
Inspection Paradox (2015) - happy-go-lucky
https://allendowney.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-inspection-paradox-is-everywhere.html?m=1
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kmm
Another neat example is that 98% of the world's population lives in a country
larger than the median.

A more interesting deduction is that humanity is probably atypical, and larger
than the average extraterrestrial civilization. Any sentient observer is
equally likely to be any single individual, but purely on statistical grounds
it is more likely to be part of a larger group. There are further corollaries
(see the linked paper), like that the average inhabitated planet is probably
smaller than the Earth, the average alien probably has a longer lifespan, and
they are probably larger than us in size. But in my opinion, these are a bit
spurious as they hinge more on the unknown distribution of life over variables
like species diversity, surface area, gravity etc...

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.07804](https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.07804)

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dmix
Is there a website or book that digs into this topic, what an extraterrestrial
life would likely be like - to the best of our current knowledge? Or more
generally about the search and likelihood's of finding them on x timescale,
and the practical implications.

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PhantomGremlin
Overall the article is very informative. But I hit a Gell-Mann amnesia moment
very early.

The author says: _Airlines complain that they are losing money because so many
flights are nearly empty._ But airlines haven't complained about that in a
while. Here's a quick google:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/221085/passenger-load-
fa...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/221085/passenger-load-factor-of-
delta-air-lines/)

Delta had a load factor of 85.6% last year. It would be hard to find "nearly
empty" flights given that load factor. Many years ago airlines ran with 50%
load factor. Nowadays they're selling most of their middle seats, most of the
time!

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mcphage
> But I hit a Gell-Mann amnesia moment very early. [...] The author says:
> Airlines complain that they are losing money because so many flights are
> nearly empty. But airlines haven't complained about that in a while.

Is that the article being wrong, or is that just an older example? Keep in
mind the article itself is from 2015, and all of the examples presented might
not be up to date (since the author was listing ones that they've noticed over
time). That's nowhere near what Crichton described: "You read the article and
see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the
issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story
backward—reversing cause and effect."

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gowld
This is also why, even if Bitcoin blocks are mined every 10 minutes on
average, the average size of the _current waiting period between blocks_ is 20
minutes, when averaged over all moments in time.

I wonde if submitter found this blogpost after the recent discussion about
Poisson processes.

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selestify
Which discussion was that?

~~~
kingosticks
Probably
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18321062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18321062)

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Sniffnoy
Non-mobile link: [https://allendowney.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-inspection-
para...](https://allendowney.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-inspection-paradox-is-
everywhere.html)

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yonatron
The plural of "bus" is "buses".

"busses", refers to kissing.

That is all.

~~~
bronson
Nope, both spellings are fine: [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/busses](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/busses)

