[Medium] The Masks Masquerade

I want to travel this summer

Incompetence and Errors in Reasoning Around Face Covering

SIX ERRORS: 1) missing the compounding effects of masks, 2) missing the nonlinearity of the probability of infection to viral exposures, 3) missing absence of evidence (of benefits of mask wearing) for evidence of absence (of benefits of mask wearing), 4) missing the point that people do not need governments to produce facial covering: they can make their own, 5) missing the compounding effects of statistical signals, 6) ignoring the Non-Aggression Principle by pseudolibertarians (masks are also to protect others from you; it’s a multiplicative process: every person you infect will infect others).

In fact masks (and faceshields) supplemented with constraints of superspreader events can save us trillions of dollars in future lockdowns (and lawsuits) and be potentially sufficient (under adequate compliance) to stem the pandemic. Bureaucrats do not like simple solutions.

Continue reading on Medium: medium.com/incerto/the-masks-masquerade

[EndCoronavirus.Org] Town Hall discussion with Yaneer Bar-Yam

Nassim Taleb joins EndCoronavirus.org Founder, Yaneer Bar-Yam, for a Town Hall discussion.
Website: EndCoronavirus.org
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Never use Single-point Estimates for Pandemics

ERRORS 101
Never produce a point estimate for risk management, esp. in a fat-tailed domain, rather show statistical properties. Never judge a risk management stance from point forecasts.

Informational Rescaling of PCA Maps with Application to Genetics

Nassim Nicholas Taleb∗, Pierre Zalloua, and Dan Platt
∗Corresponding author, [email protected] Dec 2019

We discuss the inadequacy of covariances/correlations and other measures in L-2 as relative distance metrics. We propose a computationally simple heuristic to transform a map based on standard principal component analysis (PCA) (when the variables are asymptotically Gaussian) into an entropy-based map where distances are based on mutual information.

PDF Download Link: academia.edu/41442347/Informational…