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by kadonoishi 1403 days ago
I spent some years doing computer simulations of cancer screening. The confusion between the output of the simulation, which is not evidence, and real evidence, led me into a nightmare of the Hall of Mirrors, where everything I attempted to learn about cancer screening turned out to be merely a reflection of my own assumptions. Everywhere I turned it was another funhouse mirror, where the computer warped my own ideas because the code I wrote was not a perfect flat reflection of what I meant, because my code introduced distortions, which took immense rigor to avoid.

The confusion between real evidence, and the output of my computer simulation which was not evidence but I _confused_ it with evidence, led me down a dark path lost in a labyrinth of funhouse mirrors of my own construction.

Listen to pdonis, people.