Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran medic and infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
Why #statistics is hard, and why you should learn it anyway.
All of this. Like the post says sarcastically:
"One bright, sunny morning around the spring of 1972, this continent that had given us the #slave trade, various flavors of #racial #caste systems in the #Americas, virulent #antisemitism, the ethnic cleansing of millions of people in Eastern Europe, #Nazism and sundry forms of #fascism, and a #racist #colonialist regime in virtually all parts of #Asia and #Africa, decided to bring out the magic wand its denizens had been carrying all along and proclaim, 'Let there be no more #racism on the holy soil of #Europe.' And this mighty spell having been cast, racism was apparently eradicated there."
Is the #US more racist than most European countries? Yes, I think, on the whole. Is there racism in Europe? Without question, a hell of a lot of it. And #white Europeans' reluctance to face up to that means it won't get any better. At least we're *trying* on this side of the #Atlantic.
https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-Europe-is-more-racist-than-the-USA/answer/Habib-F-2
Here's the original discussion, in all its glory: https://www.facebook.com/groups/594532837265674/posts/6636781216374109/
On an #Aliens fan group to which I belong, there is a discussion going on about a particular plot point, the kind of endless dissection #obsessive #fans know well. I know this *very* well, because I'm one of them. Someone said "read this tie-in novel, it explains everything!" Then someone else called it "fan fiction," and a third participant objected strenuously. Ah, #fandom: God help me, I do love it so.
===
The most money I ever made from writing, by far, was by co-authoring a #StarTrek novel†. It did quite well, as Star Trek novels tend to do. I lived for the better part of a year on the advance, and the royalties were a nice supplement to my income for several years afterward. Over the decades since, many people have told me it was one of their favorite novels ever. I don't know how many copies I've signed. Feels good, man.
But I don't kid myself—it's fan fiction. So is all tie-in fiction to TV and movie series, *unless* an episode or a movie takes the story and puts it on screen. I'm not sure if that's ever happened with Star Trek, in the very long series of novels based on multiple iterations of the show, and I know it's never happened with the #Alienverse. All the tie-in novels, comics, and games are non-canonical. They just kind of exist out there in the realm of what-if and might-have-been. Maybe someday someone will stumble across them, floating in the deep, and do a salvage operation ...
#StarWars is the one partial exception I know of, with some portions of the extended universe making it at least into the animated series. In general, though, screen franchise owners don't think much of novels etc. They figure tie-ins are of interest only to hardcore fans, and there aren't enough of those to make up the audience needed to justify big-budget productions. To them it's just a way to squeeze a few extra bucks out of the property.
I'm not happy about this, because a lot of really great worldbuilding happens at the edges of known space. In the case of the Alienverse, for example, I think the #DarkHorse comics would have made a much better foundation for a third and fourth movie than what we actually got. But it's a sadly consistent pattern.
===
†ST:TNG # 8, The Captains' Honor, by David and Daniel Dvorkin, in case you were wondering. David is my father, who has also written a few other Star Trek novels and a *lot* of original novels. Despite the money, neither of us has any desire ever to go through the experience of dealing with Paramount ever again.
All of this. I’m so tired of people who build their entire identities around being anti-#woke pretending to be ignorant of the following:
1. Much of the entertainment they enjoyed when they were young was already “woke” by the standards of the time, and often of the present day too.
2. There is no “woke” conspiracy suppressing such entertainment today. Every possible viewpoint is present somewhere in the enormous variety of movies and TV available at the click of a button. If any viewpoint gets short shrift, it’s “wokeness” as opposed to the endless stream of Bigger! Louder! Stupider! chock-full of utterly predictable stereotypes.
3. They, not the “woke” crowd, are the ones who would absolutely melt down if the classics they liked when they were younger and more open-minded were coming out today, word for word and scene for scene.
Or hell, maybe they’re not pretending, except to themselves. It’s amazing how people can edit their own memories.
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
BORG: We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.
MY 5 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER: Why?
BORG: We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
5YO: Why?
BORG: To expand the collective.
5YO: Why?
BORG: So that we may achieve perfection.
5YO: Why?
BORG: To reach the pinnacle of our evolution.
5YO: Why?
BORG: *sigh* Because it’s just something we do, ok?
5YO: Why?
BORG: … you know what? F this …*opens a transwarp conduit and leaves*
#Scientists are cautious, #businessmen are idiots. Film at 11:00, as we used to say in the days when we wore onions on our belts.
Filed under unshocking and easily predicted news https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759348/openai-microsoft-bing-ai-warning-gpt-4
With the usual #statistician's caveat that #causality is really hard to sort out in data like this even with good #controls ... yes, I believe this. And the #mechanisms aren't hard to find, either. 😐
"The relationship, then, between the Racism Index and white #Christian identity is a broad two-way street: an increase in racist attitudes independ...
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
#NewPaper #Paleontology #Paleomammalogy
Romano, M., Bellucci, L., Antonelli, M., Manucci, F. and Palombo, M.R. (2023), Body mass estimate of Anancus arvernensis (Croizet and Jobert 1828): comparison of the regression and volumetric methods. J. Quaternary Sci. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3549
Only mad scientists on either side of the Atlantic pronounce all the syllables. It was kind of a shibboleth for us until all those movies came out and people caught on.
The usual disclaimers: not posted for agreement (although I did get a chuckle out of the first image), if you share from my post please leave my commentary intact, originally posted by a friend I won't name unless they want me to because I'm not looking for a fight ... etc.
I really hope it's possible to have a middle-ground discussion about this.
On one hand, the idea that #AI-generated #text and #images are purely #plagiarism strikes me as fundamentally untrue. If you prompt #ChatGPT to write you a story, it will give you a combination of words which has never existed before. With a little back-and-forth, those words will be at least a reasonable approximation of the #story you had in your head when you started. Same with #Midjourney and pictures. That is a #creative act.
On the other, it's not just a tool like pen and paper, or word processors, or even add-ons like suggested text. You can plagiarize with all of those—but they don't *push* you toward plagiarism the way ChatGPT does, and although I'm not a visual artist I understand Midjourney is even worse. (I'm using those as the two best-known examples; I know there are lots of others.) My #writing contains turns of phrase from favorite books, and so does everyone else's. But not whole paragraphs or pages with the names changed ... if there's even that much editing.
So it seems to me that neither "nothing generated by AI can ever be true art" nor "stop whining, it's just another way to tell stories" is quite right. One thing for sure is that it's not going away, and things like the open letters urging a halt to AI development strike me as more attention-seeking stunts than serious attempts to solve the very real problems involved. We need to find a way to deal with it that respects *everyone's* rights.
Please tell me I'm not the only human, typing on my keyboard with my normal human hands, who sees it this way?
#Gatekeeping is never a pretty thing, so I'm sure you'll be upset to hear that the very first argument over who is really #goth happened 589 years ...
Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
Realistically, there is zero doubt that #Russia blew the #Kakhovka dam. Destroying dams with bombs or artillery is hard work, as the amount of effort devoted to it in WW2 demonstrates. #Ukraine most likely doesn't have the specialized resources for it, nor do they have any good reason right now. On the other hand, demolition of a dam you control, as Russia did until now, is ... not easy, but a whole lot easier.
And if you squint and turn your head sideways, it kinda sorta makes sense in the short term. The floodwaters will prevent any large-scale Ukrainian crossing, and do a whole lot of damage to densely populated areas that are mostly under Ukrainian control. Which fits perfectly with the Russian policy of destruction for destruction's sake.
Long-term, or even medium-term? Not so much. The #Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant will have to be shut down completely, and remain so until the dam is rebuilt. Even bigger, the dam and its reservoir provided most of #Crimea's water supply. Sustaining a long-term Russian presence there will be impossible. There just isn't enough water.
So what it boils down to is, RUSSIA HAS SURRENDERED CRIMEA.
They may genuinely not realize this yet. Thinking through the consequences of their actions has not been one of their strong suits, since about the third day of the war. But that's what it means.
Holy shit. Holy *fucking* shit.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ukraine-war-kakhovka-dam-destruction-russia-rcna87868
The usual disclaimer: this is promising, but don't count on great results.
If it works as advertised—*if*—it could be what #Theranos promised and so spectacularly failed to deliver. #Grail is using well-understood technology and (I think) large enough samples to make the claims for the #Galleri test believable, at least. And the #NHS (again, I think) doesn't have the kind of incestuous relationships with financially interested parties that helped #Holmes et al. get away with such fraud for so long. So I'm inclined to trust their reporting.
With that said, the usual #statistician's disclaimer applies: #multiple #testing is hard. So, for that matter, does the #medic's and the #biologist's, because there are multiple *kinds* of multiple testing going on here. The more you test, the more you will screw up.
I almost appended "it's like a law of nature" to that last sentence above ... but no, it *is* a law of nature. Unreasonable effectiveness of #mathematics something something.
#Cancer screening is important, and steady improvements in the field have already saved untold numbers of lives. I expect this will continue to be the case. So take this with cautious optimism. Pushing back the boundaries a little bit at a time, each small step representing another decade or year or month of life—it's what we do, every day. I want to believe.
"ToughVet." Okay, sweetie. I think I covered that here:
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran medic and infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
