Thinking about risk and prediction recently, especially after listening to Talking Politics on Superforecasters. The takeaway from that was that the more you can distance yourself emotionally from the outcome, the better you are likely to be at both estimating probabilities and adjusting them in the light of new information.

We’re almost a week into the lockdown here, and until Saturday morning there was almost no change from my normal life. Work from home? Check. See hardly any living souls in the flesh? Check. The new rules made life a little difficult. The lack of a morning cappuccino is hard, but bearable. Standing two metres apart outside the supermarket and the small local grocery stores likewise. As I’ve told anyone who’ll listen, the Italians are demonstrating the pure Blitz Spirit while my fellow Brits are pure Dad’s Army.

Yesterday, I came home from a walk, during which the person who helps clean the house was cleaning the house, to discover the groovy lights under my keyboard breathing heavily.

I have never shown the slightest interest in the groovy lights under my keyboard. I’m not even sure I knew they existed. This was odd.

Very strange, but for two days straight my log files have not shown anyone coming here for a post that couldn't be found. Is this a sign of success, or of increasing irrelevance?

Anyway, I did eventually find something that couldn't be found, and brought it in. And it triggered all sorts of nost...

Continuing my occasional efforts to bring old posts in, top of the logs yesterday was this post from 2006: Indefensible. And that started off referring to two earlier posts on the same topic, Gurt big confusion and Gene flow ... again. So I had to deal with all three.¹