Jacob James Rich

Almost no one will understand what I'm saying here, but "hanging indent to delimiter" style is superior to the more common "hanging indent" style in coding syntax.

I stand corrected. After further evaluation, AI stands for Absolute Idiot.

@jgitchell Right now, we can still unplug it.

@jacobjamesrich 👀

Everyone who knows me knows that I've been an AI pessimist, in that I think it's very useful, but I'm not too worried about Terminator. After working with updated models today, I might have changed my mind...

@JTSemprini Yes. Tobacco products, especially cigarettes and e-cigarettes, are clearly substitutes. Restricting access to one will increase the use of the other.

@jacobjamesrich No reason to trust one small choice experiment with 16+ strong, real-world quasi-experimental policy evaluation studies. See the latest here, with a great intro/discussion section showing the consensus of this evidence: journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/73…

This paper is both incredibly impressive and bad. The analysis was technically sophisticated, but it included too many arbitrary components that drastically affect the results—a slight, reasonable change in methodology would likely produce the opposite conclusion.

At SRNT, a Yale medical student insisted to me that there's no difference between smoking 10 or 20 cigarettes per day. @ArielleSelya explains the ridiculousness of the new academic discussion on "dual use" of cigarettes and e-cigarettes: arielleselyaphd.substack.com/p/dual-use-of-…

@ArielleSelya @mikepesko Wait, but I was certain that cigarettes and e-cigarettes aren't substitutes. x.com/HECJournal/sta…

Some of the strongest evidence yet that e-cigarette flavor bans have harmful indirect effects on increasing smoking: "11 to 15 additional cigarettes are purchased for every 1 less 0.7mL ENDS pod sold because of these policies" journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.10…

@jayvanbavel @jgitchell Pareto would suggest that a small fraction of the population always has a disproportionate influence over any domain.

A small fraction of online actors now exerts outsized influence over what the public sees, believes, and argues about. In a new short review paper, we trace how social media influencers can turn fringe claims into viral narratives—often by exploiting a feedback loop between influencers, algorithms, and crowds. As such, the modern information environment enables a tyranny of the minority: extreme and coordinated voices dominate attention, distort perceived social norms, and create a “funhouse mirror” version of public opinion that makes fringe positions look common and conflict look inevitable. We synthesize emerging evidence that a tiny number of highly active users drives a disproportionate share of misinformation and toxicity, and explain how platform incentives reward moralized, identity-salient, and emotionally charged content. We conclude by outlining pragmatic responses—individual, institutional, and policy-level—and by highlighting how generative AI could either accelerate bespoke realities or help rebuild shared understanding, depending on how these systems are designed and governed. osf.io/preprints/psya… We (@PillaiRaunak & @steverathje2) reviewed @noUpside's fantastic book "INVISIBLE RULERS" and connected it to the research we have been doing on this topic for the past decade.

@newrepublic @EdithOlmsted To be fair, @newrepublic does cite this statistic from @WHO, but it clearly in no way applies to the United States. And honestly, I'd be surprised if it's actually true. Maybe it's time for a replication study? who.int/news/item/06-1…

According to @newrepublic: "Children are, on average, nine times more likely to vape than adults, according to the World Health Organization." However, federal US data disagree: #page=9" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">samhsa.gov/data/sites/def… Any comments, @EdithOlmsted?

(Originally posted here: x.com/phil_w888/stat…)

Thread @newrepublic should issue some corrections

@billybinion To their defense, that's also our entire office.

SO many politicians are theater kids trapped in middle-aged bodies. They must be stopped.

.@newrepublic is a must-read if you prefer not to know the truth, or you don't want to be shown these things in this 🧵 below.👇

@newrepublic Just reference this graphic from SAMHSA:

@newrepublic These claims in the piece are demonstrably false: "No federally reviewed vaping product has been found to be less harmful than cigarettes" "Children are, on average, nine times more likely to vape than adults" How does such bad journalism get published?

RFK Jr. Uses Vape Brand’s Marketing to Promote Vaping trib.al/FBtaUoK

@newrepublic: "Children are, on average, nine times more likely to vape than adults" No data support this claim. Also, nicotine use among children in the US is at its lowest rate in recorded history. Youth use: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10… Adult use: cdc.gov/nchs/data/data…

FDA currently cites this report by NASEM: "There is conclusive evidence that completely substituting e-cigarettes for combustible tobacco cigarettes reduces users’ exposure to numerous toxicants and carcinogens present in combustible tobacco cigarettes." nationalacademies.org/projects/HMD-B…

A short thread on the inaccuracies in this @newrepublic article: