Omicron is not as active in the nasal passage ways but rather in the upper throat? In other words, has the mutation changed the location of entry—might not be the correct way to say that. I thought the general understanding in the past was the the virus really replicated in the upper/​nasal area before spreading in the body.

• jmh 14 Jan 2022 1:49 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Kenny’s comment on: The Fu­sion Power Gen­er­a­tor Scenario

  Well that comment was a while back so I’ll place a caveat on my response that I could have been thinking of something else.

  While I was in grad school one of the papers read (by a professor I took a class with but was not part of that class) was “The Origins of Predictable Behavior” (Ron Heiner, AER circa 1984?). It’s interesting because it was largely a Bayesian analysis. Short summary, humans evolve rules that protect them from big, but often infrequent, risks.

  I think the idea here is that social norms then set our priors about certain things that are a bit separate from our personal experience—and so are designed to resist the individual updates on priors because the actual evens are infrequent.

• jmh 14 Jan 2022 1:32 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Sameerishere’s comment on: I have COVID, for how long should I iso­late?

  Is that an issue from a “protect myself from others” or “protect others from me” perspective?

• jmh 14 Jan 2022 1:31 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Florin’s comment on: I have COVID, for how long should I iso­late?

  Maybe I misunderstand your statement. I don’t get why you say the burden is on those wanting to avoid rather than those who are infected. Particularly as your first statement is about an infected person taking steps to limit the spread of any residual infection they may still have.

  I do have a growing sympathy with the idea that just because you have a case of COVID that necessarily means you need to stay in the leper colony for a while. BUT I’m not sure about where one draws the line on that. Each person’s case is a unique so the risk they pose to others needs to be considered on a case by case basis and we still seem to be working that out.

• jmh 14 Jan 2022 1:23 UTC

  3 points

  on: Ques­tion Gravity

  While I agree that cohesion could explain the phenomena where is the center of gravity for the full and empty container? Most of the shampoo bottles I have seem to have thicker bottoms than sides or tops. This seems to be a case where very careful measurement is needed. Or perhaps more sampling. Do the experiment with 50 shampoo bottles of the same manufacture (and perhaps even bought at the same time to get a common production run).

• jmh 8 Jan 2022 13:28 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Chris Beacham’s comment on: Ra­tional Breaks: a bet­ter way to work

  Agree. And I think that name allows for the implication that the ratio need not be fixed for all people or across all tasks.

• jmh 7 Jan 2022 3:32 UTC

  2 points

  on: How much, and on what mar­gins, should we be re­think­ing quaran­tine pro­to­cols?

  Small update. Seems that one of the local medical organizations has come to some conclusion on the question as well.

  Coronavirus-positive but asymptomatic nurses who have received a vaccine and booster are directed to return to work immediately with no period of isolation, according to Inova guidelines dated Dec. 28. Periods of isolation vary based on vaccination status and range from five days for mild symptoms to up to 20 days or longer for those with severe illness. (https://​​www.washingtonpost.com/​​dc-md-va/​​2022/​​01/​​05/​​omicron-wave-dc-hospitals-death/​​)

[Question] How much, and on what mar­gins, should we be re­think­ing quaran­tine pro­to­cols?

• jmh 3 Jan 2022 15:43 UTC

  4 points

  on: How an alien the­ory of mind might be unlearnable

  In reading this I was reminded (or at least my mind sort of wondered of to the thought) of a statement a psychologist friend of mine made many years ago. He described his job as trying to understand the rationality underlying the people we considered “not normal”.

  In other words, understanding the operational map the person has. The goal was not really to verify where that map and the territory were not in sync (at least through the lens of his map—or other generally acceptable maps) or even to compare it with his map. I think the trivial implication here may be that every mind can be considered an “alien” mind. It’s just that for the most part human minds are not very alien from one another.

  But what also comes from that is that things like intelligence and rationality are not part of the criteria. So that seems to suggest that we can actually attempt (and I am 99.999% sure some actually are) understanding the alien minds of other species on Earth.

  Both implications see to suggest we can look to those areas, human psychology and research by those exploring the “minds” of other species for what types of assumptions are needed/​made. We could then look at ways to assess the success (would predicting future actions under defined conditions indicate some understanding of the mind?) and which assumptions (or classes of assumptions?) matter.

  That might then inform on the assumptions needed for AI.

• jmh 21 Dec 2021 18:43 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: frontier64’s comment on: Busi­ness Writ­ing Ex­am­ple #2

  I was going to comment but decided down voting was a more appropriate response. The down vote was primarily due the comment appearing to be rather off the subject of Business Writing. I don’t think it is very helpful down voting without offering some thoughts on why the criticism was made. A secondary reason for my down vote was just disagreement with several of your positions.

• jmh 20 Dec 2021 20:02 UTC

  8 points

  on: Busi­ness Writ­ing Ex­am­ple #2

  While I agree that the revised response is vastly superior to the original, and that the points about fully answering inquiries and offering low/​no cost add-on services to assist with a customer’s pain points is spot on the bull’s eye of customer relationship management.

  However, I think a key point has been missed. Why did the other questions go unanswered? That seems to be the core problem to solve and offering a solutions alone doesn’t really seem to bridge the gap between error and improved response in the future.

  Put differently, we seem to have identified the inputs and outputs (customer query and the company response) but treated the response process a bit like a black box.

• jmh 15 Dec 2021 21:21 UTC

  4 points

  on: We’ll Always Have Crazy

  Two quick observations, one perhaps trivial but perhaps worth mentioning.

  Trivial first. How comfortable are you with noting that the Christians of old we’re fine claiming the Earth as the center of the observable universe as if it were somehow seriously wrong? My understanding—and I could be wrong here I’ll accept—is that current empirical observations pretty much supports that view. Seems like no matter which way we look we see as far into the distance universe. That would put us pretty much center of the spherical limits of vision for us. Is rejecting the center view based on clear empirical data or is that a view based on belief in theory? Which would make it a bit of a faith statement.

  Not trying to argue we are at the center (I’m not even sure the concept of center of the universe is good), but really asking about just what potential biases and assumption are held related to deciding on “crazy”.

  With regards to the 50%+1 thought. Seems like that is close to the Median Voter idea that suggests political positions and agenda should be pushed to some centerist positions. I think that is wrong. I think the parties will try to keep their positions as close to what their ideology requires and then move positions around based on where the marginal gains and losses of votes push them. I’m also assuming that the non-voting population is not some static set of the total population. In that setting the party position should not be expected to only move towards the other party’s (or some blended position with multiple parties) position to capture votes. It could just as well move away depending on just what the current population of potential voters is like.

  So in a polity like the USA I could easily see that the parties would move to position where, in the extreme, they are talking to completely different groups of people who would never vote for the other party. Here the bit is getting them to vote when they were not voting before. That would produce a bar-bell type graph of position on the left-right spectrum with an increasingly larger gap between the peaks of the curves.

  Whether or not that type of outcome is crazy or not, hmmmm. Might be deserving but from the inside of both camps I suspect they think they are all sane and everyone else is mad.

• jmh 8 Dec 2021 0:50 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Rob Bensinger’s comment on: Leav­ing Orbit

  “Sorry, gotta go now.”?

  Or perhaps a phrase the Koreans say “I’ll leave first.”

• jmh 8 Dec 2021 0:47 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Leav­ing Orbit

  Unavoidable does seem likely but there may be a positive aspect as well. Since it will be a term that is cryptic to the uninitiated they are likely not to feel confident assigning any particular interpretation to the exit. And, one hopes in this type of environment, will produce a query about the term without feeling anyone was trying to hide something or exclude someone.

• jmh 6 Dec 2021 16:41 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Pri­vacy and Manipulation

  I do like the view expressed here. There is a Occam’s Razor aspect that I think helps in thinking about the situation. That said, I do think there might still be some value to the formalizing and publishing policies here.

  While one may well find one self on the opposite side from someone that has confided something to you that will often just be one aspect of the larger personal relationship. We often implicitly or explicitly assume that my friend is my friend universally and not just some “fair weather” type friend. Friends accept someone with all their flaws and strengths.

  That is really a bit of a naive view though.

  Perhaps by being more open in your own policy with people will make them consider the specifics of what’s being shared more critically rather than just assuming the friend is on the same page in this case as they have been in 100 other cases.

  While it’s clear that once you have the information you either share or keep it confidential and so find you are on one side or the others. In other words, the person sharing imposes that problem on you—once told you must be on one side or the other. In some cases that might be a hard decision to make. By making known a policy position perhaps the will limit the number of times you are placed in a situation you would really like to have avoided (ignorance can be bliss ;-) ).

  So perhaps publishing one’s policies is something of a optimal approach both helping reduce the stress in choosing a side and in even finding oneself in the position of having to make that choice.

• jmh 5 Dec 2021 21:22 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Svyatoslav Usachev’s comment on: Pri­vacy and Manipulation

  I wonder if the qualifier (if you are X) is even needed. Whether the dilemma is created by someone manipulating things or just conflicting values (e.g., confidentiality/​one’s word and discovered wrong correctable by disclosure) who wants to be on the horns.

  Why not simply take the stance that I will always reserve judgment on what confidences I will protect and when you telling me something means you are deferring to my judgement, not binding me to your position?

• jmh 4 Dec 2021 19:44 UTC

  4 points

  on: Se­cond-or­der se­lec­tion against the immortal

  Is there perhaps an unjustified assumption implicit here that somehow immortality implies some level of evolutionary fixed point position? Why wouldn’t the pill actually produce an organism that is both in a very stable health equilibrium in stable environments but rapidly able to react to changes correctly?

  That might be the story behind the experimental results. The EL group is very well suited to the current environment but unable to adapt to the new later environment while the EW do adapt. Here it seems very much the niche specialist versus the more generalist. Generalists, that are at least able to survive seem to last longer than the niche player.

• jmh 2 Dec 2021 19:32 UTC

  3 points

  on: Omicron Post #3

  An entirely lighthearted comment, perhaps in keeping with some humor in your recap of Biden’s speech.

  Omicron Everywhere

  so it’s actually omnicron?

  On a more serious note, are there any good, and known, models related to mid-pandemic travel restriction value? Perhaps particularly for mutation cases given the time lag to identify the new mutations. If one is sure the mutation is not yet present (and that it has a very, very low probability of emerging in its own) then restricting travel will absolutely slow down the rate it will eventually arrive. But that seems like a dream case.

Viral Mu­ta­tion, Pan­demics and So­cial Response

• jmh 29 Nov 2021 20:50 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: Frame Control

  When I started reading my first thought was, not independence but competitive alternatives. Then of course you pointed to the same. However, I’m wondering if that is really where it stops.

  First I want to say I did not give the OP a full read and second that there are important parts of what I did read that I have fully digested. Given that, I have to wonder if the issue of frame control as raised by the author here is fully solved in the same way we think of economic problem solutions coming out of competitive supply and demand settings.

  Am I really in a good place personally just because I can pick and choose among those controlling my frame? Or, put differently, is multiple support options (i.e., able to expose one’s self to multiple other frames) certain to eliminate the problem of frame control for that person? Something is nudging me in the direction of “not quite sure about that”. Then again, maybe what we have is that one never escapes frame control so we’re always talking about the best of a bunch of “bad” options.