Sjors Provoost @sjors@m.sprovoost.nl

Dutch PM just announced that he embraces the bat shit crazy plan to create herd immunity by controlled infection of the population. Because the "experts" say so.

Fortunately a combination of contact tracing and genetic forensics mean we can keep track of how many infection he caused down the pipeline, and hopefully hold him accountable.

Meanwhile Draper is still actively putting lives at risk, both through his direct actions and insane policy recommendations. But clearly getting people killed is fine by Twitter policy. As long as there are no guns involved.

I visited the bird site Kangaroo court. You get exactly 200 characters to appeal their flagging, and explain why they're idiots. Then you get an email without explanation that they deny your appeal.

Essentially they just want you to delete the tweet. There's probably no human involved in the process. No replies means you can't do a Turing test.

Weirdly enough you can just login and fill out the appeal form again. So I guess I'll just keep exchanging insults with a robot :-)

Which brings us to the S&P chart. If it was Gaussian, it should stay under the blue line. It's not even close, so it must a scarier distribution. But what's in the chart?

Well we can plough through 3 pages of Taleb's math, or check Wikipedia for (non nuclear war) MAD: "In other words, for a normal distribution, mean absolute deviation is about 0.8 times the standard deviation"

That's where the sqrt(π/2) blue line comes from. QED-ish; not a normal distribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_absolute_deviation#Mean_absolute_deviation_around_a_central_point

First thing to understand is that there's hierarchy of statistical distributions, our high school friend Gaussian being near the friendly bottom.

Unless you understand the underlying process, like in some areas of physics, you can measure all you like, but you can't prove something is in the lower left. You can however *disprove* it, often with a single observation (after you check your instruments). Falsification at work.

As you disprove friendly distributions like Gaussian, you move up.

Why the S&P 500 is not Gaussian

I'm trying to keep up with Taleb's new technical book, but I have neither his background in trading nor mathematical rigor. In a previous life I was a physicist; they are notorious for skipping math steps based on intuition, expecting mathematicians will prove their intuition correct.

I may do some out loud thinking here, starting with a TL&DR of this chart.

The book Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails is here: https://www.academia.edu/37221402/STATISTICAL_CONSEQUENCES_OF_FAT_TAILS_TECHNICAL_INCERTO_COLLECTION_

Of course the government has an official list of crucial professions, as well as vital processes: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/coronavirus-covid-19/cruciale-beroepsgroepen

You'll be relieved to know that IT is on that list, as well as "toonbankbetalingsverkeer", which is a new word to me, but I guess it means point-of-sale-payment-flow. So I'll consider myself part of that 🙂

Not that being on this list has any bearing on me.

Last count was 60 people on intensive care and a max capacity of about 1100 beds. Assuming that doubles every 4 days, it means you run out of beds in 2 weeks. But if the measures work, perhaps the new infection rate drops right before that happens, and we're clear (for now).

All bars and restaurants to be closed 30 minutes from now. Schools closed, except for children of medical staff, etc. Population is asked to keep 1.5 meter physical distance.

One recent problem is that people from Belgium were going to Dutch bars, and people from the Dutch outbreak epicenter (Brabant) were going north.

We'll know in ~2 weeks if this was actually enough. But can't really think what else you can do; I'd rather not have the army in the streets.

"Naive Probabilism" - Harry Cane

For the less mathematically inclined I recommend this essay. It may save your life, as it tells you which pundits and policy makers you should assume are dangerously incompetent.
https://www.researchers.one/article/2020-03-9

The bird site just locked my account and censored my tweet. In case anyone wants a statement (you never know):

"If Twitter apparatchiks are OK with a call to global genocide by negligence, in order to boost the stock market, but is not OK with asking someone to try their own advice first, then go fuck yourself."

Also note how I didn't say "I hope you and your family get infected", so it's not even actually a violation of their policy. But whatever, now I have time to read Talebs new book.

You can see for yourself here: http://online.swiftplayground.run