I think the whole thing comes down to whether saying "I have a girl born on Monday" is allowed. If it is (which I find reasonable), then the probability that the other one is a boy is 0.5. OTOH, if you have to declare only boys, then the probability is 1/3 (not considering the Tuesday thing).
This is what P-value means: "In statistical hypothesis testing, the p-value is the probability of obtaining a test statistic at least as extreme as the one that was actually observed, assuming that the null hypothesis is true." In this case, it means that assuming that the masses are the same 1 in 20 experiments with the same amount of data as this one is bound to find such a difference in mass (or more). To translate that into "there is a 95% chance that relativity is wrong" is equivalent to saying that "before this experiment, we assumed that there was a 50% chance that the theory was correct". Obviously, that's not the case for a theory that's as established as special relativity. To me the experiment in the article would need a P-value of something like 1 in 1,000,000 or so to get get to 50% on relativity itself. Fortunately, with Gaussian error, adding more data usually quickly resolves certainty on one side or another. This is certainly a useful experiment to make, but I'm not ready to ditch special relativity just yet.
With the amount of data collected so far, there's a 5 percent probability that the two types of particles weigh the same
As someone pointed out, this merely means that assuming the masses are the same 1/20 experiments will find similar results due to measurement error. Considering how much data there is to back special relativity, I'm not the least worried about special relativity. I'll start paying attention when the error margin drops to one in a million or something. Seriously, using a 5 percent error margin for something that contradicts a fundamental law of physics is just ridiculous. Oh, and I measured some forces and accelarations in my garage and they're a bit off, so there's a 20% chance that Newton's F=ma is wrong.
If this takes on, this means another group of people who are going to starve so that others can use more energy. Can't someone invent an energy source that isn't based on food?
Then again, it could also save the specie. If we're lucky enough, there'll be just enough oil to give a bad taste (and/or to exceed the safe concentration for humans), but not enough to kill the tuna population.
Well, if the US would just adopt something slightly less silly like "gallons per thousand miles", it would be a huge improvement. That or maxbe the speed limits should just be expressed as "minimum 60 seconds per mile".
I'm not saying I know what the odds where (I definitely don't). All I'm saying is that to me 70% is the kind of number you would make up when you think the odds are small and you don't want to admit it. Go read Richard Feynman's "What do you care what other people think" and what he commented about the Challenger disaster. When asked about the shuttle safety, the engineers would tend to quote numbers around 1% chance of failure, which happens to about right so far. OTOH, managers would tend to give numbers like 0.01% chance of failure.
When I saw that figure, I was nearly sure it came out of some VP's ass and had nothing to do with engineering. I wouldn't be surprised if the engineers quoted "5%", but then management decided that if it was too low they'd be asked to work on something more credible. And of course if it was too high (e.g. 95%), then they'd look bad if it failed. 70% is about the highest probability that you're not surprised to see failing.
The same thought occurred to me, even though there are some differences. In the end, both statements are partially true and partially false.
possessing downloaded music/movies = damages the industry and threatens further production
It *does* damage the recording industry. I just don't think it does much harm to the artists themselves.
possessing child porn = supports the industry and encourages further production
The real question here is the motive of the people making the material. If it's for money, then there may be a similarity with the music industry. If they would be producing this material anyway, then you can't harm them that way. Also, downloading this is already illegal whether you pay or not (there's no such thing as a legal CP download), so I'm not sure how you could use this to hurt CP distributors.
How peculiar. I form opinions based on the available facts, and then reform those opinions as my knowledge changes.
I'll tell you this: "Mr XYZ is a bloody idiot". Now, what is your opinion on Mr XYZ?
You have clearly pre-judged her to be innocent, and are sticking resolutely to that opinion despite the available facts.
Nope. I still have no clue whether who's right or wrong (if any) in this story. I just hate when people quote someone else saying "Mrs XYZ is a drug addict" in a way that's so obviously biased that the amount of information conveyed is 0 bit. Maybe that's correct -- but for me the odds haven't changed since reading that piece.
Say - are you an economist by any chance?
Not even close. But if you had bothered looking at my sig, you would have had a more reliable clue.
Although news are never fully impartial, some are closer than others. When you refer to the person on one side as "the pot- and booze-lover" you've proven that you're as far as possible from impartial. I have no clue who's right and who's wrong in this story. All I'm saying is that the post I was commenting about is definitely not something I would use to form an opinion.
Read the link quickly and just the tone of it tells you it's *far* from impartial. You'd think it was written by the boss or a close relative. I don't know what the true story is, but this almost certainly isn't.
You'll notice I said "marketing", not "advertising". Most of the budget is *not* spent on ads, it is spent on inviting doctors to luxurious places (all expenses paid) to teach them about their new drugs. That's why you don't hear too much about it.
The problem is not the manufacturer, but the patent owner. The manufacturer doesn't care what you do with the product, it just happened that it licensed the the patent for "non-commercial use" to reduce the cost. If anyone comes against you, it would be the patent owner.
The problem is that regardless of whether you agreed to anything, you never got a "commercial" license in the first place, so you can get sued. The manual just *informs* you of the fact that what you bought is a non-commercial license. That's very different from EULAs that take rights away from you. In this case, they just inform you that you never got the rights in the first place.
In the study, conducted with 20,000 Israeli Army recruits and veterans, the average IQ for a non-smoker was about 101, while the smokers' average was more than seven IQ points lower at about 94, and the IQs of young men who smoked more than a pack a day were lower still, at about 90.
It sounds from this that the average IQ in the army is also below 100 (which is the average, right?), which would indicate that people who serve in the army have below-average IQ. Not too surprising either.
1) Even if we came across aliens that are far more intelligent than we are, I'm not sure at all that they would pass the Turing test. Also, we definitely wouldn't pass *their* Turing test. So who's smartest? 2) Imagine that chimps had the equivalent of the Turing test, I'm not sure a human would pass it. Would that mean humans are dumber than chimps?
On top of that, I'm still wondering whether you could build a totally dumb machine that passes the Turing test just by doing some sort of advanced "pattern matching" based on a huge amount of "Turing test-like" training data.
Is it just me or is there an increase in the number of new laws (not just in the US) that basically state that it's illegal to do illegal stuff? I'm trying to find the rational explanation for that, but so far I've failed.
I was thinking "health insurance company's dream."
In the short term possibly, but not necessarily in the long term. Insurance is about risk and probabilities. If you know the outcome in advance, you don't need insurance.
The term patent troll has nothing to do with the fact that a company wins or loses. It's used to describe a company whose sole (or main) source of income is patent litigation.
There's actually another way to go faster than light (it's not clear from TFA which they refer to). You can have an actual particle going faster than light in a certain medium, which leads to Cherenkov radiation. The fact that they mention the "sonic boom" makes me think it could be Cherenkov radiation, but "the small displacements of the charged particles that make it up means that their velocities remain slower than light" seems to imply "disco ball"-type faster-than-light.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the whole thing comes down to whether saying "I have a girl born on Monday" is allowed. If it is (which I find reasonable), then the probability that the other one is a boy is 0.5. OTOH, if you have to declare only boys, then the probability is 1/3 (not considering the Tuesday thing).
This is what P-value means: "In statistical hypothesis testing, the p-value is the probability of obtaining a test statistic at least as extreme as the one that was actually observed, assuming that the null hypothesis is true." In this case, it means that assuming that the masses are the same 1 in 20 experiments with the same amount of data as this one is bound to find such a difference in mass (or more). To translate that into "there is a 95% chance that relativity is wrong" is equivalent to saying that "before this experiment, we assumed that there was a 50% chance that the theory was correct". Obviously, that's not the case for a theory that's as established as special relativity. To me the experiment in the article would need a P-value of something like 1 in 1,000,000 or so to get get to 50% on relativity itself. Fortunately, with Gaussian error, adding more data usually quickly resolves certainty on one side or another. This is certainly a useful experiment to make, but I'm not ready to ditch special relativity just yet.
With the amount of data collected so far, there's a 5 percent probability that the two types of particles weigh the same
As someone pointed out, this merely means that assuming the masses are the same 1/20 experiments will find similar results due to measurement error. Considering how much data there is to back special relativity, I'm not the least worried about special relativity. I'll start paying attention when the error margin drops to one in a million or something. Seriously, using a 5 percent error margin for something that contradicts a fundamental law of physics is just ridiculous. Oh, and I measured some forces and accelarations in my garage and they're a bit off, so there's a 20% chance that Newton's F=ma is wrong.
If this takes on, this means another group of people who are going to starve so that others can use more energy. Can't someone invent an energy source that isn't based on food?
Then again, it could also save the specie. If we're lucky enough, there'll be just enough oil to give a bad taste (and/or to exceed the safe concentration for humans), but not enough to kill the tuna population.
Well, if the US would just adopt something slightly less silly like "gallons per thousand miles", it would be a huge improvement. That or maxbe the speed limits should just be expressed as "minimum 60 seconds per mile".
I'm not saying I know what the odds where (I definitely don't). All I'm saying is that to me 70% is the kind of number you would make up when you think the odds are small and you don't want to admit it. Go read Richard Feynman's "What do you care what other people think" and what he commented about the Challenger disaster. When asked about the shuttle safety, the engineers would tend to quote numbers around 1% chance of failure, which happens to about right so far. OTOH, managers would tend to give numbers like 0.01% chance of failure.
When I saw that figure, I was nearly sure it came out of some VP's ass and had nothing to do with engineering. I wouldn't be surprised if the engineers quoted "5%", but then management decided that if it was too low they'd be asked to work on something more credible. And of course if it was too high (e.g. 95%), then they'd look bad if it failed. 70% is about the highest probability that you're not surprised to see failing.
The same thought occurred to me, even though there are some differences. In the end, both statements are partially true and partially false.
possessing downloaded music/movies = damages the industry and threatens further production
It *does* damage the recording industry. I just don't think it does much harm to the artists themselves.
possessing child porn = supports the industry and encourages further production
The real question here is the motive of the people making the material. If it's for money, then there may be a similarity with the music industry. If they would be producing this material anyway, then you can't harm them that way. Also, downloading this is already illegal whether you pay or not (there's no such thing as a legal CP download), so I'm not sure how you could use this to hurt CP distributors.
How peculiar. I form opinions based on the available facts, and then reform those opinions as my knowledge changes.
I'll tell you this: "Mr XYZ is a bloody idiot". Now, what is your opinion on Mr XYZ?
You have clearly pre-judged her to be innocent, and are sticking resolutely to that opinion despite the available facts.
Nope. I still have no clue whether who's right or wrong (if any) in this story. I just hate when people quote someone else saying "Mrs XYZ is a drug addict" in a way that's so obviously biased that the amount of information conveyed is 0 bit. Maybe that's correct -- but for me the odds haven't changed since reading that piece.
Say - are you an economist by any chance?
Not even close. But if you had bothered looking at my sig, you would have had a more reliable clue.
Although news are never fully impartial, some are closer than others. When you refer to the person on one side as "the pot- and booze-lover" you've proven that you're as far as possible from impartial. I have no clue who's right and who's wrong in this story. All I'm saying is that the post I was commenting about is definitely not something I would use to form an opinion.
Read the link quickly and just the tone of it tells you it's *far* from impartial. You'd think it was written by the boss or a close relative. I don't know what the true story is, but this almost certainly isn't.
You'll notice I said "marketing", not "advertising". Most of the budget is *not* spent on ads, it is spent on inviting doctors to luxurious places (all expenses paid) to teach them about their new drugs. That's why you don't hear too much about it.
Try comparing R&D expenses to their marketing expenses. R&D doesn't look that expensive anymore.
Ridiculous tribalism, that's all it is. Fragmentation of the Internet to appease some regressive, regional e-peenery is the stupidest idea to date.
Maybe if DNS addresses were based on Chinese, Hindi or Arabic then you'd have a different opinion.
The problem is not the manufacturer, but the patent owner. The manufacturer doesn't care what you do with the product, it just happened that it licensed the the patent for "non-commercial use" to reduce the cost. If anyone comes against you, it would be the patent owner.
The problem is that regardless of whether you agreed to anything, you never got a "commercial" license in the first place, so you can get sued. The manual just *informs* you of the fact that what you bought is a non-commercial license. That's very different from EULAs that take rights away from you. In this case, they just inform you that you never got the rights in the first place.
What tells you that the student will put the money to good use -- or even get to keep the money for that matter.
In the study, conducted with 20,000 Israeli Army recruits and veterans, the average IQ for a non-smoker was about 101, while the smokers' average was more than seven IQ points lower at about 94, and the IQs of young men who smoked more than a pack a day were lower still, at about 90.
It sounds from this that the average IQ in the army is also below 100 (which is the average, right?), which would indicate that people who serve in the army have below-average IQ. Not too surprising either.
This is how I tend to think about it:
1) Even if we came across aliens that are far more intelligent than we are, I'm not sure at all that they would pass the Turing test. Also, we definitely wouldn't pass *their* Turing test. So who's smartest?
2) Imagine that chimps had the equivalent of the Turing test, I'm not sure a human would pass it. Would that mean humans are dumber than chimps?
On top of that, I'm still wondering whether you could build a totally dumb machine that passes the Turing test just by doing some sort of advanced "pattern matching" based on a huge amount of "Turing test-like" training data.
Is it just me or is there an increase in the number of new laws (not just in the US) that basically state that it's illegal to do illegal stuff? I'm trying to find the rational explanation for that, but so far I've failed.
Exactly, there will be people who don't want to be insured and people the companies won't want to ensure. So zero revenue.
I was thinking "health insurance company's dream."
In the short term possibly, but not necessarily in the long term. Insurance is about risk and probabilities. If you know the outcome in advance, you don't need insurance.
The term patent troll has nothing to do with the fact that a company wins or loses. It's used to describe a company whose sole (or main) source of income is patent litigation.
There's actually another way to go faster than light (it's not clear from TFA which they refer to). You can have an actual particle going faster than light in a certain medium, which leads to Cherenkov radiation. The fact that they mention the "sonic boom" makes me think it could be Cherenkov radiation, but "the small displacements of the charged particles that make it up means that their velocities remain slower than light" seems to imply "disco ball"-type faster-than-light.