Just spoke to a colleague who couldn't get their methodologically superior study published in top journals because it got basically the same effect estimates as vastly inferior methods
bro just one more future study bro, bro I swear just one more future study and it'll fix the inference bro
My parents got me this science chick necklace a few Christmases ago, and now that I finally wear it, man on the street says I have artist vibes. The math β art pipeline is real. Fibonacci! π
New memoir working title:
"No data, no problem: My life as a security researcher"
My progeny have the fine motor skills of a sentient placenta!
There was notable pressure from my home birth midwives 2x to keep it for reasons. I felt it should be used for science. The body did so much work! It's an organ! So much information? But wasn't sure who to call to donate it...
Exploring the iWill Covid vaccine risk simulator from CharitΓ©: iwill.charite.de
Love the icon arrays to illustrate outcomes for vaccinated vs. unvaxx / 10,000, from side effects thru hospitalization to death.
Love the personal/societal split levels.
Lots to think about here for risk literacy.
Never fear, it's LOAD-BEARING turtles all the way down!
SchΓΆlkopf & co (h/t @p-hunermund.com) on the dangers of simplifying for DAGs, Hardt & co on performative power & how classification IS causal modeling, & a cool study on how much scaffolding matters.
wildetruth.substack.com/p/scaffoldin...
Oh this is great, thank you! Robins' separable treatments work sounds directly relevant to the aggregation problem I'm chewing on (e.g., dedicated vs casual attackers on the strategy pathway in screenings). Would you have a suggested reading list for his work on this? I'd appreciate a reading rec.
Cos graphs help you find things you don't know (colliders, confounders, identification strategies). That's one reason to draw one. You don't draw a DAG cos you think you have everything right; you draw it to reason about causal structure better. But the graph can't check its own variable validity.
Well, the graph is in part a heuristic to help you find and prevent logical errors in causal thinking. But it can't tell you if your variables are valid abstractions. If they're bad compressions (like LDL+HDLβcholesterol), the DAG looks fine while tossing causal salad. That's Rubenstein et al. 2017.
Ha! Not pessimistic β just honest about the recursion. I didn't say progress can't be made!
Rubenstein et al (ty!) call it "turtles all the way down." I'm just taking SchΓΆlkopf's own group at their word. π
Progress = better scaffolding, not life without turtles. That's the optimistic reading!
Reeling a bit from the recursive nature of error here and in my own work.
Are we just always blind to our own representational or indeed epistemic limits, even when describing those limits in others?
"We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows." (Frost)
That is, the graph encodes causal relationships, but has no notation for whether your variables are valid abstractions. Aggregated LDL and HDL in one cholesterol variable is the classic example.
According to Rubenstein et al 2017 ("Causal Consistency of Structural Equation Models"; h/t @p-hunermund.com), DAGs have the same blind spot on another level. www.auai.org/uai2017/proc...
In *Causality,* Judea Pearl argues that SEM's founders kept causal meaning in their heads, but didn't encode it explicitly in the notation β and later generations lost track of that causal intent and correct reading.
(I never had a wedding, either. Maybe next time!)
I'm sorry your parents weren't interested in attending your graduation. I think that's part of the wound? The idea is for your elders to recognize your accomplishment in a social context. Much like at weddings were recognize couples as a social unit and this legitimates the entity as a new family!
He argues the neural architecture of modern man isn't so different from a caveman. We need to see ourselves doing and having done the tribal dance, to take on the relevant role.
As someone who also missed my MA and PhD graduations, this hit. Maybe I need to do a second PhD for the tribal dance!
Just got Judea Pearl's new book, and it contains this unexpected gem of wisdom about graduation ceremonies as essential rituals to embed accomplishment in community, enabling meaningful application.
Pearl confesses he skipped all three of his own graduation ceremonies and regretted it.
"part of the peculiar beauty of *human* excellence just *is* its vulnerability⦠Human excellence is... something whose very nature it is to be in need... (Martha Nussbaum, *The Fragility of Goodness*, p. 2)."
toleratedindividuality.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...
#Statistics thought of the day: If you think you can find new disease subtypes by empirically clustering patients, think again: www.fharrell.com/post/cluster... #StatsSky
Wow this is a breakthrough in validation of predictive models that fully accounts for point estimates used in predictions being only point estimates. Great work @richarddriley.bsky.social and colleagues! #Statistics #StatsSky
This Is Just To Say
i have seen
the draft structural equations
that are at one level
and which
i was thinking
worked
don't
Forgive me
the code ran
so precise
and so clean
New blog post about the age-period-cohort identification problem!
In which, for the first time ever, I ask "What's the mechanism?" and also suggest that sometimes you may actually *not* be interested in causal inference.
www.the100.ci/2026/02/13/o...
A validation problem solution rainbow across screenings:
π’ HIV testing: fully solved
π‘ Colonoscopy: largely solved
π Mammography: persistently open
π΄ Security (polygraphs, Chat Control): unsolvable
github.com/verawilde/equilibrium-screening
Pushed a new module to my equilibrium screening repo. I was brainstorming this in a Google Doc in 2023. Today it's running Python with tests passing.
The answer is still that we can't solve the validation problem in security. But now that's a coded feature, not just a claim in prose.
Up there with Alan Turing responding to a U.S. conference invitation: " 'I would not like the journey, and I detest America.' " www.atlasobscura.com/articles/tur...
My chopping is like my science; it ain't perfect, but it's done!
