The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 10 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Fry: Hyper-sensitive cancer detection AIs risk triggering massive overdiagnosis
“And the real danger of relying too much on algorithms to detect those cancerous cells is that if you are too good at detecting them, you're not just good at detecting the ones that then go on to be a problem. You're also going to be good at detecting the ones …”
Fry: Driverless racing lacks the human emotional stakes audiences crave
“And I think that in many ways, the thing that makes Formula One or other racing so fascinating to watch is because you have it sitting in that gigantic, you know, engineered machine with so much science and technology going into it. You have a person who cares…”
Fry: Open-sourcing algorithms fails to provide effective public accountability
“If you publish the code, if you publish the source code of something, the level of technical knowledge and time actually that it would take to interrogate that as an outsider, enough that you have a really good understanding of how it works, enough to be able …”
Fry: Mathematical modeling justifies early pandemic lockdowns before deaths surge
“The reason why we know that that's a bad, why, why we're in a bad situation, and the reason why we know we need to take these extreme measures to essentially shut down our borders, to shut down our country, is because the mass is telling us what is coming next…”
Fry: Math education must focus on basics to prevent working memory overload
“If you're ever going to be able to reach the most beautiful elements of the subject, if you're ever really going to be able to properly to put it to use, you can't have your working memory being swamped by remembering all of these rules and remembering these r…”
Fry: Deploying algorithms without considering human behavior causes catastrophic consequences
“I think that people have sort of rushed ahead, and maybe not always thought very carefully about what happens when you build an algorithm, or when you build something based on data, and just expect humans to fit in around it. And I think that that actually has…”
Fry: Google Maps preserves human agency by presenting multiple route options
“The shift in design that we've seen recently, and this is only very recently, is where you type in the address now. So I'm thinking in terms of Google Maps and Waze certainly, and perhaps others, is that you type in the address and then up pops a map, which gi…”
Fry: The optimal dating strategy involves exploring for the first 37%
“So if you frame it like that with those assumptions, then it turns out that the mathematically best strategy is if you spend The first 37% of your dating life just having a nice time and playing the fields. So it's one over E, right? So 37%. Yeah, spend the fi…”
Fry: Exponential growth specifically means changing by fixed fractions over time
“The word exponential just gets thrown around. Like, you know, people say, oh, this project's exponentially more difficult, or, you know, exponentially more dangerous. And it's like, well, no, it's not. That's not what the word means. And it is really counterin…”
Fry: Humanizing math through historical personal stories makes it compelling
“And I think for me, that's what makes the maths come to light because when you realize how important this stuff is to people, that they know that they're going to their death and still the only thing they want to do, Is finish their mass. I think that's the st…”