jeff

please like my tweets my self esteem is very fragile

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

*doorbell rings*
BILLY MAYS' WIDOW: you again. for the last time, no.
ME, WITH THINGS FOR SEANCE: *weeping* please, I don't know what to buy

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

Can someone on the more conservative side of things help me understand the reaction to the 14th Amendment continuing to be upheld as it has been since it was drafted? I genuinely do not understand why I’m seeing sentiment about the end of America when nothing is changing

[Kyle 🌱 @KylePlantEmoji]

"if I pronounce a word wrong, it's because I learned it by reading," I say through tears as my wife's step son roundly mocks me for saying "The Wizard of Ounce"

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@poetickate But how will you live without your extremely dramatic roommate???

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@_vandul Vaxxed?

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@childhoodsen @rob_mcrobberson No, it's the opposite. A 99.9% accurate HIV test is an amazing tool in populations of people most likely to have HIV. As soon as you start using that test on *everybody* though, the number of false positives skyrockets. The lesson is indiscriminate testing is not good.

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@InverseMarcus @rob_mcrobberson So then we agree that asymptomatic testing has introduced net harm into the world

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@InverseMarcus @rob_mcrobberson But if we both agree that Bayesian statistics inherently means that these scans in isolation mean very little, what case can be made for doing scans without symptoms?

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@InverseMarcus @rob_mcrobberson That directly implies that there’s no point in screening without having an indicator in the first place though which is exactly what the doctors are saying.

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@childhoodsen @rob_mcrobberson No? The entire claim is that testing *everyone* with *only* a 99.9% accurate test against that particular incidence rate would be inaccurate. Pair it any other factor like lifestyle or symptoms and the false positives plummet through the floor and it suddenly becomes valuable

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@DrSiyabMD It’s hard for me to fathom another dev actually believing our field has any rigor whatsoever when some of the most prominent voices out there right now are genuinely saying we should stop reading AI-generated output

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@Ian_Fisch @DrSiyabMD checking the stock market every day and trying to adjust your retirement accordingly despite knowing that index funds win out against all but the most talented, brilliant money managers in history. Access to information that doesn’t lead to positive outcomes truly can be harmful

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@Ian_Fisch @DrSiyabMD conclusively. Because at least one false positive revealed by a test will statistically be acted on unnecessarily, administering tests to everyone regardless of indication is almost indistinguishable from directly causing harm to a nonzero number of people. It’s kind of like

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@ostschlampe @ElizabethAF @DrCasteelEM field before learning the intricacies of it, the same is probably true about other complex fields.

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@ostschlampe @ElizabethAF @DrCasteelEM and you can actually easily work your way into places that are genuinely hard to recover from due to premature optimization. I’m not a doctor but I know that, on average, they’re bright people so I think it’s charitable to assume that if I had incorrect assumptions about my own

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@gxonio @BenMazer I feel like I’m not fully understanding what you’re saying when the graph you’re responding to is the result of science indicating that more scans don’t lead to better outcomes.

So wouldn’t continuing to get scans anyway be “not turning on the light” in your scenario?

[jeff @theofficialjeff]

@mattparlmer So what would you call the medical equivalent of crowdstrike shipping straight to prod