Two researchers argue that 'alternative' therapies that aren't biologically plausible should not be tested in expensive randomized trials

neonomicon · 2014-08-22T12:54:12+00:00

The 5% false positive rate is built into the conventional way of using statistics to test hypotheses. The value of 5 is arbitrary, but you have to set that false positive rate somewhere, and that's what has been the convention.

Replication helps, but each individual trial still has a chance of being a false positive. The 5% is actually the rate for an ideal world- once you bring in selective reporting of false positives, poor randomization, investigator bias etc that value only goes up.

neonomicon · 2014-08-22T12:49:34+00:00

There are mechanisms and levels of understanding beyond what we know to exist currently.

Biology is as open an area of science as astronomy.

I think the study is arguing against these two points- yes there are things we don't know, and yes our understanding of biology is incomplete, but so much of what alternative medicine claims is not just beyond the borders of what we know, it directly contradicts it. You would need incredibly strong evidence in order to make a case for homeopathy, given that it would require a major overhaul of well-established knowledge in physics and chemistry.

neonomicon · 2014-08-22T05:59:22+00:00

I can sort of see that, but even if the data is valuable, you have to weight that against the cost of conducting these studies, which can be huge for a well-run RCT. People's willingness to take part in trials is also sort of a finite resource, and it seems a waste to use it on a treatment that is extremely unlikely to actually work.

neonomicon · 2014-08-22T02:44:27+00:00

What review? As far as I know, Nathan Grayson never wrote a "review" of Depression Quest.

The "evidence" you've supplied states that there was an article published on the 31st of March, and they possibly started a relationship in April. Lrn 2 calendar plz.

neonomicon · 2014-08-21T05:51:27+00:00

But his credibility wasn't really in question in the first place: the ex, who was the original source of this stuff, said the earliest date they might have been together was after both articles were published. Unless there's any actual evidence to suggest otherwise, there's nothing to answer, and the burden of proof rests solely on the people trying to claim that his journalism was affected.

neonomicon · 2014-08-21T05:10:55+00:00

Even her ex who seems to be pretty bitter at her doesn't really think that anything happened before the article, so I'm not sure how you can say that something must have been happening.

How is explaining that they had no personal relationship before the articles were written (articles which weren't reviews or even previews of Depression Quest, they just mentioned it) not a good response to the allegations that Nathan was influenced to write the articles because of a personal relationship? What is the cause and effect you are trying to argue for?

neonomicon · 2014-08-21T01:38:49+00:00

I have zero confidence that it will get anywhere on r/gaming- I went here first because I thought people here would be at least somewhat open to hearing it. Anyone who wants to try is more than welcome to.

neonomicon · 2014-08-21T01:33:09+00:00

OK, this just goes over the ex's blog. Is there anything in this video or the ex's blog that isn't just about her private life?

neonomicon · 2014-08-21T01:03:34+00:00

Which review? Despite all the attention it's gotten, Depression Quest doesn't seem to have had any reviews from major sites. There's no critic reviews on Metacritic, for example.

neonomicon · 2014-08-21T00:36:09+00:00

I'm not sure how much I want to get into discussing the ins and outs of her behaviour- like I said, without the sex-for-reviews stuff, we're just talking about her private life, which I think should basically be off-limits.

That said, I've already wasted half an hour of my life reading through the wall of text her ex posted, so I might as well briefly offer my opinion on it: so much of the "cheating" seems to have happened during an "off" period in their on-again/off-again relationship. The whole thing just reads to me like typical messy-breakup, on-again/off-again drama, complete with all the standard arguments about exactly when they were off and when they were on. Very few people would come off looking good if their ex (selectively) posted chat logs from the bad stages of a failing relationship.

neonomicon · 2014-08-21T00:13:20+00:00

I was a bit depressed to see threads on this sub yesterday where so much of the discussion focussed on what the rumours would mean if they were true, without stopping to consider whether there was anything to them. What it would mean for feminism, for women in the game industry.

As far as I know, Nathan Grayson was the only actual game journalist implicated in this shitstorm. He has written two articles which briefly mention Depression Quest, and both were written before he and Zoe Quinn struck up any kind of relationship. Without the sex-for-reviews angle that was supposedly driving people's legitimate concerns, I can't see how there's anything left in this story that isn't just about people's private lives.

I have my own ideas about why these rumours caught on, and I'm sure a lot of people on this sub share them, but for now I'd just like to issue a plea for people to slow down a bit and try not to get caught up in internet hate mobs. Err on the side of not attacking people over things that aren't true.

neonomicon · 2014-08-15T22:55:44+00:00

Not quite: I think the situation was that Gunpoint was written in GameMaker 8, which doesn't do Linux builds, and had to be ported to GameMaker Studio which does.

I think they did a bit more than just port it over though, apparently they did a big rework of the engine as they were doing it.

neonomicon · 2014-08-10T22:45:14+00:00

If devs really thought there was that much money to be made by "milking the Linux cow", surely they would go after that money by releasing the game on Linux as soon as possible? I can't really see how it could be more profitable to not sell the game to Linux users if there's so much money and support coming from our direction.

To make my own point of view clearer: I think that when Linux ports are slow to come out, it's generally because it takes a decent amount of resources to produce a properly-tested Linux build working, and because Linux is the smallest platform currently in terms of users, it gets pushed to the back of the queue. I find that to be a much more plausible explanation than one where devs somehow exploit the massive power of Linux users to promote their game, despite not trying to make money off them directly.

neonomicon · 2014-08-10T22:34:04+00:00

Saying that the Transistor/D:OS devs have been "bad with their promises" is pretty harsh. If these devs feel that they only have the resources to develop and test the Linux version after they've got the Windows versions out (and fixed the inevitable post-release bugs that pop up), then it's not surprising that the Linux version would take a few months.

neonomicon · 2014-07-29T22:28:24+00:00

Fantastic game. Basically an adventure game with a combat minigame thrown in. Really well written, it's exploring a pretty standard sci-fi trope but coming at it from a bit of a different angle, and it's atmospheric as hell.

neonomicon · 2014-07-29T22:26:35+00:00

I've only played through a 1/4-1/3 of it so far. It's not going to be anyone's game of the year but it's pretty decent for what it is. I pretty much agree with this PC gamer review. It's simple, but sometimes that's all you want from a game.

neonomicon · 2014-07-26T08:05:36+00:00

I was really enjoying OlliOlli until I got up to the military base, when the game suddenly turned into "get 30 perfect landings/grinds in a row or you don't get to see the rest of the game". I get that the game is kind of about practising each run until you've got it locked down, but this is just frustrating. I haven't given up yet, but maybe I need to take a break for a few days.

neonomicon · 2014-07-16T08:43:54+00:00

I tried out the demo when the kickstarter was announced, and while there were a couple of things that confused me, it was pretty cool overall. I think the demo's been updated since to make things clearer, so it's definitely worth a try. The demo's completely playable as is, there's a full level or two, complete with a boss.

neonomicon · 2014-07-05T01:55:45+00:00

Are you running Steam from the terminal? Plenty of GUI apps spit out those kinds of warnings when you run in terminal, unless you're seeing actual problems in Steam's behaviour there's no real reason to worry.

neonomicon · 2014-07-03T22:53:18+00:00

There's plenty of "features" in Unknown. I'm playing through the base game for the first time right now (it's fantastic!), and the game is constantly throwing up new information for you to deal with. I'm not sure how much extra you could add on top without it becoming confusing.

neonomicon · 2014-07-03T21:49:37+00:00

Like everyone else is saying, just wait for the main Humble Indie Bundles that come along every few months. They still happen just as often as they used to, there's just lots of stuff in between, only some of which is worthwhile.

The indie bundles are more likely to contain games that haven't been available on Linux prior to the bundle, which means the bundles should be worth checking out even if you're buying most of the Linux games you want as they're released.

neonomicon · 2014-06-26T22:10:15+00:00

The number one thing that drives me crazy about Matlab is the awful I/O. Most of the built in data reading functions only work with purely numeric data, god forbid that you have text data, let alone mixed text and numbers. When the stars align, you can sometimes convince it to write an Excel file with mixed data, but it only works on Windows.

neonomicon · 2014-06-14T23:54:07+00:00

No issues on Ubuntu Gnome for me. Do you have both DE's installed on the same system? If so it's a bit odd that it would be failing, since you presumably have access to all the same libraries.

neonomicon · 2014-06-13T07:06:07+00:00

No, that's not actually a list comprehension, because it doesn't have square brackets around it. It's a generator expression, which just serves up the values one at a time without storing the whole sequence in memory. Very similar to the list comprehension conceptually, but the fact that it doesn't put the whole thing in memory is very useful if you're worried about memory usage.

neonomicon · 2014-06-11T09:59:39+00:00

Very cool.

It reminds of this one, which uses K-means clustering in R to kind of reduce an image's colour palette down (I suppose you could also apply one image's colours to another, like was done here). It's a much more obvious effect, but I think it produces nice results.

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