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Epidemiologist/mathematician. Professor at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Author of The Rules of Contagion and The Perfect Bet. Views own.
New book Proof: The Uncertain Science of Certainty available now: proof.kucharski.io
Was chatting about that 2004 Nature 100m extrapolation paper the other day (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...) and decided to see how current results tracked.
Post 2004 points are above fitted lines (and line for women now shallower because of retrospective drug DSQ for winning 2000 time).
New post on the original culture war: kucharski.substack.com/p/the-origin...
Want a large language model that never hallucinates? Easy: just get it to always print “I don’t know”, regardless of the input.
If you find this solution is a bit unsatisfying, you’re not alone. But it hits on a crucial trade-off with learning machines and decision-making more generally.
New post:
There are two big errors we can make with information, but one often gets forgotten
"The Moat is effective because it’s easy to imagine the embarrassment that comes from being in it. It’s so vivid, it looms so large that we forget the novel upsides that come from transcending it."
Recently came across the really useful term 'Moat of Low Status' from Cate Hall. It describes why we find it so difficult to take steps required to fulfil our ambitions - if we're already good at one thing, it's hard to endure being bad at something else.
It hurts, but less than you think
Obviously I am not the first person to coin this term but it’s a thing right? Just recently without being conscious of it I found I’d started emailing old friends. LONG email. Cos we’re old and busy, replies come weeks or months later, they’re a nice surprise, I have to put aside time to read them!!
Slowcial media
This astonishing feat has been dismissed across the political spectrum
Some are upset about things the administration did/did not do
Warp speed still delivered and deserves recognition
Others applaud things the administration did/did not do
Warp speed still delivered and deserves recognition
Operation Warp Speed was arguably one of the most successful policy initiatives in recent history, accelerating vaccine delivery that saved millions of lives.
It’s remarkable to see some now urging the leaders who backed it to disown the achievement.
Would need to dig more into methods, but very curious about the process that has generated this clustering in ranking uncertainty. Would understand if it looked 'boxy', i.e. high ranked places that couldn't be distinguished. But seems uncertain about 15-25 range, and confident of those in 30-35?
Those confidence intervals in full!
Operation Warp Speed was arguably one of the most successful policy initiatives in recent history, accelerating vaccine delivery that saved millions of lives.
It’s remarkable to see some now urging the leaders who backed it to disown the achievement.
Thanks to Braver Angels & David Zweig for engaging in this debate on the primary effects of the first year of the pandemic (540,000 deaths), the secondary effects (one year of learning loss for kids, unemployment, isolation), and things that we did right and wrong 1/ www.youtube.com/watch?v=59Gg...
YouTube video by Braver Angels
