jsbennett86 comments on Rationality Quotes February 2013 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: arundelo 05 February 2013 10:20PM

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Comment author: jsbennett86 02 February 2013 03:36:42AM *  31 points [-]

It seems that 32 Bostonians have simultaneously dropped dead in a ten-block radius for no apparent reason, and General Purcell wants to know if it was caused by a covert weapon. Of course, the military has been put in charge of the investigation and everything is hush-hush.

Without examining anything, Keyes takes about five seconds to surmise that the victims all died from malfunctioning pacemakers and the malfunction was definitely not due to a secret weapon. We're supposed to be impressed, but our experience with real scientists and engineers indicates that when they're on-the-record, top-notch scientists and engineers won't even speculate about the color of their socks without looking at their ankles. They have top-notch reputations because they're almost always right. They're almost always right because they keep their mouths shut until they've fully analyzed the data.

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics' review of The Core

Comment author: jsbennett86 02 February 2013 03:37:42AM 11 points [-]

The remark included the following as a footnote:

Even top-notch engineers and scientists will speculate wildly when they're off-the-record. We define on-the-record as those times when their written or oral communications are likely to be taken seriously and directly attributed to the scientist or engineer making them. Surely answering a direct question posed by a general would fall into this category.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 February 2013 12:35:50PM 3 points [-]

See also the extra panel (hover onto the red button) in yesterday's SMBC comic.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 06 February 2013 03:04:14PM 8 points [-]

... I had not known about red buttons on SMBC.

roll d20... success on 'resist re-binge' check.

Comment author: Daniel_Molloy 07 February 2013 03:25:11AM 0 points [-]

Umm... how do I use the red button on a mobile device? (I also have this problem with xkcd.)

Comment author: TobyBartels 07 February 2013 04:04:02PM *  2 points [-]

I know that you crossed this out, but the answer to the parenthetical implied question is this: Use the xkcd viewer app.

  • Android (used by me regularly on my Android phone)
  • Apple (never used by me because I don't have an Apple product)
Comment author: [deleted] 07 February 2013 04:46:40PM 1 point [-]

Thank you!

Comment author: [deleted] 07 February 2013 04:46:29PM 1 point [-]

You just press it. It also works with karma scores on LW to see the percentage of positive votes (at least on Android). I didn't know how to read title texts on xkcd until reading TobyBartels's comment, though.

Comment author: Desrtopa 02 February 2013 02:26:07PM 4 points [-]

32 people in the same ten block radius simultaneously dying of malfunctioning pacemakers seems so tremendously unlikely, I can't imagine how one could even locate that as an explanation in a matter of seconds.

Comment author: jsbennett86 02 February 2013 10:57:46PM 3 points [-]

Also from the review:

A pacemaker malfunction isn't automatically fatal. In most cases the patient's heart will still beat, although with an abnormal rhythm. The severity of a pacemaker problem depends on the type of malfunction as well as the severity of the patient's condition. EM interference can cause problems, but major problems are rare considering the amount of EM interference pacemaker patients are exposed to. Pacemakers are designed to minimize these problems. It's hard to believe that dozens of pacemaker patients with various heart conditions and different makes and models of pacemakers would simultaneously die from microwave exposure.

Comment author: HalMorris 03 February 2013 04:53:06PM 1 point [-]

Unless the 32 people used the same, or very similar, pacemakers, and somebody forgot to say that.

Comment author: Desrtopa 04 February 2013 04:56:41PM 3 points [-]

Still sounds extremely unlikely. If a model of car has a particular design flaw, you'll expect to hear a lot of reports of that model suffering the same malfunction, but you wouldn't expect to hear that dozens of units within a certain radius suffered the same malfunction simultaneously. You'd need to subject them all to some sort of outside interference at the same time for that sort of occurrence to be plausible, and an event of that scale ought to leave evidence beyond its effect on all the pacemakers in the vicinity.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 11 February 2013 02:14:40PM *  1 point [-]

If I recall correctly, he also pointed out that the fact they had invited two experts on magnetic fields was also a strong clue.

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