Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · Aug 30

Those differences are not all "rewards", i.e. causal effects. Economists these days are supposed to be more into finding methods of doing causal inference. (This is aside from the issue of allowing for costs in time and $.)

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · Aug 30

The genome level. That's all part of standard evolutionary models. It's part of why incremental additive fitness gets selected for more readily than incremental fitness from interactions- the latter can get lost pretty quickly, especially if the interactions are between distant genes.

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · Aug 30

Genomes are pretty stable. The basic rules of evolution by differential reproductive rates do not depend on semantics.

Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media

Reposted by Michael Weissman

Nigel Goldenfeld @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · Aug 29

Very few PhD students finish within 4 years. But international students will need to do that if US proposed visa rules change go through.

Sound reasonable to you?

Fed register is accepting comments for next month. Details at the link & comment button

www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Unlike most nonimmigrant classifications, which are admitted for a fixed time period, aliens in the F (academic student), J (exchange visitor), and most I (representatives of foreign information media...

www.federalregister.gov

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Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · Jun 30

As you say, RFK is a liar (and a lunatic). Just saying so will not convince people who sort of like him. Why believe us rather than him? A mixed strategy including careful factual work makes sense. Science can be better than competing authoritarian cults.

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Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · Jun 20

My guess would be a small mammal that eats low-calorie foods, due to surface/volume scaling setting metabolic rates.

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · Jun 18

With troops being employed for domestic suppression and war looming, I briefly escaped into nostalgic family memories.
michaelweissman.substack.com/p/more-stori...

More stories from my dad

focus on Los Alamos.

College alumni join forces

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Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · Jun 10

College alumni join forces
open.substack.com/pub/lastpaig...

Fighting fascism with a unified voice

open.substack.com

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · Jun 10

This sounds like a useful advance. Major advances (nasal vax, t-cell stimulating vax targeting conserved epitopes,..) are going to be slowed by Trump's attacks on public health.

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · Jun 4

This is urgent. We have until noon Sat. to get 10 k alumni signers for this amicus brief. Harvard may suck, but this is where the front lines are in the defense against Trump's attacks on science and education. Please sign if you're eligible. and circulate!
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Harvard Alumni Amicus Brief Sign On

This is the sign-on form for an amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief from Harvard alumni. The brief will be filed in support of Harvard, in its lawsuit challenging the U.S. government's unlawf...

docs.google.com

Open Letter to Scott Alexander

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · May 27

There was more interest than I expected in this niche substack answering Scott Alexander on Covid origins. It may be more generally useful for its brief discussion of how hierarchical Bayes is needed in messy practical problems.
michaelweissman.substack.com/p/open-lette...

It's ok to change your mind

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · May 26

The other side is indeed overt fascism, which is why it's necessary to tack to win support. Probably left on some economic issues and right on some social issues. The econ-right, social-left quadrant is almost unpopulated except for big donors.

Open Letter to Scott Alexander

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · May 26

Why does it matter now? Partly to avoid dragging credibility down on the public health issues by tying it to the weak zoo story. I try to explain here.
michaelweissman.substack.com/p/open-lette...

It's ok to change your mind

An Inconvenient Probability v5.11

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Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · May 26

Your criticisms of Immerwahr on the response to Covid mostly look on target. Unfortunately, he's closer to being right on the origin question. There's a reason groups like the French Academy of Medicine are now leaning toward lab leak. michaelweissman.substack.com/p/an-inconve...

Bayesian analysis of the probable origins of Covid. Quantifying "friggin' likely"

Restoring Gold Standard Science

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Reposted by Michael Weissman

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · May 24

tl;dr — this EO co-opts the language of open science to implement a system of political control wherein presidential appointees are given broad latitude to designate any number of reasonable scientific activities and inferences as scientific misconduct, and to penalize those involved accordingly.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7301 of title 5, United

www.whitehouse.gov

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Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · May 22

All the analyses say that B is not ancestral, which is the fact used in my HSM side calculation. I discuss 1 vs 2 spills not for a BF but to illustrate the shocking illogic of a prominent paper, P2022.

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · May 22

Rare events happen but they're rare. So that goes into the probabilities.

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · May 22

What I actually wrote:

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · May 22

No. That's not how conditional probabilities under competing hypotheses work.

Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · May 22

Sure. But the incorrect way you wrote it indicates that you haven't bothered to start to think about the method. No one who had read even the briefest intro would write about negative BFs.

Reposted by Michael Weissman

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · May 22

Harvard today, your institution tomorrow.

It's all part of the Project 2025 plan to destroy high education in America.

All leading US universities depend on federal funding and tuition dollars from international students. They severely curtailed the former. Now they're eliminating the latter.

The Trump administration on Thursday halted Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a crucial funding source for the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college in a major escalation in the administration’s efforts to pressure the elite school to fall in line with the president’s agenda.

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Michael Weissman @mbweissman.bsky.social · May 22

There is no such thing as a negative BF. If their BF was 0.0 then they would have been 100% sure that it was not a lab leak. Math isn't just another form of free association.