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The "getting bonked on the head a lot might be killing us" narrative has progressed rapidly in the past 20 years, fwiw, and you'd think we would have noticed it earlier given it is visually evident postmortem and doesn't depend on technology

I refer you to BMJ 2018;363:k5094, "Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial"

Conclusion: "Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention."

It's hard to scientifically prove some things!


Spoiler: the aircraft never took off.

I’m not sure that they are as clever as they think they are. Maybe I’m not academic enough for the joke.

https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094


The whole point of the study is to show the limitations of a Randomized Controlled trial.

This study shows the difficulty in studying the effectiveness of entrenched practices, especially when there is good reason to suspect that not using the practice will result in extremely significant harm at high probability. Here we have a study with enormous self-selection bias.

They did ask candidates mid-flight in commercial aircraft if they would be willing to participate at their current altitude and speed, and obviously all declined. On the other hand a number of candidates found on private planes that were not moving were willing to participate.

This study also shows how statistical techniques can be misused, as here in a study where the adverse results in question occurred in literally zero participants of the control group is obviously worthless, but one can still run the stats to conclude no statistically significant difference was detected.

Lastly it brings up questions about best available evidence. Many researchers tend to automatically assume that an RCT is better than other evidence. Now if they read the study closely and notice flaws they often change their mind, but if they just skim the abstract they can miss this. This is an example of a case where the only available RCT is total garbage, and we have far better evidence in the form of accident statistics from skydivers. Accidents where no chute was packed, or the chute (and any backups) completely fail to deploy are a very good proxy in practice for jumping without one at all.


mammals are x86, birds are ARM

And birds are at 2nm process nodes while mammals are 22nm

fr Nathaniel Hawthorne is immensely relevant in the present day


I'm taking an introductory economics course right now, and was surprised to find out that even hardcover books are a form of price discrimination: The manufacturing costs aren't significantly higher than paperback, but "enthusiasts" will buy them at inflated prices. I'm starting to think that like 80% of product diversity is really just pricing discrimination in disguise.


> 80% of product diversity is really just pricing discrimination in disguise

Very good and yes: Think of it from the manufacturer / seller perspective. Why shouldn't it be? If the goal it to optimize profit or return (and it is), then anything less would be a waste of opportunity. Even kickstarters go to great effort to think up ways to "justify" "bonus offers".

This is often one of the great failures of new ventures not to try and offer versions or features that SOME customers would love to pay for.

Except not pricing discimination in that these prices apply to everyone (who doesn't know the discount code). Just "differentiation" and "price point". Offering a different price to someone who "calls" from San Francisco, Kansas City or Mumbai is a different issue, and less palatable.


> Offering a different price to someone who "calls" from San Francisco, Kansas City or Mumbai is a different issue, and less palatable.

The interesting thing about this statement is that expecting a fixed price for anything is a relatively new phenomenon. It isn't very long ago that the price for pretty much everything was individually negotiated in some physical market, and nobody expected to pay the same price as everyone else.


That's a good point. Anyone has experience with haggling over the web or email - for stuff that's listed on web sites? Besides stuff that's deliberately not priced on the web like enterprise software?


Often the hardcover version comes out well in advance of the paperback, so if you want the book as soon as it comes out, you have to pay the premium for the perceived "premium product". Only later does the paperback come out at a lower cost, while the hardcover retains its higher cost -- I'm not sure if it drops a bit when the paperback comes out or not.

This is a lot like back in the movie rental days. The VHS cassette for a new release would be $120 or something, and only a few months later could you buy it at the grocery store checkout for $25.


I remember when I was looking for new cookware a while ago, there were rumors that Kitchenaid was selling rebranded Demeyere pots and pans. It sure looked like the exact same cookware in the photos. But Zwilling is known to disguise the same pan in 30 different ways, and for anyone willing to trade the "Demeyere" label for a "Kitchenaid" label, they were getting a steal of a deal.


A lot of luxury products are like this. For example a lot of wine on shelves are literally the same wine under different labels and price points.


Have a source for this?

It's certainly plausible, but I'm not going to just accept it.


Is that really price discrimination?

“Enthusiasts” might have legitimate reasons for preferring hardcover (durability, aesthetics, etc) and are willingly and knowingly paying extra for that.

How much it cost to manufacture is mostly irrelevant.


Coming from the hardware world, wait until you learn about e-fusing chips to lower tier products!

I've worked at a place where there was exactly one chip and ~8 ways to disable different things to make the whole product family, with nearly 2x difference in cost between low and high. This is usually done by disabling bad sections of the chip, but if yields are too high, you just disable functioning bits of good chips. Our yields were great. :-|


American publishers tend to give one a choice: hardbacks, more expensive, clumsier, but made for heavy duty; paperbacks, less expensive, handier, but not holding up as well under wear. And in general the first year of publication one can buy only the hardback--which is why I don't like book clubs that want to read only new books.


I've sometimes found library editions which are a middle compromise - cheaper than hardcover but higher quality that paperback.


Or just buy the ebook and save the paper, transportation, and shelf space.


Assuming you can in fact buy it DRM-free. Otherwise it is just an indefinite-term rental.


> I'm starting to think that like 80% of product diversity is really just pricing discrimination in disguise.

I think the term used for this practice is "market-segmentation".


Autostereogramming it doesn't help me lol

If it's perfect, the overlapping regions just merge in color, i.e. the cat's paw becomes off-white. If it's not perfect, I still have to attend to which parts are popping in and out. In both cases I still have to compare the merged view to the left and right hand sides.

Although it is very nice for illustrating each eye's contributions to the merged view. Just not an attention-saver.


Consider the liability to which a bad security guard can expose your organization! Not that pay guarantees quality but still


Closer proximity to all the different vibration sensors in the skin helps with sensitivity as the bulk skin mass kind of acts as a low pass filter -- Consider the sensitivity with which you feel a splinter vs the sensitivity of that object on the skin surface.

Also, some people just seem to have a fetish for poking metal bits into themselves.

Maybe it's good for first dates or something, "wanna feel the lumps in my hand" is a bit more intimate than "wanna feel my glove"


Wearing magnetic gloves to a first date is a great way to not get a second one for sure.


You know if you take a metal plate bolted down at it's center, throw some salt on it and bow the edge with a violin bow. It makes stable patterns depending on the frequency of the tone playing

Now take this plate and turn it into a 3d sphere and that's spherical harmonica more or less. Electronsike to form them


An underappreciated feature of nonmonogamy is that it makes ethical conflicts of interest a bit more challenging. This article doesn't discuss that explicitly, but does hint at it in some of the quotes


How so?


It’s hard enough when there are clear roles/responsibilities/expectations. Divorces (which assume monogamy) are notorious for getting incredibly ugly.

Look at how few people can even agree what open/enm/poly even means in this discussion.

Then add more parties with more emotions and more abilities to act out…. More degrees of freedom means harder to predict.

And then also add in that Society is going to have an even harder time holding anyone accountable for anything in these kinds of situations - he said/she said is hard enough, what about when it’s he said/she said/he said/she said/they said?

Just give up and throw everyone in jail? Or no one?


It's completely rational just inverted -- Our understanding of biology is based on testing hypotheses of how drugs work, mostly. Some of the best practical understanding comes from "phase 4 clinical trials" i.e. those performed informally by the market


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