Jason Gantenberg

Risks of linear thinking in a complex world open.substack.com/pub/manlius/p/…

So many occasions these days where I am tempted to dunk on someone who says “I didn’t think Trump would do that!” But I am resisting the temptation. Instead I am trying to think “glad that you see the problem with him now. Welcome aboard.”

Trump’s attack on US institutions, even if fully expected, is dispiriting, discombobulating and dangerous. In this very difficult time, we have to remember one thing: This is not normal, and it should not be normalized. If, as I hope, the US democracy survives and (somehow) recovers, then history books will judge those working with Trump and Republican lawmakers in the Senate and Congress enabling him harshly (and so should we). If US democracy does not survive, I don’t know what history books will be like.

Because @RobertKennedyJr is not an honest player. He’s been shown the massive quantities of evidence from high quality scientific, clinical, and epidemiological studies support the safety and efficacy of vaccines on the CDC schedule over and over. He rejects it all.

@BostonChildrens @PLOSGPH 4/n Remember (and as i always say) antivaccine activists don’t care about you or your family. They only care about their filthy lucre, monetizing the internet, phony wellness influencers, useless nutritional supplements, they have another agenda

People in France remember the summer of 1997 for the deaths of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, and Jeanne Calment. The first became a household name by marrying into royalty; the second, by caring for the world’s sick and poor. buff.ly/42iZNig

"... the most common path towards being a public intellectual is being regarded by average people as smart and persuasive. This often places a cap on how smart and thoughtful you can be ..." buff.ly/40vPxlA

Give money directly to low-income families impacted by the L.A. wildfires, reaching them quickly and fully remotely + empowering them spend on what they need most ⬇️ GiveDirectly.org/fires

@SpencrGreenberg Or abandon dichotomania altogether!

Statistics is hard enough for most people as it is; please stop using the phrases "type I" and "type II" errors. Unless, of course, your goal is to confuse people - in which case, congrats - you've succeeded! Just say "false positive" and "false negative" instead.

I just found out that Bill Watterson (the genius behind Calvin and Hobbes) gave a commencement speech in 1990 and it's incredible 1/2

There are now papers showing that the migration of academic communities from Twitter to other social media sites mostly failed. But they never fully returned to Twitter either. I wonder if we will ever see so many different communities interacting in the same online space again.

@ojelibalon I love this!

Do you want to learn how the Physarum algorithm works playfully? It can be very intimidating at first glance, but we can break it down into smaller bits of information: 1/8

LIFE AS NO ONE KNOWS IT is out TODAY! And, I’m especially excited for three things (1) inspiring thoughts/debate on the fundamental nature of life (2) catalyzing discussion on how we might solve it and (3) your thoughts! (photo from the fab @caitlin_oh)

I learned yesterday that my girlfriend explains my travel to SER as me "going to an adult science fair". Accepted without revision. #ser2024

Just started leafing through X again after not paying much attention for a couple of years. Twitter/X became (and remain) depressing. On a technical note, though, I have now seen 4 posts marked as "probable spam". Only one could have been reasonably mistaken for it.

A deep and beautiful truth. Our selves comprise our relations to others...

@statsepi I would love to see a move toward "living papers". Just post incrementally updated and versioned papers. Fix error, bump version. New subanalysis, bump version. Publishing as currently employed is mostly archaic. (PeerJ is one that does it much better than most, imo.)

Sora by OpenAI is insane. But KWAI just dropped a Sora-like model called KLING, and people are going crazy over it. Here are 10 wild examples you don't want to miss: 1. A Chinese man sits at a table and eats noodles with chopsticks

@bradleyybeal @statsepi Come on, that's a thing!

@statsepi “Computational social scientist” 😗