People are not rational about risk.
Category Archives: Mathematics
My FISO Telecon
I talked about the book in the context of recent events. The slides and audio are available for download now. There was a glitch partway through in which everything was echoing, not sure if they edited that part out or not.
The Climate Cover Up
I was amused to hear about the panic of “scientists” in the government “protecting” from the Trump administration data they’ve been hiding for years. But here’s a comprehensive round up of their rewriting the past.
A Taxonomy Of Uncertainty
This is a beautiful taxonomy. The root of a great deal of suffering is people believing their field is level 3, when it's actually level 4. pic.twitter.com/8yg2sRocNL
— Will Wilson (@WAWilsonIV) February 15, 2017
Climate science is currently somewhere between levels 4 and 5, but many (particularly ignorant adherents of the climate religion) think that it’s at 2 or 1.
Risk In Human Spaceflight
I didn’t make it to the conference in time to hear him, but I was told a couple weeks ago that Bill Gerstenmeier would be talking about many of the themes of my book. He apparently did. I would note though, that “loss of crew” isn’t just probability of killing crew; it also includes causing a career-ending injury.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: With new types of launch systems, we’re discovering new causes of launch failure, even after almost sixty years of orbital spaceflight.
Progress On Aging
…and the resistance to it. I think he’s right that it’s not based on science or logic, but philosophy. Some people (including Isaac Asimov) think that death is necessary, almost to the point of ultimately worshiping it. Of course, some of it could be a recognition, conscious or otherwise, of the supreme disruption to many accepted institutions that it would entail, including pensions, life-time appointments, death taxes, etc.
And I hate when they use the word “immortality.” I think an eternal life would be far worse than death, but that’s not the goal; it’s simply living as long as we want to continue to live.
Update a couple minutes later]
Sort of related: GM Salmonella cures cancer. Cool. But the anti-science left will oppose it because GM.
We’re Building A World-Sized Robot
…and we don’t realize it. Some thoughts on the Internet of ShitThings, from Bruce Schneier.
The Truth About Science
…is bad news for those seeking certainty. Nice to see articles like this at places like The Guardian.
“The Hottest Year On Record”
Lawsuit Update
Tomorrow is the deadline for filing amicus briefs on our behalf. Judith Curry has filed another one. I haven’t read it yet, but I expect it to be good.
[Update a while later]
Reading through it, it would seem to make a strong case for her own defamation, though she’s above that.
[Update late morning]
Some thoughts on “alternate facts” in the climate debate:
My tweet asked the climate scientists on my feed whether they agreed with the statement specifically the use of the word “all”. My expectation was that a reasonable core of climate scientists would agree that Dr. Mann had overstepped the science. This was not the case. Instead, what I got was overwhelming support for Dr. Mann with not a single non-skeptic initially commenting negatively. It was as if Dr. Mann was the pope and the climate community his congregation. Nothing he said could be considered to be anything less than the truth, even if it took huge convolutions of logic to make it true. In the last couple weeks the term “alternative facts” has entered our lexicon. Well in the next few paragraphs I want to unpack Dr. Mann’s “alternative fact” and see if it is indeed defensible. Then I will go into what I feel this means for the climate change debate.
RTWT.