Hamartiogonic

Then there’s also the flat-earther style: “We applied a flawed model and flawed methodology to standard circumstances and got the results we wanted!”

I guess we need a new comic to address all the different kinds of pseudo-science.

The universe seems pretty infinite when viewed with our current tools and from our perspective. I would still argue that we can’t really be sure just yet. However, we can say it’s effectively infinite just like a lot of things in physics are effectively massless, effectively frictionless etc. You totally can make your calculations work really well even though your model cuts some corners here and there.

In many cases, you can even assume the Earth is flat and simple maths still works well enough. However, when you zoom out and start doing more complex calculations, you run into trouble and need to upgrade to a more sophisticated model. I would argue that the current assumption of the universe being infinite can fall into the same category.

If we can’t find the cosmic frame of reference, then how do we know it even exists? Sure, you can assume it exists, and call that a hypothesis. If only someone had a way to test that hypothesis.

Good point. Sounds like it would be a good idea to replace the RNG chip with a weather station. This way, sunshine, wind, rain, temperature and other conditions control the frequency of the motor. Anyone who can predict that deserves a Nobel Price.

Add a long pipe labyrinth so narrow it will cause turbulence and loose an unpredictable amount of energy that way. The mathematician who can predict how that mess works out gets a noble prize and a pack of drill bits.

Build a bund wall, and throw a pump in there as well. Then, just pump the liquid back into the tank to keep it full at all times. In order to deter mathematically inclined terrorists, use a variable frequency drive and make that frequency change every second. The problem becomes unsolvable.

There are other options too. You could fill the tank with tar, any really thick slurry, molten sodium, hydrogen sulfide, 2-mercaptoethanol, propane just to name a few. Drill into a tank like that and you’ll regret that decision instantly.

The idea of modern medicine is to sell chemical compounds that actually have an effect. It’s a philosophical and ethical thing. All products have a unique psychological effect that gets intertwined with their biochemical effect. If you can’t study them individually, it’s impossible to tell if the biochemical effect even exists at all. If your medicine relies heavily, or even entirely, on the psychological side, it’s no different than homeopathy. The idea of modern medicine is to be better than the old stuff that preceded it.

I prefer to think of this as an equation like this: Pm+Bm=Pp+Bp

Pm=psychological effect, medicine

Bm=biochemical effect, medicine

Pp=psychological effect, placebo = surprisingly big

Bp=biochemical effect, placebo = 0

If these sides are equivalent, the medicine is just as effective as placebo. If the medicine side is bigger, you’ll want to know how much of it comes from the P and B terms. In order to figure that out, you would need to know some values. Normally, you can just assume that Pm=Pp, but if you can’t assume that, it you’re left with two unknowns in that equation. In this case, you really can’t assume them to be equal, which means that your data won’t allow you to figure out how much of the total effect comes from psychological and biochemical effects. It could be 50/50, 10/90, who knows. That sort of uncertainty is a serious problem, because of the philosophical and ethical side of developing medicine.

Statistical tests are very picky. They have been designed by mathematicians in a mathematical ideal vacuum void of all reality. The method works in those ideal conditions, but when you take that method and apply it in messy reality where everything is flawed, you may run into some trouble. In simple cases, it’s easy to abide by the assumptions of the statistical test, but as your experiment gets more and more complicated, there are more and more potholes for you to dodge. Best case scenario is, your messy data is just barely clean enough that you can be reasonably sure the statistical test still works well enough and you can sort of trust the result up to a certain point.

However, when you know for a fact that some of the underlying assumptions of the statistical test are clearly being violated, all bets are off. Sure, you get a result, but who in their right mind would ever trust that result?

If the test says that the medicine is works, there’s clearly financial incentive to believe it and start selling those pills. If it says that the medicine is no better than placebo, there’s similar incentive to reject the test result and demand more experiments. Most of that debate goes out the window if you can be reasonably sure that the data is good enough and the result of your statistical test is reliable enough.

Yeah, that’s the thing with placebo. It’s surprisingly effective, and separating the psychological effect from actual chemistry can be very tricky. If most participants can correctly identify if they’re bing fed the real drug or a placebo, it makes it impossible to figure out how much each effect contributes to the end result. Ideally, you would only use effective medicine that does not need the placebo effect to actually work.

Imagine, if all medicine had lots of placebo effect in them. How would you treat patients who are in a coma or otherwise unconscious?

Also: What You Drink Is What You Pee, or WYDIWYP.

People have been reviving old hardware with Linux for decades now. Next step is to revive old organs too. If your kidneys aren’t good enough for their original purpose anymore, perhaps you can run Linux on them and give them a second life.

I’ve seen a bunch of Terminator style movies where an AI slices, dices, scorches and/or nukes humanity to oblivion long before climate change gets us. I have it on good authority that we don’t need worry about the temperature change.