…and I don’t know which possibility is the least worrying
It could be random chance. It also could just as likely not be. The only correct answer is “we don’t know”.
Don’t be fooled by randomness. Randomness comes in clumps. For example if you flipped a thousand coins every day for a year and measured how each one predicted the stock market, heads for up, tails for down, at the end of the year you’ll likely have one coin that far out performs the average. But would you use that coin to determine your investment strategy the next year?
And yeah Boeing is now killing people outside of their planes.
Could this be akin to the Birthday paradox?
That was a great read! Not something I’ve heard of before. Thank you!
And yeah it’s related for sure.
Not really. That is just a fact that there’s only 12 months, and the more samples you make increases the odds it’s a sample that overlaps with another.
What the OP is saying is that sometimes randomness can appear less random than other randomness. True randomness will occasionally give results that closely match something non-random. It’s why almost all music players don’t use true random for shuffle. True random you could have the same song play 15 times in a row. In fact, that is expected to happen eventually (assuming infinite time) just as all other sets of 15 songs are.
I made a random character selector app for super smash bros that makes you play through every character before it lets you repeat a character. And it won’t let two people play the same character at the same time. My friends and I like playing random characters, but we kept getting the same characters over and over again, sometimes even in the same colors (online only). I got frustrated one day and made the app.
It definitely livens up our game nights.
Didn’t the iPod have the same “issue” that it sometimes played the same song twice in a row or randomly played the next song in the playlist?
You essentially did what Apple did and made the randomness less random so humans think it’s more random.
Yeah, true random sucks pretty badly for any sort of repeated selection. You could make your algorithm potentially even better by grouping characters into different roles and not repeating them in a row either. Never give two sword characters in a row if possible, for example.
That’s a really interesting thought. We do still have issues where we get like Ken then Terry (or Mii Gunner then Mii Brawler) back to back, and for people who don’t like that type of characters, its a bummer.
Each character having a list of groups that they belong to, then not allowing players to play a character in the same group consecutively would probably be a huge improvement. I would need to be careful to make sure too many characters aren’t excluded, though. It would be tough to get right, but I think it would be really good.
The birthday paradox derives from how the chance of somebody there having their birthday on a specific day is 1-in-365 (ish)/nr-of-people hence the chance of two people having their birthday on that specific day is 1-in-365^2/nr-of-people, but the chance of two people having their birthday in the same day out of any days of the year is quite different because it’s not a specific day anymore so it’s quite a different calculation (which I totally forgot ;)).
In here the closest to that paradox would the chance of 2 whistleblowers of any company with whistleblowers dying within a few weeks of each other (which, depending on how many companies have whistleblowers, can be quite high) compared to the chance of 2 whistleblowers of Boeing dying within a few weeks of each other (which is statistically a lot lower unless there are thousands of Boeing whistleblowers).Edit: actually it’s more the chance of any 2 Boeing whistleblowers dying with a few weeks of each other at any point in time (so this includes long after they did it) vs the chance of any 2 Boeing whistleblowers dying with a few weeks of each other during the time they are blowing the whilstle.
The probability of 2 people having the same birthday is 1 in 365 because it’s the same as picking person A’s birthday as a specific day in the year and checking whether person B has their birthday on that date.
Now, the reason the number is so low is that you are basically comparing pairs and with 23 people there are 253 different pairings (23 choose 2 or
22*23/2). With each pair having a 1/365 chance to have the same birthday and having 253 distinct pairs, you would have to fail a 1/365 check 253 times in a row. The formula you can use for the success rate is1 - (1-p)^xwith p being the probability and x the number of trials, so in this case1 - (1 - 1/365)^253 = 0.5004In essence, the unintuitive part of the “paradox” is how fast the number of possible pairs grows the more people you add.
Boeing is now killing people outside of their planes.
That’s a great line!
But given the choice between coins you’d still most likely pick the one that was successful, even if its 99% chance its nonsense - the other coins would have 99.9% (made up numbers).
So out of our analogy, we can’t be sure beyond resonable doubt to arrest Boeing, but a message has clearly been sent to any future whistleblowers
It takes a ton of bravery to be a whistle blower when others aren’t dying like 80 year old diabetes patients. It’ll take even more now, and I hope there are more. Boeing needs to be kicked in the bags.
Finally I have a reliable way of finding my magic stockmarket coin. Thank you kind stranger!
I stole your coin.
You stole the wrong one. Björn Tantau paid me the real one for a bottle of water.
Great example
Thank you, I can’t take credit for it. I got it out of the book Everybody Lies.
Crunching the numbers in your example, there’s a 92% chance no coin does better than 55% correct. Randomness happens, but the law of large numbers usually refers to much larger numbers than 1000, and there aren’t 1000 huge companies being investigated right now. I think suspicion is warranted here
You’re saying my intentionally over simplified example to get a point across wasn’t perfect? Amazing analysis…
Do you go by the nickname Captain Obvious with your friends?
it could also be coincidence. humans are great at assuming patterns
I believe in coincidences. I don’t trust coincidences.
Could it just be that whistleblowing is intensely stressful and difficult (reporters, lawyers, harassment from former coworkers and company fanboys, difficulty finding new employment, etc.) I imagine all of that makes whistleblowers far more susceptible to disease and mental issues.
We need stronger whistleblower protection laws. Not just in case companies put out a hit, but also to help the whistleblowers endure and recover from doing the right thing…
The guy already gave his statement at a deposition. Why on earth would they kill him after the fact?
It’s a message about the consequences of such a move
To give conspiracy theorists something to do.
To stop others having the same idea.
The latest death was due to disease (flu and MSRA, leading to pneumonia and apparently a stroke), though, and his family confirmed as such. Many of these whistle-blowers are older experienced engineers who will be biased towards a higher death rate.
Still, fuck Boeing though. Corporate scumbags.
Influenza B and MRSA? I’m not sure I’m convinced… but yeah. A bit different than the last death.
If he was hospitalized for the influenza, getting MRSA while there isn’t all that surprising.
Many of these whistle-blowers are older experienced engineers who will be biased towards a higher death rate.
This, plus being highly involved in any court case is extremely stressful, which can take a toll on your mental and physical health.
Which is why I’m still kinda leaning towards an actual suicide with the first case. Being stressed, tired, having your life dictated around court schedules while you sleep in hotel rooms… I could see that wearing someone down after a while.
I just don’t think it makes real sense for a company to hire an actual hitman to operate in the US. Corporate murders happen, but usually overseas, and usually not when they’ve already testified.
Not saying it isn’t a possibility, I just think it’d be cheaper to pay the guy off and have him sign an NDA.
Corporate murders happen, but usually overseas, and usually not when they’ve already testified.
Do you have a source for that? I doubt there’s graph of “workers murdered by companies, by country” or “murders, pre- vs post- whistleblowing” so it sounds like that might be at best an educated guess, or at worst pro-US bias.
The only stats I could find show that historically the US has had a terrible record for worker deaths during labor disputes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes
Do you have a source for that? I doubt there’s graph of “workers murdered by companies, by country” or “murders, pre- vs post- whistleblowing” so it sounds like that might be at best an educational guess, or at worst pro-US bias.
There’s no material reason to kill people who are going to testify against you anymore. Corporations basically started to capture the judicial system in the late 60’ and for the most part succeeded in their goals by the late 80s.
Tort law has been effectively neutered, leaving the only real legal recourse being ineffective , long drawn out class action lawsuits. There is a reason the last person killed on that Wikipedia article was when unions started dying off.
This is incredibly naive. We are talking about a company that was literally too lazy to check if all the bolts were in place and secured in an airplane, risking a fatal incident with hundreds of people killed. And that is after two planes already force crashed killing everyone on board, because of a faulty IT system that was not properly checked.
Boeing has proven plenty, that they have a full disregard for human lifes, if they think they can get away with it. So assassinating whistleblowers and using their influential friends to cover it up as opposed to uncertain and lengthy court battles requiring millions to be spent on it, is absolutely in character.
Again that character was to ignore safety warnings, despite knowing that sooner or later a plane will crash and it will cause a shit ton of damages to the airlines and it will cause a shit ton of litigation towards Boeing. It was by far the obviously cheaper choice to just do proper QA. They have neither a moral nor a long term profit/investment outlook on humans lifes. All they care for is immediate profits.
A whistleblower is the type of person to refuse such an NDA, regardless of buy-off price. They would understand that if Boeing is willing to pay them 10 million or whatever, that the information they have, should they release it, prevent over 10 million dollars worth of damages to the public.
I just don’t see someone like that committing suicide in a hotel parking lot out of state the day (two days?) before they are supposed to testify. That would go against everything they were doing up until that point.
They wouldn’t just… go home instead?
I mean there’s an argument to be made that once the allegations are public, there’ll be in investigation regardless, and if you don’t want to go through the ordeal of being grilled by probably some of the best lawyers in the world or put your family through finding your body then it makes sense to commit suicide that way and still have a big impact
A whistleblower is the type of person to refuse such an NDA, regardless of buy-off price. They would understand that if Boeing is willing to pay them 10 million or whatever, that the information they have, should they release it, prevent over 10 million dollars worth of damages to the public.
Maybe, but 10 million dollars is nothing to Boeing, and an awful lot for even an ethically driven person. Especially if they’ve been laid off and are in active lawsuits against a multi billion dollar corporation.
They can afford to stall as long as legally allowed, and the legal system is built to levy the scale in their favor. It’s basically impossible for a person in this type of suit to have a normal life, and the corporations know that and try to exploit it as much as they can.
I just don’t see someone like that committing suicide in a hotel parking lot out of state the day (two days?) before they are supposed to testify. That would go against everything they were doing up until that point.
Suicide isn’t timely, nor is it a logic based decision. Unfortunately it’s fairly common for people to kill themselves at times people (especially their loved ones) would not initially expect.
The family was probably threatened by Boeing and forced to say that
the Panther is still on the loose
A person could easily be
poisoned, I mean infected with Flu and MRSA.
Let me guess, suicide by 17 gunshots to the back of his head? In his car in a hotel parking lot?
No, sudden illness I’m afraid. He arrived in hospital a few days ago for pneumonia like symptoms. poor bugger fell out of a window twice.
No way to tell what happened
Or it’s a coincidence. N=2
Still statistically significant, even with a high margin of error our only evidence points towards it being a trend
There’s an xkcd about this
It statistically significant because middle-aged people who were about to give evidence at a trial dying is not a common occurrence. Happening once is suspicious happening twice is extremely suspicious.
It is not like Boeing is staffed by geriatrics on the edge of life as it is
Or, as The Onion reports, Boeing intentionally hires employees with suicidal tendencies.
Coincidence or not, it must’ve caused a chilling effect to other whistleblowers.
Thank you!
