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[Cthulhu]

It could still exist, but the experiment doesn't say much.  In retrospect it's kind of apparent on the graph, clickbaity articlws always use a more dramatic graph but the average predicted score hovers around 60-70% for the entire sample, like theres no actual bias in predicted score in either direction

[Bralbaard]

Pretty cool: The city cleaning services in Stockholm have managed to train crows to clean cigarette butts from the streets, in exchange for food from automatic dispensers.
The researchers chose crows for being the most intelligent bird species available, with an intelligence level comparable to chimpansees.
Next they will try and train jackdaws as well, because they fly in larger packs and are more abundant.

In France a similar project has been done before. The difference is that the French experiment worked with handraised tame crows, the Swedish project trained wild birds.

I just want to share that I misread the first sentence and was left to wonder how the hell they managed to train cows to do that until I got further in the paragraph.

[delphonso]

It could still exist, but the experiment doesn't say much.  In retrospect it's kind of apparent on the graph, clickbaity articlws always use a more dramatic graph but the average predicted score hovers around 60-70% for the entire sample, like theres no actual bias in predicted score in either direction

A few months ago I read an analysis of the Dunning Kreuger effect that pointed out some flaws in it. For instance, people skilled in a field have less range to make mistakes in their predictions than those unskilled.

That is, if you consistantly score a 90 in math tests, you can only.overestimate your skill by ten points. If you consistantly score 70s, you can overestimate by much more, which doesn't require an understanding of your own ability in the greater field, in either case.

[Starver]

I once scored 102% in a mathematics* test, because the teacher said to just multiply our correct answers by two, in a 51-question situation, but I had had a fairly good run of it that day.

Not sure what that means for Mssrs. Dunning or Kreuger, but I was probably fairly smug for a while.


(* - trying to be linguistically neutral, there. given that it's "maths" over here and I wouldn't be honest writing it the yankee way...)

[martinuzz]

Technology allows fully paralyzed spinal cord injury patients to walk, bike swim and even walk stairs again within a single day after implant.

Good news for patients and cyborg technology.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/wetenschappers-ontwikkelen-implantaat-waarmee-dwarslaesiepatienten-weer-kunnen-lopen~b14112a8/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01663-5

Sadly the nature article is paywalled except for the summary.

The test subject use an app on their smartphone to select their type of movement. A bit like controlling your own motions with a gamepad.

[Starver]

The test subject use an app on their smartphone to select their type of movement. A bit like controlling your own motions with a gamepad.

Reminds me of the basic premise of Exo-Man (except of course, being effectively Endo-Man).

[martinuzz]

The experimental fusion reactor JET, in the UK, managed to produce 59 megajoules of energy for the duration of 5 seconds.

This is more than double their previous record of 22 Megajoules (in 1997).

They did not break the previous record for 'most productive second', but that doesn't matter, because the goal is not to produce peak power, the goal is to produce higher yield over longer periods.

[Starver]

In the article I read about this, earlier, mention was made of switching from carbon lining, due to its tendency to absorb the tritium (no mention that the deuterium is chemically identical!).

But, that aside, "for the latest tests, new walls were constructed out of the metals beryllium and tungsten. These are 10 times less absorbent." - I hate that highlighted phrasing. Is just me, or is it being used more and more by people?

(They probably mean it only has a tenth of the absorbency, but there's potential ambiguity creeping in there.)

[wierd]

As confused as some people get, these two expressions mean the same thing:

1 * .01 = .01
1 / 100 = .01

The first is "one hundred times less"
The second is "One one-hundredth"

[Starver]

Certainly, written that way, and I'm not confused by your numeric example, but it's possibly quite a lot messier when sing sloppy language instead.

Take the phrase "<Some particle> is detected as travelling 95% the speed of light. <Some other particle> was ten times slower."

At what speed was the second measured to be, w.r.t. c? 50%? 45%? 9.5%? 4.5%? It all depends upon what exactly you are multiplying(/dividing) by ten - and also from where you are applying this 'slowerness'.

For (say) a business with fixed costs and variable income on any given a day, given one day with a marginally below average net-profit and "ten times less" net-profit on another, this could mean net loss. Or just a slightly more significant dip in profits. Or a particularly bad dip, but still at least in the black.


Like I said, taken straight (as quoted) it's probably a tenth of the absorbency, but I always get the feeling that any such quote is referencing a more nuanced version of "X times less/fewer/smaller" (from a value that we don't even know[1]) that doesn't produce the same instinctive double-inversion (by the standard that "one tenth as big" == "ten times more small", or equivalent). Easily used in a deliberate narrative attempt to do "lies, damn lies and statistics", but then there's also errors introduced by misunderstandings cropping up at some point between the raw data being stated and the case then presented to us using such wording. All I'm saying is that it really shouldn't be encouraged.

But don't mind me. Mindful that I might be over-reacting, I pledge that even if I could gather all the people who say this kind of thing in one place, at my complete and utter mercy, I'd probably only decimate them... i.e. there'd be a tenth fewer of them by the time I was finished.


[1] Also a problem. A death rate that is 50% more than (or of) a one-in-a-million chance isn't as interesting as the same adjustment to a one-in-two base fatality rate.

[McTraveller]

The first is "one hundred times less"

I'm on Starver's side here.  This is just ill-formed!  Sadly however the war is unwindable and colloquial usage wins.

I will go to my grave asserting that "small" "slow" "less" "cold" and their kin are not measurable quantities so you can't "times" them.  But I'll only admit it in pedant-friendly environs.

[Starver]

(Oh yes... "<Foo> times colder" might have the °C or °F baseline problem, if not °K or °R. But maybe it's where my old favourite, the °D scale, is (marginally, and differently) less confusing.)

[wierd]

The lack of numeracy is going to be systemic, regardless of how you state it.

Really saying "(Foo) is 100 times less than (Bar)", is just saying this:

Bar * (1/100) = Foo

It is the cognate of "Bar is 100 times larger than Foo"

Foo * 100 = Bar


I agree that it can be dicey if you say something like "X is 95% the speed of light, and Y is 50% slower (than X)"  because it relies on the implied "(than X)".  It COULD be interpreted as "X is 95% the speed of light, and Y is 50% slower (than the speed of light.)"

They are very different things indeed!

But, saying something is "50% colder" is just the cognate inversion of "Hotter".

You can measure thermal energy, and thus can indeed measure "coldness".  Coldness is just a negative value for a thermal figure, rather than a positive one.

(EG, one can derive a "Increase in coldness" from inversion of "Increase in temperature", using a negative number for the "increase" )

Is it conceptually convoluted for no real reason, other than lack of scientific literacy, or lack of numeracy?  Absolutely.
Does doing away with it actually help matters? Not really. The fundamental problem is lack of scientific or mathematical literacy.  Changing the language wont fix that. 


For a functional basis by which to define "Coldness", one could start with differing starting conditions for the measurement.  Instead of taking absolute zero (where there is no thermal energy at all), one could start at maximally allowed entropy before the concept becomes meaningless, (derived from the mass term of the energy added by the entropic energy, against the smallest allowed massed particle, before that energy causes the particle's energy-mass to exceed the schwartzchild metric, and become a black hole) then work DOWN, rather than working UP. (After hitting that energy metric, adding more energy only increases mass, it does not increase temperature.)

[Starver]

I never said to change language. Just to stop using a subset of the current language which ideally we shouldn't have been using in the first place. There's better alternatives already there. I'm not advocating moving over to Lojban.

[...]if you say something like "X is 95% the speed of light, and Y is 50% slower (than X)"  because it relies on the implied "(than X)".  It COULD be interpreted as "X is 95% the speed of light, and Y is 50% slower (than the speed of light.)"

Not sure "(than X)" is sufficient.
"X is 95% the speed of light, and Y is 50% slower (than X is, compared to C)" Y=92.5% - did you mean this?
"X is 95% the speed of light, and Y is 50% slower (instead of X's comparison to C)", Y=97.5%
"X is 95% the speed of light, and Y is 50% slower (than C itself)", Y=50% - your second example
"X is 95% the speed of light, and Y is 50%(age-points*) slower (than those X already lacked)", Y=45%

* - because percentage points and percentages also tend not to be differentiated neatly enough in everyday usage.

I'm not saying talking percentages (with the asterixed point as an exception) is quite as bad, but it still suffers all the same possible assumptions/presumptions of implicitly unstated aspects.

[McTraveller]

There is a reason you can't make a consistent system by treating "coldness" or "length" as either a negative of temperature (-X), or even the multiplicative inverse (1/X).

Let's say you try additive inverse: 1 meter is -1 shorty.  This doesn't work with multiplication; 2 shorties is not half the size as 1 meter (2 x -1 = -2), it's twice as big!

So let's say you define a "shorty" as 1/x instead of -x; if you have 1 meter of length and 1 shorty of "shortness".  If you add two meters you get 2 meters.  But if you add 2 shorties, you get... 2 shorties; but 2 shorties is 1/2 a meter, which doesn't match what you got by sticking those two meters next to each other.

This is why we don't measure things in coldness or shortness or slowness; instead we measure them in heat/energy, length, and speed.