Comments on: World Fails to End in June; Bloggers Hardest Hit

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 05 Jul 2004 16:41:35 +0000

Right. The squirrel-in-the-road theory is applicable to both asteroid impacts and interest rates. If it’s far away and it looks like you’re heading straight at it, relax: it’s probably going to move before you get there and you won’t hit it. Similarly, whatever the benchmark interest rate is, the larger the number of economists who predict steady rates for the forseeable future, the greater the chance that some kind of bond-market debacle is around the corner.

By: Sylvain Galineau

Sylvain Galineau — Mon, 05 Jul 2004 16:16:52 +0000

Indeed. I am blanking on his name at the moment, but one of the fathers of modern statistics, commenting at the end of a long career on statistical predictions, pointed out that, quite ironically and paradoxically, the only consistently reliable statistical prediction he knew of said that about 90%+ of statistical predictions were bound to be wrong. And it seems to remain true, regardless of technology or the increasing volume of predictions.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 05 Jul 2004 15:36:55 +0000

I predict that most people’s predictions will prove inaccurate, but that that won’t stop them from continuing to make predictions :)

By: Engineer-Poet

Engineer-Poet — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 12:14:26 +0000

I don’t think the outgassing makes a difference to the probability of hitting a particular target, as it would appear to turn hits into misses with the same probability as the reverse. All it does is make prediction more difficult.

It’s far more interesting to calculate the probability of the prognosticators being right. I wonder if the Heaven’s Gate group wasn’t optimal in this regard, as they removed their nonsense from the meme pool in true Darwinist fashion. ;)

By: Jay Manifold

Jay Manifold — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 00:53:40 +0000

I note that increasing the relative velocity of the putative comets to nearly 49 km/sec (hey, the ^{tag doesn’t work in comments!) merely strengthens the case for improbability of the predicted events, as the distances between them grow commensurately, to 17 million and 8� million km, respectively. We now have three unrelated comets distributed across one-sixth of an AU, subject to orbital changes caused by outgassing, just like Halley (or, to take the extreme case, LINEAR). So it’s like shooting at a target with a musket and bullets that have little extra charges on them that go off in flight.}

By: Andy Dolberg

Andy Dolberg — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 00:34:04 +0000

I thank the Marine Corps, Jeff Cooper and Steyr ; )

By: Engineer-Poet

Engineer-Poet — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 00:08:14 +0000

I have one physics nit to pick:

Then, turning to this groovy simulator, we find that the typical cometary impact velocity is 51 km sec-1; subtracting the 11 km sec-1 added by Earth’s gravity at the end leaves us with a relative velocity of 40 km sec-1.

Such velocities don’t add linearly, the kinetic energies do. As kinetic energy of the meteroroids at the top of the atmosphere is ~51 km/sec and Earth’s escape velocity is 11 km/sec, the V(infinity) of the incoming meteroids would be (51^2 – 11^2)^1/2 = 48.8 km/sec.

And it’s not fair to use superscripts and not let anyone quote you properly in their response.

By: Mitch

Mitch — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 14:07:38 +0000

Townsend’s Law of Prognostication: The future will resemble the past, except for an unknown number of unpredictable and important changes. This seems to pass the test. Maybe they just got the date wrong?

;-)

By: rdbrewer

rdbrewer — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 13:01:22 +0000

So the formula seems to be: (fascination with apocalypse) + (intuitive physics) + (vague recollection of astronomical events) - (knowledge of existing network for transmitting actual findings) = wildly propagating hoax. Since none of those factors is disappearing anytime soon, my prediction is that there will be more predictions of this type. Not to get too far off topic, but something about this sounds like the Michael Moore forumla for documentaries . . . So the formula seems to be: (fascination with [conspiracy]) + (intuitive [reasoning]) + (vague recollection of [historical] events) - (knowledge of existing network for transmitting actual [news, facts]) = wildly propagating hoax. Since none of those factors is disappearing anytime soon, my prediction is that there will be more predictions of this type.

By: Sylvain Galineau

Sylvain Galineau — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 12:51:49 +0000

From over a hundred yards ? Damn. The man is good.

By: j.scott barnard

j.scott barnard — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 11:52:58 +0000

I can write my name in the snow when I pee…

By: Jay Manifold

Jay Manifold — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 10:27:46 +0000

I should have said “hitting a bullseye 2� inches across at a hundred yards, three times in a row” without a rifled barrel.

By: Andy Dolberg

Andy Dolberg — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 06:11:39 +0000

The above comment was posted by me.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 03:47:12 +0000

i can hit 1 in at 100 yards all day long brotha : )

By: MatyaNoBaka

MatyaNoBaka — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 02:11:48 +0000

I’m no marksman, but once my father taught me to exhale and squeeze slowly, i hit a 2.5″ bullseye five times in a row at scout camp. This is in probably a couple dozen or so trials of five shots each. Might have been 60 yards rather than a hundred though, too long ago to remember…

Tungusta did happen, and there have been other, bigger “events”.

The Earth survived them, though usually with a big species die-off. And the next one will probably do the same.

Since foolish predictions are inexhaustable, sooner or later one will be right.

Maty no baka…