Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!
Image by Midjourney v6.1. The prompt was my own.
I’m familiar with Adam Mastroianni’s thesis that science is a strong-link problem — here is at least one mention on this blog — and I am certainly familiar with the recently uncovered shenanigans in Alzheimer’s disease research, but I never thought to connect the dots in the latter refuting the former. Well, paleontologist Matt Wedel did just that:
I’m going to wane philosophical for a minute. In general I’m very sympathetic to Adam Mastroianni’s line “don’t worry about the flood of crap that will result if we let everyone publish, publishing is already a flood of crap, but science is a strong-link problem so the good stuff rises to the top”. I certainly don’t think we need stronger pre-publication review or any more barrier guardians (although I have reluctantly concluded that having some is useful). But when fraudulent stuff like this does in fact rise to the top in what seems to be a strong-link network — lots of NIH-funded labs, papers in top journals (or, apparently, “top” journals) — then I despair a bit. Science has gotten so specialized that almost anyone could invent facts or data within their subfield that might pass muster even with close colleagues (even if those colleagues aren’t on the take, he said cynically — there is a mind-boggling amount of money floating around in the drug-development world).
There is indeed. Lots more at the link, mostly about paleobiology, ending with these wise words:
So if you want to do good work — in this metaphor, to be at the top where the good science floats (eventually, alongside a seasoning of not-yet-unmasked bad science) — then I think you have to be aware that other cells exist, and occasionally peer into them, if for no other reason than to make sure you don’t accept an idea that’s already been debunked over there. And you need to read broadly and deeply in your own cell — there’s almost certainly valuable stuff you don’t know because the relevant works are stuck to the bottom of the pot. Go knock ’em loose.
📺 Ars Technica’s list of best television in 2024 goes on and on (and on, and on). This is why I barely watched anything this year, and most of what I did see were Modern Family reruns.
📚 Finished reading: Order without Design by Alain Bertaud, which is more of a textbook for urban planners than something one would read in their spare time but still managed to grab my attention and change my mind on a few things. Bertaud makes the case for organic, bottom-up growth of cities in the style championed by Jane Jacobs while at the same time noting the costly second-order effects of NIMBY-ism, 15-minute-city projects, public-transport-for-its-own-sake movements and other causes taken up by modern-day Jane Jacobs wannabes. So yes, I am now more skeptical of both 15-minute cities and public transport. Caveat lector.
I have been reading Order without Design for the last few weeks — it’s a dense book! — so it is complete coincidence that its author Alain Bertaud was on EconTalk as a guest the same week that I finished it. Bertaud talked to to Russ Roberts once before, back in June 2019. I haven’t listened to either episode yet but they’re on the list.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!
Image by Midjourney v6.1. The prompt was my own.
🍿 Krampus (2015) is comedy-horror fun for the entire family with great practical effects and a clear, if simple, message. Will watch again, this time next year.
I was peripherally aware that large language models have crossed a chasm in the last year or so, but I haven’t realized how large of a jump it was until I compared ChatGPT’s answer to my standard question: “How many lymphocytes are there in the human body?”.
Back in February of last year it took some effort to produce an over-inflated estimate. Today, I was served a well-reasoned and beautifuly formatted response after a single prompt. Sure, I have gotten better at writing prompts but the difference there is marginal. Not so marginal is the leap in usefulness and trustworthiness of the model, which went from being an overeager high school freshman to an all-star college senior.
And that is just the reasoning. Creating quick Word documents with tables and columns just the way I want them has become routine, even when/especially if I want to recreate a document from a badly scanned printout. My office document formatting skills are getting rusty and I couldn’t be happier for it.
In his Kefahuchi Tractt trilogy, M. John Harrison conjures up alien algorithms floating around the human environment, mostly helpful, sometimes not, motives unknown. Back in the early 2000s when the first novel came out I was wondering what on earth he was talking about but for better or worse we are now headed towards that world. Whether we are inching or hurling, that depends entirely on your point of view.
(↬Tyler Cowen)
🍿 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) is an underappreciated marvel that starts with racism and murder, revs things up with a powerful man’s lust over a young woman and ends with near-genocide, to the tune of Latin chants. Heavy topics for a Disney cartoon! And oh that villain song…
For some Sunday pre-holiday week reading, here is a detailed analysis of what went wrong in Valencia from the Financial Times that shows both the human and technical side of the flooding there earlier this year. It is excellent throughout, and really got my blood boiling near the end with this series of paragraphs:
Cutting the risk of flash floods is not impossible. After the 1957 disaster, generalísimo Francisco Franco oversaw a vast engineering project to reroute the Turia river away from Valencia’s city centre. It is the reason why the capital was largely unscathed on October 29. But dictators do not have to consult stakeholders and such poured-concrete solutions are out of fashion today.
Still, Spain has not lacked modern proposals to stop the Poyo ravine flooding. But its slow-moving state has failed to implement them. The Júcar river basin authority put forward a risk reduction plan in 1994. Three of its four parts were blocked on environmental grounds, so it only stabilised the walls of the ravine from Paiporta to the coast — a job finished in 2005.
By then the basin authority had commissioned work on an alternative plan, which was authorised by the central government in 2009. It involved restoring forests to improve soil water absorption and building a “safety” channel to siphon water from the ravine to Franco’s rerouted river.
By the time it won environmental approval in 2011, Spain was heading into austerity. A new conservative government then shelved the plan. When the socialists returned to power in 2018, the environmental approval had expired. Pedro Sánchez’s government concluded a new plan was needed, but cost-benefit studies and new environmental demands at regional level threw up fresh obstacles. On the ground, nothing was done.
Valencia is a beautiful city as I saw for myself not long ago, and big part of it was the dry river bed-turned-park going straight down the center, orange groves and all. To think that what enabled it was a fascist dictator’s big project, when he probably didn’t care an iota about the park. And the people who care about the parks are clearly not capable of doing these large-scale projects. It’s the yin and yang of humanity.
Nate Silver, who so vehemently defended Daylight Saving Time, does not in fact know what DST means. No, I will not call him a clown — though he has made himself appear to act like one — because he may actually be on our side!