- The Flawed Reasoning Behind the Replication Crisis – Issue 74: Networks – Nautilus
The problem, though, is the dominant mode of statistical analysis these days isn’t Bayesian. Since the 1920s, the standard approach to judging scientific theories has been significance testing, made popular by the statistician Ronald Fisher. Fisher’s methods and their latter-day spinoffs are now the lingua franca of scientific data analysis. In particular, Google Scholar currently returns 2.85 million citations including the phrase “statistically significant.” Fisher claimed signficance testing was a universal tool for scientific inference, “common to all experimentation,” a claim that seems borne out by its widespread use across all disciplines. - The Real Reason Why Instagram Is Hiding “Like” Counts – The Realists
Typically when opening up a news or photo feed, one’s eyes tend to be drawn to numbers first. If a post has many likes, we tend to give more importance to it, to think of it as more worthy of our attention. If that number is hidden, we are more inclined to read a full post or study a photo more carefully. And I think that this ultimately drives users to spend more time on these platforms. Even two extra seconds spent examining a photo or a post can have a powerful cumulative effect, especially when it comes to investor reports (“users’ average time spent on the app increased this quarter!”).–interesting to watch the social media manipulation stuff go back and forth . . .
- I tried to get rich dropshipping cheap crap to Coachella kids | The Outline
Instead of the old middleman, you have Scott Hilse, 23-year-old YouTuber and digital marketing genius. Hilse has built multiple successful dropshipping stores, and he also offers a paid online class and mentorship program for aspiring dropshippers. “I have this saying: ‘location-neutral income automation’,” he told me. “And you can’t get more location-neutral income automation than dropshipping.” - xkcd: Icon Swap
“Someone’s probably working on an eBook app where, if you stop reading right before some plot twist happens, the app will wait a while and then send you a breaking news alert about what’s happening, prompting you to open it and read the next few pages to learn more.” - The Internet is Great, We’re Just Not Using it Right | NewMusicBox
We don’t need digital detox. Or more accurately, we do need a detox, but we have misidentified the toxin. Interacting online is not inherently poisonous, and online interactions are no less meaningful than talking face to face. Different, yes, but just as valuable. If we experience problems relating to each other online, I believe it’s because we’re doing it wrong.To my mind, there are two main challenges facing us in our interactions and communities on the internet: The first is the overwhelming amount of choice. The second is the ubiquity and malignancy of the big social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter). We can solve the choice problem. And we can abandon — note that I say abandon, not reform or regulate — the social media platforms which dominate and poison our online experience. Then we can begin reclaiming better ways to interact online and building new ones, as I will discuss in the next two posts. If we do these things, I think the internet can be a much happier place.
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So for me, and I believe for many, the internet is drastically happier when we stay off social media. It’s important to know what’s a toxin and what’s a carrier. When possible we don’t dispense with contaminated water, we root out the contaminant. We refresh the stream. I recently left all mainstream social media, and I know many others who have left. I am hoping for a mass exodus.
–h/t @timklapdor
- Richard Gaisford on Twitter: “One witness, part of a group involved in the trouble, explained to staff that things kicked off when another passenger appeared dressed as a clown. This upset one of their party because they’d specifically booked a cruise w
One witness, part of a group involved in the trouble, explained to staff that things kicked off when another passenger appeared dressed as a clown. This upset one of their party because they’d specifically booked a cruise with no fancy dress. It led to a violent confrontation.