Read this contentious New Yorker interview with the lawyer who wrote the coronavirus paper Trump embraces

[anon61221983]

@armozel

It seems folks like Epstein want to wag their tongues and other things to prove themselves ‘relevant’ or otherwise insightful.

It’s not about coming to a better understanding of reality, it’s a competition to show who is the most clever boy in their mind.

[Melizmatic]

You ought to see all the stuff that I refrain from posting here sometime…

[anon62122146]

@anon55609254

There was no knowledge of infection rates or anything like that, just pure regression on data freely available

Yeah. I did a few regressions like that’s to get county-by-county data, and they’re all straight lines on the log plot still.

My point was, you , and me, despite not being epidemiologists, can read an article by an epidemiologist, which says that they expect this to be exponential, and, if we want to do some checks on local conditions, we can download a publicly available dataset, and the first thing we do is do fit it to the form suggested by epidemiologists to check how things are going. This is the work of a few minutes, and makes it abundantly clear that we are in a regime of exponential growth.

This guy, on OTOH, clearly did not even download a dataset and look at the data before spouting this shit. This means that he doesn’t even understand that looking at data is necessary to make quantitative assessments.

The fact that someone this utterly useless and incompetent is apparently a well respected lawyer, and some kind of fancy law professor, tells you everything you need to know about the legal profession.

[anon55609254]

You put it in a nutshell. I don’t think Epstein understands the first thing about mathematical models. Am I right in that he seems to both understate and overstate their utility in the same article?

[GagHalfrunt]

@anonotwit

This is where 90% of your cranks come from. Oh, that problem in your field? I can solve that with my mighty brain without any knowledge of your field or the fact that anybody who’s gotten through the 102 course knows that’s not gonna work.

Physicists are notorious for doing this.

Elon Musks are also notorious for it.

[SheiffFatman]

@anon62122146

The fact that someone this utterly useless and incompetent is apparently a well respected lawyer, and some kind of fancy law professor, tells you everything you need to know about the legal profession.

To be fair, it’s not unheard of for scientists and engineers to get into heated arguments with lawyers about questions of law.

Very crudely, experts of all stripes can be divided according to which of the following propositions they hold:

• “The fact that I am an expert in my field means that I am an expert in my field, no more and no less.”

• “The fact that I am an expert in my field means that I am a genius whose opinions in any field that catches my eye are worthy of respect.”

[RickMycroft]

@armozel

It seems folks like Epstein want to wag their tongues and other things to prove themselves ‘relevant’ or otherwise insightful.

The fact that several people at the Hoover Institution all came out with similar stuff at the same time doesn’t seem like a coincidence. This seems like a commissioned project, so that it could be dropped in places like the Federalist, so that it could be brought to Trump’s attention. So that it could kill people for money.

[anon29537550]

@SheiffFatman

@anon62122146

The fact that someone this utterly useless and incompetent is apparently a well respected lawyer, and some kind of fancy law professor, tells you everything you need to know about the legal profession.

Very crudely, experts of all stripes can be divided according to which of the following propositions they hold:

• “The fact that I am an expert in my field means that I am an expert in my field, no more and no less.”

• “The fact that I am an expert in my field means that I am a genius whose opinions in any field that catches my eye are worthy of respect.”

Sadly, the former seems to be less common than the latter. Humility is a characteristic that seems to be actively discouraged on our society. I am as guilty as any of thinking “I am well educated and intelligent, if I put in some effort I can probably figure this out better than most.” But this is a very different thing from assuming I know more than the experts who have spent their professional lives studying whatever their field is. (e.g., being an effective game show host does not qualify one to be President of the United States)

[kennykb]

@SheiffFatman

• “The fact that I am an expert in my field means that I am an expert in my field, no more and no less.”

I guess I might be of this type. I’ve many times said to a customer something like, “That question is really outside my professional competence. I’ll be happy to refer you to an engineer who specializes in that area, or subcontract one.”

[smulder]

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