csaid.bsky.social
Data science at Propel. Formerly Stitch Fix, Opendoor, Twitter, Facebook, neuroscience.
https://chris-said.io/
234 posts
461 followers
173 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
comment in response to
post
I think vaccines will be broadly available in 12 months (although perhaps not covered by insurance) because the alternative is politically infeasible.
I could be wrong though. If David thinks I am, he is welcome to take me up on my offer!
comment in response to
post
I am a big fan of productive conversation! And to that end bets are a really epistemically healthy practice, because it encourages people to put their money where there mouth is!
comment in response to
post
I love vaccines but I think you are overconfident on this.
Want to make a bet on the availability of vaccines in 12 months?
comment in response to
post
I don’t think your last sentence follows from your preceding sentences.
comment in response to
post
It's not a great model in general. I just think in this particular case, excessive precision + inability to really study it well was getting in the way. I realize there are precedence-setting risks.
School-based randomization would be quite useful, but I wouldn't delay policy a year for it.
comment in response to
post
It's tough for me to say this since I'm a huge fan of uncertainty, but I think that a certain type of excessive academic rigor got in the way of (probabilistically) good policies.
comment in response to
post
Those are good responses, but I'm actually quite grateful to Haidt's influence. He single-handedly got some (probabilistically) good policies enacted, and I don't think that would have happened if he led with "the data doesn't really support this".
comment in response to
post
I wrote this a while back. I just don’t think the science should matter as much as we might want it to.
comment in response to
post
Science will never be able to answer these questions with much certainty, since doing so will require impossible tasks (e.g. long-term, high-compliance, network-aware RCTs; or time traveling to edit diagnostic criteria)
Policymakers should rely less on scientists.
comment in response to
post
The vulgarity is definitely part of it, but so are the anti-market nature of the tariffs.
For a more longer take, see Hanania's mea culpa
www.richardhanania.com/p/what-i-got...
comment in response to
post
Why that meme? He openly admits to voting for Trump and now regrets it.
comment in response to
post
More broadly, there is so much about Trump that any normal human would find objectionable, so when a conservative intellectual turns against him my default would be "it's genuine" rather than "it must be the billionaires".
Could be wrong though!
comment in response to
post
I don't know about Ahmari, but @hananiarichard.bsky.social is genuinely disgusted by the stupidity of MAGA (even if he trolls a bit)
All his tweets are like this.
comment in response to
post
I don't know about Ahmari, but @hananiarichard.bsky.social is genuinely disgusted by the stupidity of MAGA (even if he trolls a bit)
All his tweets are like this.
comment in response to
post
Did not know about that one!
comment in response to
post
What’s wrong with explaining things like this?
comment in response to
post
(I know that any increase to an account going into one side of the equation must be balanced with an increase to an account going into the other side of the equation.)
comment in response to
post
Yeah, I would say Elon[2008] was pretty smart (95th percentile) but not exceptional, and also had exceptional abilities at self promotion, being a talent magnet, aiming big, not settling for mediocrity, etc.
comment in response to
post
I think his gradual decline probably started around then.... but even as late as 2021 he was sending some reasonable emails to SpaceX staff and could reportedly carry on a conversation.
comment in response to
post
A lot of people say "sure, there was a need for reform but the way DOGE is doing it is bad". That's sincere, honest, and in many ways true.
But also, conventional reformers saying "we should fix this" hasn't had a good track record either!
comment in response to
post
Ohh gotcha
comment in response to
post
My guess is he is mostly indifferent but maybe somewhat against someone getting murdered for this.
comment in response to
post
“There is no other rationale for this”?
Not defending him or denying that’s possibly his rationale, but obviously he could just be doing a (shameless) full court press against the org because he wants to destroy the org alone.
comment in response to
post
If that were the case though, you’d think he’d want to publicize the defiance and its consequences rather than unrelated stuff.
comment in response to
post
Ooh good call
comment in response to
post
I don't think he want to inflict suffering on impoverished foreign aid recipients, but I do think he wants to destroy the NGO complex.
I can actually understand that to some extent, but baby/bathwater.
comment in response to
post
? The electorate would still learn when officials lose their public security detail.
This is to give officials assurance they will get a private security detail if they criticize the president.
comment in response to
post
yup
comment in response to
post
If these results are true, standard clinical practice guidelines around NSAIDs for acute back pain have been causing chronic pain for millions of people.
I'd love to see a human RCT around this, but in the meantime, I'll stick to Tylenol instead of NSAIDs.
comment in response to
post
And similar to the results in humans, analgesics without anti-inflammatory properties (red, purple, blue) were good in the long term.
Only the anti-inflammatory (green) was bad in the long term.
comment in response to
post
A pure anti-inflammatory diclofenac (green) showed identical results. Just like dexamethasone, it was better than saline in the short term, and worse in the long term.
comment in response to
post
If that's not enough evidence, the paper also did a randomized experiment on mice.
Compared to saline, a drug with anti-inflammatory properties (dexamethasone) drove short term pain relief but made things worse in the long term.
comment in response to
post
This is observational data so obviously there could be residual confounding. But what’s interesting is that there was no increased risk from non-anti-inflammatory like Paracetamol (Tylenol).
Only the anti-inflammatories had higher risk.
comment in response to
post
Actually one other interesting observation. I described the size logic to like 5 family members over Thanksgiving and 5 other coworkers.
Zero of them had ever thought about it before!