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Comment by emptiestplace | Hacker News Reader

I mean, this tends to be true, but what evidence are you referring to?

The evidence relayed by the person I replied to, that as the chip was cooled the performance increased.

the singular form of evidence is not anecdote. I think it's an interesting conundrum myself. as others have pointed out, the story as it was told is not consistent with the physics and current knowledge of what things were like in those days: CPUs did not yet do thermal throttling and simply cooling a CPU from that time doesn't make it go faster.

somebody else mentioned the possibility that the cooling did something to the crystal oscillator, but I think there are another two explanations that either alone or in combination might explain what happened: unreliable narrator (OP was very young when the memory was formed) and external influence - his dad or teacher might have done the overclocking which might have been beyond his understanding and therefore notice at the time.

either way there's no reason to take anecdotes uncritically.

> the singular form of evidence is not anecdote

It is in Bayesian reasoning.

that's right, and you don't just update your posterior to match the one dodgy data point at the expense of decades of evidence.

That’s right. Did somebody investigate the same thing and had different results? Because in this thread there are only theoretical explanations why it cannot be, and not experiments. So in short, there is only one data point.

What conclusions do you believe it is reasonable to draw in light of this? Is your position significantly different from what I said:

> either way there's no reason to take anecdotes uncritically.

> Because in this thread there are only theoretical explanations why it cannot be

No, the explanations are referring to the mountain of evidence based on the physics of the chips and the known characteristics of the chips of the time. That's not theoretical, that past observations.

Show me those observations. Without that your word is just another anecdote.

what would you accept as evidence? does it need to be certified by a notary public?

You know well that a single study about the temperature response of the given CPU is enough.

Those CPUs can fly. Now you have to show me a single study about the flight response of the given CPU.

The logic which you apply here caused several decades and centuries of scientific delays for no good reason.

that's right, we should have been throwing CPUs off a cliff several decades and centuries ago.

Trolling on HN might be one of the stupidest things I've witnessed in a while.

Alright, that's an interestingly chill take on 'evidence'.

Never has someone described my personal epistemology so succinctly!

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