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by Nimitz14 2240 days ago
> It does make it invalid, when the difference between runs is as big as 80,000 estimated deaths which can lead to dramatically different government policies.

Wrong. Nobody decides policy based on whether there will be 320k or 400k deaths. What matters is the order of magnitude.

1 comments

80,000 deaths is more than double the current number of deaths in the UK, which is itself very high.

This difference alone is the difference between deploying the army to build field hospitals and emergency seizures of industry to make it happen, or doing nothing. And it comes from floating point differences between AVX and non-AVX hardware. The apologetics for this on HN are absurd.

> 80,000 deaths is more than double the current number of deaths in the UK, which is itself very high.

That is not relevant.

> This difference alone is the difference between deploying the army to build field hospitals and emergency seizures of industry to make it happen, or doing nothing. And it comes from floating point differences between AVX and non-AVX hardware.

No, 320k or 400k deaths will not make the difference to decide whether the army will be deployed.

If the 80k were the difference between 100 and 80100, then it obviously would impact policy.

What matters is the relative difference, not the absolute. How is this so hard for you to understand?