Martin Jambon 🌍🌎🌏 @mjambon@qoto.org

@LouisIngenthron yeah. I think the example of the French government getting it done is a good example that it could be done in the US as well. You still need to click some buttons but the forms are all pre-filled for you and of course, it's free. This online service works better than many French companies's websites. It's extremely surprising to me. There must be cultural and historical factors I'm not aware of.

@LouisIngenthron foreign income and other complicated situations are one reason why it can't be completely automated. Lobbying/corruption by tax software companies is another.

For what it's worth, it's much easier in France than in the US. i.e. the threshold where you need to pay someone to get it done is much higher in France.

@dpiponi @johncarlosbaez yes, and they typically use the terms "tallest trees" vs. "largest trees" for the correct species but they don't point out the subtlety.

@dpiponi @johncarlosbaez obligatory note about the difference between coastal redwoods and giant sequoias: https://www.nps.gov/redw/planyourvisit/upload/ThreeTrees-2014-508.pdf

The problem is that if they use political correctness, they're being shallow which is ok, but if I do, it's hypocritical.

Yes, this should work: next time I want to accuse someone of being a hypocrite (which is bad), I'll assume they're just being shallow (which is better)... as an instance of "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" (known as Hanlon's razor).

oh, I know it's because the authors really believe that changing words will change how people think about what the words refer to. I suppose involuntary shallowness is indistinguishable from hypocrisy.

lol, they managed to write the whole Wikipedia article about political correctness without using the word "hypocrisy" a single time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

#language #english #bullshit

@freemo
@dlakelan mentions "saliency bias". I have to digest all this stuff. My overall impression is that different paradoxes emerge from the way we model things (and go beyond their domain of applicability).

@freemo i.e. not something I need for urgent or professional purposes 🙂

@freemo the original example was a "clever" post by a shitposting page on Facebook, something like this:

"It's not possible that every time we call your customer service you're experiencing a higher amount of calls than usual".

@freemo I skimmed the Wikipedia article about representativeness heuristic. Seems to connect to the notion I had of stereotypes vs. averages.

@freemo yes, thanks a lot!

@freemo no, I didn't get the connection with regression to the mean.

@freemo oh, interesting note regarding the friendship paradox:

> In contradiction to this, most people believe that they have more friends than their friends have.

I would explain this by the fact that we spend more time with people who have fewer friends than average. (not sure if it's a hard rule or if depends on the shape of the friendship graph)

If half of an airline's flights are full and half are empty, passengers will complain that the flights are full every time, contrasting with the assessment of the crew who report that half of the flights are empty. How do you call this effect/paradox? (I forgot)

The same effect explains that if you have an average number of friends (= popularity), more than half of your friends are more popular than you.

Or when your doctor tells you you're in average physical condition but each time you go cycling, most cyclists you come across are faster than you (because the fast cyclists are also the ones who spend the most time on the roads and are encountered disproportionately).

#stats #statistics #math #paradox

@scottsantens yes, hobbies are fun.

@freemo oh no, what I meant is that you should behave your best so as to be a good example of what <insert ideology> is really about. It's not because some asshole does asshole things in the name of some ideology that they're in line with the ideology.

@impermanen_ donkeys are my favorite dog breed, just before cat and chow chow.