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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Is it also not somewhat equally likely someone who wanted to remain unknown to mask their own lexicon so as to make it harder to detect who the real author(s) were?

If someone were to do something like this, would it not be in their interest to assume someone else's lexicon or, at least, coopt the lexicon of others in general to throw of the lexicographic 'scent'?

In other words we can't only make the presumption that this is the author(s)' natural language.

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At the end of the article the author discusses this, quoting this tweet: https://twitter.com/dmimno/status/1037490608015925248

"Now might be a good time to remind everyone that “distinctive phrases” and rare words (high TF-IDF) are not as good for stylometry as subtle differences like “and” vs “the” ratios. If you can easily notice it, someone can easily spoof it."

Then again stylometry would be the thing you'd expect to change most between a tweet and an article published with style checkers and editors.

Is "'and' vs 'the'" ratios an actual thing? I tried searching for it, but as you can imagine "and vs the" does not return any useful results on google or ddg.

here's a shout-out for stylometry:

https://books.google.com/books/about/To_Couple_is_the_Custom...

(obviously, biassed since I'm related)

fails Occam's razor

This is another abuse of pre-packaged logic which I see regularly. Occam's razor dictates that when there are competing hypotheses - the one that makes the least number of assumptions tends to be true.

This doesn't mean "automatically assume the simplest explanation is gospel truth, and if someone suggests otherwise, simply say the magic words 'Occams Razor' to them".

Maybe this occurred. Maybe it didn't. But dismissing it with what's essentially a prepackaged argument adds very little to the conversation.

If I were to leak info, I certainly would try to hide my way of writing. Not sure how to do it effectively. Possibly run it through Google translate and back a few times. Then patch it up to make it readable?

It seems easier, although maybe riskier, to have a trusted friend (or even your attorney) ghostwrite it for you. That would also avoid reintroducing your idiosyncrasies during the "patch it up" step.

If it were me, I'd make an outline and have my spouse write it (assuming I had a good relationship with my spouse).

Another obvious choice would be someone at the New York Times. Even if we could figure out who then all we'd have discovered is dubious proof on someone who might know the identity of the source, which isn't terribly useful.

Occam's razor does not necessarily apply in cases where there is an intelligent agent actively trying to deceive you, by means including but not limited to taking advantage of your application of Occam's razor.

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