Anecdotes are not Evidence
Non-fiction books are notorious for relying on anecdotes instead of actual evidence to prove their points. Discerning readers must approach anecdotes with […]
Tag: logic
Optimal Stopping and the Secretary Problem (from Algorithms to Live By)
This post is split out from my main summary of Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. Check out […]
Sorting (from Algorithms to Live By)
This post is split out from my main summary of Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. Check out that summary to […]
Bayes’s Rule (from Algorithms to Live By)
This post is split out from my main summary of Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. Check out that summary to […]
Game Theory (from Algorithms to Live By)
This post is split out from my main summary of Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. Check out that summary to […]
Causality is so much harder than we normally think
I was listening to a podcast recently that talked about how people’s family situations and upbringings affected how they turned out. It […]
Objective Ignorance
Objective ignorance is the idea that many things on which the future depends simply cannot be known.Objective ignorance is higher the longer into the future a prediction is. The future is messy and minor events can have large consequences. Many things are just unknowable.
Prosecutor’s Fallacy and Base Rate Fallacy
The prosecutor’s fallacy and base rate fallacy are related ideas that both involve conditional probabilities. The prosecutor’s fallacy mixes up the probability that someone matches, given their innocence, with the probability that someone is innocent, given a match. You don’t care about the first probability – you already know there is a match.
Book Summary: Calling Bullshit by Bergstrom and West
There is a lot of bullshit out there, probably more than you think. It takes a lot more work to refute bullshit than to create it. Bergstrom and West describe how to spot some of the most common ways to spot bullshit so you can call it out.