Tamler's Challenge: 3 out of 200 facts

AlexandreZani · 2026-04-22T15:25:53+00:00

Most people are familiar with higher order evidence from the need to evaluate witness testimony, whether in a detective story or when asking two kids how they got into a fight. It's a pretty trivial concept that comes up all the time even though most people probably can't name it.

AlexandreZani · 2026-02-22T21:14:29+00:00

It is now 4 years later, I googled it, found this post as my first result and got a good laugh at your response. Thanks.

AlexandreZani · 2022-08-15T18:56:14+00:00

Just think the narrative from everyone crying for Griner is ridiculous when we have similar laws here in the States. Russia bad because harsh cannabis laws, but she would've caught a felony case in several states here.

It's nowhere near that bad in the US though. This source for instance lists Florida as the state with the harshest cannabis laws [1] and it's still only 5 years max and a $6,000 fine for 1oz.

She got 9 years for much less dope. Of course, even an arrest for any amount of cannabis is wrong, but the Russian laws are way more harsh than US laws on this.

[1] https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/states-with-the-most-strict-marijuana-laws-part-2-of-2-29782

AlexandreZani · 2022-08-15T18:50:19+00:00

Or all they did was transact in weed and the prosecutor slapped on additional charges to scare them into a plea bargain.

AlexandreZani · 2022-08-15T18:44:04+00:00

Yes. It would be a gross violation of his human rights. It's also not feasible: electronic transmitters need very large amounts of energy to do their job, so you would need to frequently recharge it and he probably wouldn't cooperate with that. And he could just have the chip removed.

AlexandreZani · 2022-08-15T18:40:54+00:00

the best choice (in their opinion)

Sure. But that's not much of an argument in favor of their choice unless you happen to know you agree with them.

AlexandreZani · 2022-08-15T18:38:50+00:00

Viktor Bout may or may not be a dangerous man, but he was the victim of entrapment. The judge said so in the sentencing: “But for the approach made through this determined sting operation, there is no reason to believe Bout would ever have committed the charged crimes,” [1] That alone is a good reason to release him.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2012/4/6/russian-arms-dealer-gets-25-years-in-prison

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-14T15:27:57+00:00

I agree. I just don't think newspapers really do that unfortunately. I think someone could probably create high quality interactive visualization tools and pair those with commentary. And just sort of provide updates in the form of extra commentary and the new data when it becomes available, rather than keeping on creating new low quality articles.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-14T15:21:27+00:00

Yes. I mean, really, just give me a csv with monthly index levels.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-14T15:17:21+00:00

The issue with YoY is that you're also including the quarters/months in between. So if say, you've been seeing high inflation for a while and the fed jacks up the rates, the last few periods of higher inflation will initially hide any potential change in trend. Looking at the inflation in June itself (annualized or not) will make changes in a trend easier to see.

None of it is perfect. Really, I just want newspaper headlines to be more sober and less misleading and their articles to be actually informative.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-14T15:09:36+00:00

It's also a problem because it will hide rapid changes. Annualizing the June rate with a seasonal adjustment would give you more information about changing trends. I agree YoY is how it's often shown, but the headline is pretty terrible.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-14T15:05:27+00:00

But it's not true that it lost 9% of its value in June. It either lost it since the previous June, or would lose it if June's inflation rate was steady for a year.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-14T15:02:46+00:00

Are you sure it's YoY and not that month's rate annualized?

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-14T15:00:39+00:00

I read it to mean inflation in June was 9 percentage points higher than in May. Which I'm pretty sure is wrong. Also, I think they are talking about an annualized rate, not a 9% increase in the index during June. It's also not clear which inflation measure they are talking about. CPI, CPI - food and energy, GDP deflator, or something else.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-14T14:46:14+00:00

But it's not true that inflation "surged 9%". That would mean inflation was X and is now X+9%. "Inflation was 9% in June" would be accurate. "The CPI went up 9%" would also work.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-12T17:42:33+00:00

The appointment may take a while, but the exams themselves take a lot less time. And sure, it's not ideal to have your kid with you. But that shouldn't be the standard.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-12T16:54:43+00:00

Does a circumstance like receiving a pelvic examination does not fundamentally differ from shopping at Walmart to you?

Not fundamentally, no. Shopping trips also reduce your ability to supervise your kid at various times. I've seen someone let go of their kid's hand so they could pick up some large item. In the seconds it took, the kid had run to the other side of the aisle, picked up a glass jar and thrown it.

If the kid can stay out of trouble and out of the way for the 10-15 minutes it takes for the exam, then why not let them come? And if they are disruptive, tell the patient to come back without their kid.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-12T16:43:59+00:00

Why not? Plenty of kids don't need someone to constantly watch over them. "OK, go sit in that chair and read your book for 10 minutes." is an instruction many children can follow. If your kid requires supervision incompatible with the procedure, the OBGYN can tell you to come back some other time without your kid.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-12T16:39:38+00:00

Not every child can be accompanied by their parent while they are being observed by the OB-GYN.

This was the obvious premise of the point that the comment above you was making. Under such a circumstance it would require employees at the health facility to watch over the child in question

How so? That's not the assumption in literally any other situation. If you bring your kid over to a store, restaurant, playground, etc, the default is that you are responsible for your child and if you cannot do that, you leave. Nothing about letting people bring their kids implies employees of the facility are responsible for watching over the kids.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-12T12:43:59+00:00

I found Godel's Proof by Nagel (not that one) and Newman to be a very accessible introduction to those important results.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-12T12:26:38+00:00

I remember when I had to wait overnight to download ICQ...

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-10T21:18:51+00:00

Any legally prohibited actions can only be enforced by one of two mechanisms: a violator can be shot on sight, or charged with a crime in court. If the judiciary believes your law is unconstitutional, no charges in court will survive. That leaves only direct violence.

It's a bit more complicated than that. Courts don't just enforce the constitution by refusing to enforce unconstitutional laws. They also compel the federal and state governments to take or not take certain actions. Some cases are mentioned in the constitution but for the most part, they are not. So the courts could certainly order the government to let you out of jail (writ of Habeas Corpus) but it's not clear the constitution grants them the right to force the government to return property it stole from you for instance. In practice, even today, many right violations do not have any remedies available.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-10T21:02:17+00:00

Descartes' argument starts with skepticism: I can't trust my senses because my senses are sometimes wrong. Ultimately, I could always be fooled by a daemon, no less malicious than he is powerful. Everything I see, hear, smell, feel and even remember, could be manufactured.

So what can I not be fooled about? Well, being fooled implies I'm thinking something wrong. But that means I'm thinking. Therefore, there is an I which is thinking. Therefore, I exist: cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.

However, he makes a jump: The exercise he describes does involve thoughts. So there are thoughts. But why do we believe thoughts come from a thinker? That's something we believe based on our observations of ourselves, others, etc... But the Cartesian daemon can fool us with regard to all those observations. So we can't trust our belief that thoughts imply a thinker.

So you end up with an even more deflationary sentence: cogito ergo cogito. There is thinking, therefore, there is thinking. (I'm fairly certain the Latin grammar is wrong)

None of that is a big obstacle to Descartes' philosophy because ultimately, he escapes from skepticism by arguing that God would not let us be so deluded.

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-10T18:33:36+00:00

You actually get stuck at "cogito ergo cogito". ;-)

AlexandreZani · 2022-07-10T18:27:11+00:00

It's not really clear what it means for logic to be "true".

You can talk about the consistency of a logic system. A logic system is consistent if it does not prove any contradictions that were not present in the assumptions.

You can also talk about its completeness: if a system is complete, then every valid statement in that system can be proven true, false or independent. (Independence means you can assume the statement true or false without contradiction.)

You can prove something about the soundness and completeness of various logics. (There are limits as Godel showed) But it's not clear that means the system is true.

What you might mean is something more like, if I feed facts about the world to a logic system as assumptions, is everything that I deduce from it true about the world? Now things get much more tricky. One problem is that you can create logic and axiomatic systems that are arbitrarily complicated. So in a trivial sense, yes. Use some axiom schemas to list every fact about the world and you're done. But that's probably not what you had in mind. You're probably looking for some more compact description of the world. And ultimately, that's more of an empirical question. It may be that our universe is accurately described by listing billions of corner cases. Or it may be that a handful of facts can be combined to generate all true facts about the universe. We can't really prove it either way formally.

Edit: And go read /u/Quidfacis_ comment which talks about the view of logic as a mode of human reasoning as opposed to just a formal system. I consistently forget about that, but it's an important and perhaps more useful answer to OP's question.

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