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0 pointstimschmidt5mo ago0 comments

> Do we live in a world of airplanes of all makes and models probabilistically falling out of the sky

This statement and others you've made about dice and probability suggest that you think actions of humans bear no weight on probability of infection or outbreak. History teaches us otherwise.

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estearum5mo ago

No, I believe that the specific cause of a previous outbreak does not significantly change the probability distribution of future outbreaks, and therefore informs very little about the appropriate mitigations against future events.

Basic statistics and logic teaches us this.

timschmidtOP5mo ago

> I believe that the specific cause of a previous outbreak does not significantly change the probability distribution of future outbreaks

If humans didn't learn and adapt, that may be true. And in that scenario we would all be suffering from cholera, still drinking from the community well John Snow identified in 1854.

Thankfully, he performed a root cause analysis, made his famous map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology#/media/File:Snow-... identified the well as the source of the outbreak, and we all changed our behavior in accordance.

And the probability of another cholera outbreak is much lower. But further! The probability of other water born illness outbreaks is also reduced.

You're so knowledgeable, surely you know all this already.

estearum5mo ago

Good guess! I did know this.

Note that he didn't need to identify which specific bacteria was causing the infections. He needed to know which well to remediate and that chlorine would remediate it.

If he decided not to chlorinate the well in order to fully decide which specific bacteria was causing cholera, that would have been stupid.

The additional information would not have been worth the cost of acquiring it.

It would not have changed anything about the correct remediations and it would have incurred significant cost to acquire that information.

Great analogy, to my point :)

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estearum5mo ago

Basic statistics and logic teaches us this.

timschmidtOP5mo ago

> I believe that the specific cause of a previous outbreak does not significantly change the probability distribution of future outbreaks

If humans didn't learn and adapt, that may be true. And in that scenario we would all be suffering from cholera, still drinking from the community well John Snow identified in 1854.

And the probability of another cholera outbreak is much lower. But further! The probability of other water born illness outbreaks is also reduced.

You're so knowledgeable, surely you know all this already.

estearum5mo ago

Good guess! I did know this.

Note that he didn't need to identify which specific bacteria was causing the infections. He needed to know which well to remediate and that chlorine would remediate it.

If he decided not to chlorinate the well in order to fully decide which specific bacteria was causing cholera, that would have been stupid.

The additional information would not have been worth the cost of acquiring it.

It would not have changed anything about the correct remediations and it would have incurred significant cost to acquire that information.

Great analogy, to my point :)

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse