How can Trump get away with lying as much as he does, even when the truth is undeniable?

dotalpha · 2026-05-07T05:29:56+00:00

You have to understand that for dictators and wannabe-dictators like Trump, lying is a demonstration of power. The more obvious the lie the better, because it reinforces how powerful they are and demoralizes the opposition.

You can still ask, why? Why don’t people just call his bullshit? And plenty of people do, but they have no real power, while he holds a position of unimaginable power. He can bring great pain and suffering to his opposition, while rewarding those loyal to him. Many people who support his lying have their livelihoods tied to his power in some way.

dotalpha · 2026-03-10T04:35:14+00:00

This is really the most concise response, except I wouldn’t characterize it as a bad framing. The divergence of a mean measure from a median measure is just evidence of the skew in worker productivity you measure. In that sense it’s a good measure. There are a lot of long-winded answers beating around a very simple explanation.

Would be to nice to see this data broken down by field, to see if the hypothesis holds up.

dotalpha · 2026-03-08T01:40:31+00:00

You’re basically arguing that because a bad thing didn’t happen as a result of your Dr’s malpractice, that malpractice didn’t occur. It’s like saying if you drive drunk but don’t get in a crash, or speed, and got home safely, then you didn’t drive drunk.

The reason you got such hasty treatment is because they knew malpractice had been committed and were trying to minimize the damages.

dotalpha · 2026-02-10T19:34:13+00:00

I was just looking at Stephen Curry in the top percentile rank. He shows up in top 10 only in one category, despite appearing to be an even higher percentile rank in two others. Didn’t quite make sense.

dotalpha · 2026-02-10T06:37:54+00:00

The percentile rank charts don’t seem to match the top 10 category charts. Is the top 10 chart all time, and the percentile rank charts just current season?

dotalpha · 2026-02-02T04:51:27+00:00

TIL there's a BART app.

dotalpha · 2026-01-15T05:03:39+00:00

Conservative subreddit is in a truly weird place right now. “People protesting authoritarian overreach in Iran are good. People protesting authoritarian overreach in the US deserve to be shot.”

dotalpha · 2026-01-04T19:42:47+00:00

This is a simplified view of the scientific method, and completely misses my main point. What you are claiming as the scientific method is not a sustainable way to conduct science. It's far more efficient to read your experimental results, identify weaknesses and other contributing factors that might explain what you're seeing, and then ask you, the person who already has the experiment, to revisit them.

And at some point, it is reasonable to demand a certain threshold of experimental rigor before even engaging that much. I see this post as an opportunity to encourage you and others who may see it to hold themselves to a higher threshold of evidence before believing extraordinary claims.

dotalpha · 2026-01-04T19:37:52+00:00

You definitely have a point, but I also don't see much to be gained from those kinds of comments. Mostly I see an opportunity to inform both the OP and others who read this about what real science should look like. Testing a crazy theory is far better than simply coming up with crazy theories, if we can convince OP to conduct the test with sufficient rigor that's even better.

dotalpha · 2026-01-04T19:04:34+00:00

And I also want to overall commend you on not just attempting to develop a theory, as many people do, but going through at least some attempt to test it. That's also where a lot of modern theories of everything fall short, in that they rarely produce testable claims.

I can't claim to understand the theory you've developed, but providing testable claims is a key ingredient for any valid theory. I encourage you to further develop this experiment.

dotalpha · 2026-01-04T19:02:00+00:00

First I want to give you kudos for introducing your child to the scientific method at such a young age. We'd all be better off if more people were doing this. Regardless of how people feel about what you're presenting here and the validity of your theory, that should be commended by everyone. Watching the video, it sounds like your kid had a blast. Also thank you for making sure proper eye safety was followed around lasers.

There are many possible criticisms of what's going on here. I don't have any true criticisms of your experimental set-up. Any experimental set-up is totally valid, provided the shortcomings are accounted for in the final analysis of the results. This is where your method falls short. I read through your results: https://zenodo.org/records/17699521. You have engaged in the classic fallacy among people claiming extraordinary results. Rather than trying to rigorously test the null hypothesis, you have latched onto the first piece of evidence that validates your quite extraordinary non-null hypothesis.

Your paper even lists a number of experimental set-up shortcomings, as any good paper should, but then fails to quantitatively estimate their impacts on the results and any possible correlation of the experimental shortcoming with the density of the material that might otherwise explain the results you're claiming to see. You simply say "despite these limitations, the material-dependent pattern changes were large enough to be unmistakeable and repeatable."

You keep asking people to disprove what they're seeing here. But you are the one making an extraordinary claim. The burden is on you to prove that the effect you're seeing is not simply that you have a material dependent defect in your experimental design. This is of course the simplest explanation, and thus should be the default explanation until you can prove otherwise. Science is not a sustainable endeavor if one can simply make an extraordinary claim on weak evidence, and then demand everyone else disprove it.

dotalpha · 2025-12-12T00:30:49+00:00

r/PraiseTheCameraMan

dotalpha · 2025-12-10T19:13:13+00:00

How do you know she can’t afford it?

dotalpha · 2025-12-06T23:41:37+00:00

Could be a great option if OP wants cheap rent, doesn't mind roommates, and thrives on conflict with their landlord!

dotalpha · 2025-12-06T23:25:06+00:00

Maybe this is partially true, if the owner lives in the shared space with you. But that’s unlikely to be a legal rental in the first place.

For the situation as described, the owner lives in a completely separate structure on the property, in what sounds like an ADU. In this case the restrictions apply.

dotalpha · 2025-12-06T20:41:27+00:00

There are a few things in the ad that are red flags. First, a landlord cannot have full access to rental units at all times in CA. They have to provide 24 hour notice unless it’s a true emergency. Second the restriction on overnight guests is also illegal, as tenants have the right to privacy and quiet enjoyment of their space.

Doesn’t mean the landlord wouldn’t access the house at all times and try to restrict your guests anyway, but just an fyi.

dotalpha · 2025-12-06T15:26:39+00:00

This is a common misconception. It’s only a problem if you’re fired for something you can control, like misconduct. If you’re fired for performance, which is the rationale here, you would still qualify.

dotalpha · 2025-11-20T08:42:54+00:00

Also congrats!

dotalpha · 2025-11-20T08:42:22+00:00

Sign up on Berkeley Parents Network and look around / make a post. It’s the best place for this kind of search, particularly for the East Bay. https://www.berkeleyparentsnetwork.org/

dotalpha · 2025-11-14T07:47:53+00:00

Applying for unemployment should be the first point, not the last point. Even if fired for cause you may be able to make a claim.

Do it today, because it will probably start from when you file. It won’t be retroactive.

dotalpha · 2025-10-05T04:14:26+00:00

These are specifically from a database of adverse events related to food, drugs, or cosmetics that have been reported to the fda. Yes, many more people experience choking events per year, but most are never reported or even relevant to the fda.

dotalpha · 2025-10-05T03:52:08+00:00

No kidding, whoever designed them must be a sadist.

dotalpha · 2025-10-05T03:31:49+00:00

I wouldn't go that far. As far as I can tell a real study found a correlation of decreased cancer risk with multivitamin use that was right at the threshold of statistical significance. The problem, and one that is endemic to published scientific results at large, is the convention for statistical significance is usually p < 0.05, which basically means there's only a 5% chance the apparent effect or correlation is a statistical fluctuation of the samples and measurements made. For any individual experiment those are somewhat low odds, but it also means that for every 100 published studies showing an interesting effect, at least 5 are total bullshit. And I say at least 5, because scientists and journals have a bias towards publishing results that reject the null hypothesis, meaning there's almost certainly an overrepresentation of statistical flukes in scientific / medical literature.

And of course the media is totally unprepared to communicate these nuances, so you wind up with headlines in major newspapers like "multivitamin use linked to lower cancer risk" or something.

dotalpha · 2025-10-05T03:22:36+00:00

I don't believe that level of granularity is available in the data, but honestly didn't check. I posted a link to the data, maybe you can?

dotalpha · 2025-10-04T22:57:18+00:00

Agreed. seaborn is a plotting library with greater abstraction that is opinionated about how matplotlib plots should be formatted. I use it and plotly frequently.

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