glaugh

Fwiw, I have had some discussions on FB that seemed to improve with some of these strategies.

This goes a bit against the spirit of the thing, but a side-effect seems to be that if one is using these tools in a public forum like FB (which of course goes against this article's advice), one does come off as more reasonable to anyone in the audience who is undecided. (I think...)

(Putting this in a separate comment because it’s a bit meta, and not about the dataset itself)

This “here’s an interesting dataset to play with” approach might ring a bell with some folks here. Statwing was a YC S12 company, and we were acquired by Qualtrics in 2016. We used to try to find interesting datasets and stick them into Statwing, like the Stack Overflow survey of software developers discussed on this HN thread[1].

It’s 2020, and @lejohnq and I (and a team of other socially-minded engineers) are still working on Statwing (now called Stats iQ). We were looking for a way that we could do something (anything!) useful to help with COVID-19, and realized that we could apply that old approach to interesting public health-related questions.

So, yes, there is an element of “we hope people play with Stats iQ, like it, and then sign up to use it professionally on their data or want to work with us (we’re hiring)” But I can assure you that we personally stand almost nothing to gain financially from this, and that the primary reason we care about ROI on this is so we can justify doing more work like this in the future.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7874289

There was a lot of discussion in the early days of the pandemic about “immunity passports” (also called “immunity certificates”), which would allow individuals who had recovered from COVID-19 to live with fewer restrictions than others. Some proposals were limited to more high-risk situations--for example, an eldercare facility might require immunity certificates for its employees.[1]

That conversation was derailed because it was initially unclear whether recovering actually yielded immunity from further disease and infection[2]. The scientific consensus is now that at least some degree of immunity will be conferred[3], so this conversation could re-emerge, as in a report produced by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and backed by former UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt[4]

Assuming that the various technical and scientific hurdles could be overcome, there would still be one fuzzier objection---that such passports would create a perverse incentive for some folks to intentionally seek out infection so as to obtain these privileges.

We wondered if that objection was well-founded. So we surveyed 1,000 Americans, asking them whether they’d seek out infection in order to be granted certain privileges, like the ability to attend large gatherings or be employed at an eldercare facility.

A quick report of a few findings is in this footnote[5]. But, at least to me, just as interesting as the top-level finding is the why, the correlates of that willingness.

We put the data into Stats iQ (formerly Statwing, YC S12), an easy-to-use, cloud-based statistical analysis tool, so anyone can analyze it. It’s a fascinating dataset, and it contains some interesting findings that we didn’t actually set out to learn about (e.g., it turns out that about as many people were happy as sad to have been stuck at home for a few months, and that sentiment was associated with gender and parenthood).

We hope you find it to be as interesting as we have, even if some of the findings are, frankly, a bit dark.

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765836 [2] https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-p... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/health/coronavirus-immuni... [4] https://institute.global/policy/taking-uk-testing-strategy-n... (The report advocates for health passports generally, in which antibody testing would supplement mass testing generally) [5] https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/americans-seek-covid-infectio...

Sure, maybe not as good as Wu’s, but still pretty freaking cool. I’d be proud if I made these.

Especially if you've witnessed the absolutely extraordinary beauty of a total eclipse, imagine living in ancient times, believing in active and utilitarian gods, and witnessing a total solar eclipse during a battle

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Eclipse

This may or may not have actually happened, but I'm not sure that changes the fun of thinking through what that would feel like. At the very least, it would have been the case that many folks witnessed an extraordinary event that their friend, a few miles away and outside the path of totality, would not have seen.

Abbott Labs FP rate was stated as 0.02%

https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/15/fda-says-abbotts-5-minut...

Can you add a citation for the false positives number?

The Abbott Labs test false positive rate was 0.02%, which seems totally acceptable to me

https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/15/fda-says-abbotts-5-minut...

On the other side of the equation, Mina’s point (see paper in my other comment) is that with frequent enough testing, the math of the epidemiology indicates that the sensitivity does not need to be terribly high to have a huge impact on the trajectory of the pandemic

Edit: I see now that you were talking about antibodies, not antigens, sorry

Paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.22.20136309v...

Op ed: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/coronavirus-tests...

This isn’t like PCR testing. It’s closer to insulin testing, in terms of the expense and difficulty of creation of the tests (and the means of interpreting the results). 350M is well within the range of possibility.

And the reward to having a reopened economy and significantly reduced death toll could justify very large investment.

“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.”

Hemingway

Lots of good answers here. And I think there’s reason to be skeptical.

One concrete thing I’ve taken out of it is greater empathy for my kids’ lived experience. Alison Gopnik at Berkeley talks about how fmri studies suggest that the increased connectivity between different regions of the brain on psychedelics shows some similarities to children’s brains at all times.

I can sense in my kids, particularly the one with some sensory processing issues, just how overwhelming certain situations can be by analogizing to my experiences with psychedelics. I look at her and think, yeah, I wouldn’t be able to handle this birthday party either if my brain was in that state.

Few random thoughts:

1. Most people’s answers to questions like this tend towards “Here’s what I did, you should do it, too”

2. If you want to have a family in your 30s, you might feel a strong pull to optimize for money then. So optimize for learning and fun and risk in your 20s.

3. Working at (effective) larger organizations is nice training of best practices, process, communication, and professionalism

4. Working at a larger organization yields a big network that you can pull on for the rest of your career for interesting opportunities

5. Working at small startups is nice training for hustling, getting stuff done, and learning a lot by dint of doing a lot

6. Doing your own startup is #4, only moreso.

7. The best financial return is generally a pre-IPO that looks very likely to go public or reach liquidity soon. They tend to pay closer to market salaries and hand out equity relatively generously (ymmv)

Coronavirus have “proofreading” functions that make them less likely to mutate meaningfully than many other kinds of viruses.

While it’s true that viruses often mutate to become less potent over time (bc that makes them less detectable and therefore more likely to spread, an evolutionary advantage), any claims that this is happening should require very strong evidence to be believed. This isn’t even weak evidence.

Most of the above is googleable. I don’t have direct citations because most of my understanding comes from the excellent This Week in Virology podcast where various virologists chat about such issues. They’re quite dismissive of the frequent “The virus is mutating” stories (though of course all viruses mutate in small, unimportant ways all the time)

Similarly:

“Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet.”

Douglas Adams

Cool idea. Just to explore it further, I think it’d be interesting to create a model that included a couple other major factors, like when the comment was posted relative to the front-paging of the article and where the parent comment fell on the page (this comment is responding to the top comment, which will help it a lot).

I guess I’m not aware of an analysis with this goal (who and what types of comments engender more conversation) anywhere else, and actually doing it would probably be pretty fascinating. Again, cool idea.

Interesting. More splitting the baby than splitting the difference

And while neither effect was found to be stat sig, the “treat earlier” group was close to stat sig (eyeballing it, it probably would have been stat sig at 90% confidence) so that’s good enough reason to try again with a larger sample size. If the effect stayed roughly similar, a larger N would lead to a smaller confidence interval that would not include a non-effect if an odds ratio of 1, and therefore be stat sig evidence of benefit.

Edit: Also it looks like they didn’t find an effect overall, but if they slice the data to just those who were treated early, they’re closer to having something stat sig. Hopefully that was a pre-planned cut of the data, but either way the interpretation is still probably “Somewhat promising but needs more data.”

My understanding is that they closed plants of their own volition because so many people were getting sick.

What the government can do is (1) find and prioritize personal protective equipment for food processing and (2) do a better job on enabling mass testing, again prioritizing the food supply chain.

Lobbying the government is more powerful when backed up with the popular pressure that will come from this ad and associated media coverage.

It’s a relatively generous interpretation, and I’m not commenting on the wisdom of it or what it seeks to induce, but it seems plausible to me.

I think the logic is less “Give money so the pitchfork folks won’t come after you personally” and more “Give money so there’s no need for a revolution”

This is a nicely crafted example.

Human communication is so densely laden with nuance and context and subtext that it takes soooo much work and a dose of generosity to have a real conversation that doesn’t spin off into something useless.

In a technical context you can define things clearly, but in a political context it’s just too hard, there are so many things that mean different things to different people.

My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. I think it sometimes works. But it’s a ton of conversational work with unclear payoffs.

I don’t see how we’re not doomed to usually have largely fruitless conversation in the current climate. I don’t like the approach, but I understand why people move towards a “screw convincing them, let’s rally the base.” Bit of a prisoner’s dilemma there, I think, where the whole country is left impoverished by the individually rational approach to rallying the base

The thing I find most exciting about this is volunteering to volunteer software engineering capacity to NY. I hope you’re able to source more opportunities like that.

I have a hypothesis that a lot of young software developers would love to do something like the US Digital Service[1] if they could do it remotely. Some of the young software engineers I work with make enough money in a couple years to take a couple years off (which they then proceed to do) but they are also seeking a bit more meaning than that life can maybe provide.

I dream of helping states create their own USDSs. If anyone has any feedback on this hypothesis, I’d be curious to hear it.

[1] https://www.usds.gov/

Whenever I see the IHME charts[1] (which are great) I think “I wish I could see the what the model predicted before today’s date so I can assess it.”

This shows laudable transparency, in my view.

(Also the model was directionally correct, it’s not like it was entirely the wrong shape.)

[1] https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/cali...

A semi-random example to prove the point: https://www.nuclearphynance.com/Show%20Post.aspx?PostIDKey=1...

I found this to be a useful summary of similar research: https://examine.com/nutrition/supplements-for-cold-and-flu/

I’ve had dailies for a long time and now really love acuvue moist. Way less dry. if the delta between weeklies and dailies is 1, moving to acuvue moist has been another 0.3 or so

One day I walked into our company’s swag closet and grabbed 10 identical company shirts that are kinda subtle about the branding and just look like some band t-shirt. I’m a couple years into wearing only these to work (plus two pairs of jeans and two pairs of shorts) and it is indeed one less thing to think about. Occasionally people notice and it’s kind of a fun conversation, and that’s about the only consequence of it.

Most of the effects of administering testosterone (at least to men with clinically low levels) take weeks or months to appear. For example, interest in sex takes 3+ weeks to increase.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188848/

And much of the impact of testosterone happens in utero (Young boys and girls have similar levels; behavioral differences are driven by in utero exposure.)

This study seems to test a very narrow area where testosterone could influence empathy

Not really disagreeing with the main thrust of your comment, but there’s also some selection bias at work. Uncontacted tribes will tend to live in the least productive spaces, since more productive spaces would have already been colonized by modern society.

I think this insight comes from Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday, but I’m forgetting.

I think spenrose is saying “We shouldn’t be upvoting this” or maybe “I hope newspapers don’t report on this like it’s a clear, solid answer”, not “This paper is flawed in ways that the authors didn’t recognize”.

Personally I’m fine with this being on HN because I think this audience understands issues around low N (and commentators do a good job of pointing them out), but I agree that it would be problematic if this were picked up by the New York Times or something.

Your comment is the only one I’ve seen cite data so far. I couldn’t quickly find that study. Can you cite it?

I did find this reference to a more qualitative but I think still useful study: https://www.foodnavigator-latam.com/Article/2019/02/20/Chile...

This reminded me of the delightful David Foster Wallace bit:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”