Chris Hibbert

Karma: 61

Chris Hibbert 22 Jan 2021 16:56 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: The Problem of the Criterion
Bartley is very explicit that you stop claiming to “know” the right way. “This is my current best understanding. These are the reasons it seems to work well for distinguishing good beliefs from unhelpful ones. When I use these approaches to evaluate the current proposal, I find them to be lacking in the following way.”
If you want to argue that I’m using an inferior method, you can appeal to authority or cite scientific studies, or bully me, and I evaluate your argument. No faith, no commitment, no knowledge.

Chris Hibbert 22 Jan 2021 4:26 UTC
1 point
on: The Problem of the Criterion
I’m a fan of W. W. Bartley’s Pan Critical Rationalism, from his book The Retreat To Commitment. It doesn’t seem to me to fit in your list of approaches. Bartley was a student of Karl Popper, who proposed Critical Rationalism. CR, badly stated, says “This is the fundamental tenet: criticize all your beliefs and see what survives.” PCR cleans that up by saying “This is the best approach to epistemology we’ve discovered so far: criticize all your beliefs (including this one) and see what survives.”
Isn’t that better than believing in a foundational, unjustified criterion? Isn’t it more flexible than methodism? Isn’t it more useful than skepticism?

Chris Hibbert 1 Jan 2021 17:44 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Matthew Barnett’s comment on: Anti-Aging: State of the Art
I once heard from a cancer researcher that we had, for all practical purposes, cured aging in mice, but the results have not yet translated into humans.
This seems untrue on its face. What we mean by “curing aging” is negligible senescence. The best that has been achieved in mice is doubling their life spans, AFAICT. Extended (human) lifespan would be nice, but it’s not the goal.

Chris Hibbert 28 Sep 2020 15:32 UTC
2 points
on: Puzzle Games
Broad spoilers for The Talos Principle:
The Talos Principle is in the same class of puzzle games and of the same quality as Portal and Portal 2. You are given some simple reusable tools and explore a large space needing to use your tools to open doors and disable traps.

Chris Hibbert 11 May 2020 15:40 UTC
5 points
on: Zoom Technologies, Inc. vs. the Efficient Markets Hypothesis
This argument misses the fact that some of the sellers in the market are selling because of other circumstances in their life or business. This doesn’t affect the price on average, but it does make it unreasonable to say “you need to buy them from someone who’s willing to sell at that price—who presumably does not agree that the price is going to go way up.”
At any point in time, some of the sellers in the market are selling because their daughter is about to start college, or they are nearing retirement, or there’s some other valuable they want to invest in with somewhat better prospects, and they need financial liquidity to do so. Similarly, there are buyers who just sold an asset (real estate, e.g., that finished construction) or received a bonus, or sold something else to protect their gains and need to get back into the market.
The point isn’t that these behaviors move the price in one direction or another, it’s just that not all activity in the financial markets is driven by disagreements about prices.

Chris Hibbert 25 Mar 2020 16:23 UTC
4 points
in reply to: PeterMcCluskey’s comment on: Coronavirus Open Thread
Thanks, Peter! very helpful.
Update on the data: NY is now adding 5000 new cases per day. WA is above 200, and CA above 250. No one looks like they’re stopped the growth in new cases. A slow exponential is still exponential.

Chris Hibbert 22 Mar 2020 19:00 UTC
2 points
in reply to: madhatter’s comment on: Coronavirus Open Thread
Airplanes pressurize to levels that aren’t as high pressure as being on the ground, I’m pretty sure. They’re trying to reduce the consequences of being at altitude, not increase above sea level.

Chris Hibbert 22 Mar 2020 18:59 UTC
1 point
in reply to: K2msmith’s comment on: Coronavirus Open Thread
I’ve been following the daily numbers from California, Washington state, and New York, on covid2019.app, which were extremely informative, but they stopped reporting by state as of two days ago. Anyone know of a good source for daily state level new case data?
Summary: CA, WA, and NY had all reached 100 reported daily new cases by ³⁄₁₄. Up to ³⁄₁₉, neither CA, nor WA had broken through 200 new cases, but on ³⁄₁₈, NY reported 1709 new cases, and on ³⁄₁₉ they had 1069. The state level data is not available at the moment (when the site was working better, it said state level would be available), and even the regional data is broken in the current download.

Chris Hibbert 22 Mar 2020 18:37 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Alexander Mont’s comment on: Coronavirus Open Thread
Going outside for solo exercise (walking, jogging, Tai Chi) is pretty safe. I’m not absolutely positive that tennis or volleyball (multi-player sports, but with shared contact with the ball) or ultimate frisbee or basketball (close proximity, occasional contact) are as safe. The SF Bay area shelter in place order encouraged going on walks or hiking, and that seems sensible to me.

Chris Hibbert 22 Mar 2020 18:32 UTC
12 points
in reply to: DanielFilan’s comment on: Coronavirus Open Thread
The donor centers are probably the cleanest place you can visit outside an ICU. Their standard hygiene practices are superb and have been so since the HIV epidemic decades ago. (I’ve been giving blood routinely for at least 35 years.) Even if someone were to visit who had been exposed, there’s little chance they could transfer it to anything that would transfer it to you. The one opportunity you have to be close to other people who aren’t being extremely cautious at all times is in the canteen for your mandatory 20 minute break after donating, and unless the donor center is extremely crowded, you’ll be able to maintain a 6 foot separation and not touch anything that isn’t freshly removed from packaging for your use.
I donated platelets a week ago. I stopped donating whole blood ~ a year ago after noticing that it impacted my ability to exercise (blood oxygenation, presumably) for a few weeks after donating. Now that I’m sheltering-in-place and not getting any of my usual aerobic exercise, I’m considering giving whole blood once I’ve passed the waiting period.

Chris Hibbert 22 Mar 2020 18:19 UTC
7 points
in reply to: gwillen’s comment on: Coronavirus Open Thread
Diseases normally evolve toward increased spread by reducing lethality because they don’t have a superpower like Covid2019′s ability to spread while the carrier is asymptomatic. I don’t think there’s much evolutionary pressure on this disease toward lower severity. Even if we do a good job of enforcing shelter-in-place in populous areas, there will be hidden reservoirs until we reduce the number of new cases in connected communities all the way to zero.
The normal evolutionary pressure works because there’s some variation between different strains, and whichever variant can reach the most people comes to dominate. With a normal infection, once everyone is aware, you can quarantine people with evident symptoms and thus squelch the spread. Any variant that has milder symptoms has a better chance of spreading and becoming dominant. Covid2019 already has the ability to escape surveillance if there’s any of it in the population, so a less lethal variant doesn’t have a selective advantage.

Chris Hibbert 1 Mar 2020 19:10 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Dr_Manhattan’s comment on: Coronavirus: Justified Practical Advice Thread
Wear masks on the flight if possible.
This doesn’t seem to be advised unless you have professionally fitted N95 masks. Surgical masks and nominally fitted serious masks do a decent job of preventing you from transmitting the virus, but little to protect you. And anecdotally, wearing a mask may cause you to touch your face and mask a lot more, which is on the wrong side of the trade-off.

Chris Hibbert 1 Mar 2020 19:00 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Ofer’s comment on: Coronavirus: Justified Practical Advice Thread
I shaved my beard. I’ve only had it for about 6 months, and I played with it constantly and unconsciously. Since shaving it off, I bet I’m touching my face 10% as often at most, and only fleetingly.

Chris Hibbert 1 Mar 2020 18:43 UTC
1 point
in reply to: LemonWatcher’s comment on: Coronavirus: Justified Practical Advice Thread
I saw an earlier recommendation and went to Amazon. They have pages of them, differentiated by color and style, which made me realize they are a commodity, in common use among a particular large population of at risk people. They’re not covered by health insurance, so there’s actual competition. Look at the ratings and use your usual yardsticks to pick ones that people who have bought before find to be reliable and useable.

Chris Hibbert 1 Mar 2020 18:26 UTC
3 points
on: Cortés, Pizarro, and Afonso as Precedents for Takeover
How significant do you think it was that the conquistadors had access to a deep historical archive? The Aztecs and Incas arguably had writing, but it wasn’t used to preserve a large library of historical and fictional stories. The Portuguese presumably were reasonably educated, and knew many stories of emperors and empires. The South Americans may have had some oral histories to go by, but I presume it was paltry in comparison.
The Indian case was far different, I would imagine, so this hypothesis doesn’t touch that case at all.
What links here?
- Randaly's comment on Lessons on AI Takeover from the conquistadors by Daniel Kokotajlo (19 Jul 2020 12:10 UTC; 6 points)

Chris Hibbert 5 Jan 2020 20:04 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Chris_Leong’s comment on: Normalization of Deviance
As long as you remain explicitly aware of the difference between emergency medicine and normal operations. If the hospital is just understaffed compared to their case load, then by accepting that situation and not following accepted practices, they need to realize that they are accepting the trade-off to treat more patients at a lower standard of care.
And the analogy to software teams is clear. If you accept the declaration of an emergency for your development team, and you don’t clearly go back to normal operation when it’s done, then you are accepting the erosion of standards.

Chris Hibbert 17 Nov 2019 22:25 UTC
2 points
on: How common is it for one entity to have a 3+ year technological lead on its nearest competitor?
Xerox PARC in the 70s and early 80s had a head start on inventing the personal computer revolution. PARC was well-funded, and they spent a fair amount of money building computers so each researcher had one on their desk. A little later, PCs were made in such quantity that it was no longer possible to stay ahead and have better equipment than businesses and consumers could buy. At PARC, they invented ethernet, the desktop metaphor, WYSIWYG editing, and much else. they didn’t invent the mouse, but they built platforms and environments that made really great use of it.

Chris Hibbert 16 Nov 2019 18:53 UTC
4 points
on: Instant stone (just add water!)
The next stage in the evolution of building with concrete is also a wonderful innovation. “pre-stressed” concrete is another solution to the problem that concrete is stronger in compression than in tension. To make pre-stressed concrete, you start by laying out the rebar in sections where you will pour the concrete with the ends of the rebar sticking out. Then, just before pouring the concrete, you put the re-bar under tension, pulling it from the ends. After the concrete sets hard, you release the tension. the re-bar pulls the concrete, putting the entire slab under compression. Then when you use it to bridge over a gap, any resulting tension is partly mitigated by the pre-existing squeeze.

Chris Hibbert 4 Jan 2019 5:02 UTC
5 points
on: Strategy is the Deconfusion of Action
anything called a strategy will be a causal explanation of how a given action or set of actions will cause success.
This is very helpful. It should be in bold.

Chris Hibbert 27 Dec 2018 16:14 UTC
14 points
on: Norms of Membership for Voluntary Groups
Elinor Ostrom has written several books that would be informative. Much of her work is from the point of view of the incentives that produced particular patterns of cooperation and keep it going over long periods of time. You’ll have to do your own thinking about how to move a particular organization toward a stable norm. Robert Ellicskson’s “Order without Law” is more about dispute settlement among neighbors and enforcing different sets of norms than about organizing groups, but there are interesting examples there, too.
James C. Scott’s “Thinking like a State” talks more about pathological cases from a self-government viewpoint, and doesn’t have much to say about healthy groups.
I would want to expand the taxonomy to include sports leagues for children (children and their parents cycle through on an annual basis, while some core maintains the form of the organization) and HOAs, which are attached to property and have different standard pathologies, since membership is incidental to another goal, but members can impose substantial penalties and incentives on each other,