Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Ana Simkiss,
Speaking of lazy op eds, anyone have the fortitude to read all of Bob Jones' epistle in the herald ?
I did. It's a parody account, surely?
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Hard News: Why did Stephen die?, in reply to Mike O'Connell,
I've been rather circumspect on the roads today and feeling a little jittery when spotting cop cars - while behaving perfectly legally.
Wearing a helmet? It does cut the 'noids down a lot. Which is, ironically, one of the big things that's dangerous about helmets.
I thought after a certain time - six years? 10 years? - a case couldn't be re-opened, the double jeopardy situation.
IANAL. Nor are the people who have it done to them, and consulting lawyers is expensive. This is all part of the persecution.
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to izogi,
Priceless. Sad that he kept saying "We", meaning Australians, when it's so patently clear Australians don't see it that way. Um, Paul, you've got a kiwi accent. No, really, you do.
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Hard News: Why did Stephen die?, in reply to Mike O'Connell,
I said nothing more than I had to and accepted my fine.
Wise. You were unlucky - I've never been pinged for no helmet, despite coppers directly observing me. They must have really had nothing to do, and probably didn't like the cut of your jib. Did you get demerits against your driver's license?
Pointing out further possible charges is a standard tactic to get you to accept what you're faced with. We don't have official plea bargaining here, but it does seem to work out that way in practice. In some ways it's even more crooked than just making that part of the system, because for the accused there is no official ringfence ever put around further charges. I know guys who many years after various accusations will receive calls saying that the police are going to re-open a case they dropped. Even if nothing comes of it, it's a form of endless bullying, and the purpose is clear - to assert some kind of control over them. They often don't even know why this bullying is happening, it could be related to wanting to get them to inform on someone for something that is totally unrelated. The police see a connection, and then it "Aha I know that guy. I'll give his balls a squeeze and see if he squeals, something might shake out". But other times it just seemed like pure meanness, a bad donuts day.
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Hard News: Why did Stephen die?, in reply to Greg Wood,
It's a scary thing when you can't walk away from someone you'd otherwise walk away from, because this time they happen to be a police officer.
Yup, the expected behavior is fear and humility, and complete cooperation. Anything less is provocation.
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Hard News: Why did Stephen die?, in reply to Lilith __,
It boggles my mind that Police could behave this way over a small amount of cannabis , whether real or imagined.
I had a cop nut off at me once, bitter that he couldn't find a thing to bust me for, aged 18, driving an old car, full of my mates. I think my crime was that I was about 18 inches taller than him when I got out of the car. Giving people shit that they can't answer back to seems to be a perk for some of them. He seemed to be attempting to get me to lose my temper, and fully lost his when I didn't. Leaves a bad taste, which unfortunately overpowers the considerably greater number of positive experiences I've had dealing with the force.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to steve black,
Add up all the probabilities on the red side and you would get about 8%, and on the blue side gives you about 92%.
Yup. That would, in fact, be how the number 92% was arrived at. Given that, how is it not accurate to say that the simulations are saying that is the actual probability of an Obama win? Whatever biases, deviations, trends, the whole lot, are captured in the simulation. Which is the point of doing the simulation.
Is this reasoning correct? I understand that problems in the underlying sims cascade into the final result. Do they do that in a way such that any ring fence you put around the underlying problem has an unknown effect in the final? If so, why even bother coming up with the final? It's turned into a much less meaningful number. A lower bound maybe, if you knew there was a deliberate Romney bias?
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to David Hood,
So in some respects, the 92% is doind a similar job to expressing a confidence interval, but it is a different thing in the finer level of detail.
Heh, yes, it's a degree of trust that you can't trust.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to steve black,
Hopefully it means there is a 92% chance that the statement "Obama gets 270 or more Electoral College votes" is true. What's missing of course is reporting of confidence intervals and such.
So 92% isn't the confidence interval itself, relating to the statement "Obama gets 270 or more Electoral College votes", calculated from a probability density function of how many votes he will get (however they came by that p.d.f)?
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