Newmark's Door

As I've noted it's an interesting time to be a cosmologist.

Noting that there are a whole lot of worse things to spend government money on, I'd agree.

From a Twitter account that is "A Compendium of [prize-winning physicist David Deutsch's] explanations". This post, arguing what we should do about global warming is, in my opinion, really excellent. A key excerpt:

Hence, we need a stance of problem fixing, not just problem avoidance. It's true that an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure, but that's only if we know what to prevent. If you've been punched on the nose, then the science of medicine does not consist of teaching you how to avoid punches.

If medical science stopped seeking cures and concentrated on prevention only, then it would achieve very little of either.

I think the most important aspect of this article is found in a pull quote:

It’s embarrassing how few protections we have against fraud and how easy it has been to fool us.

I've written this here before: modern cosmology seems pretty weird.

No surprise: 36 years ago two of my former colleagues in the NC State economics department reported this result.

"Recently, though, the tables have turned. Now insights and intuitions from physics are unexpectedly leading to breakthroughs in mathematics."

What would we do without scientists?

If this finding holds up it will be a relief to some parents.

Counterfactual causal inference, bootstrapping, and more.