tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6976144462093297473.post616900332401800659..comments2024-03-26T19:10:00.791-04:00Comments on West Coast Stat Views (on Observational Epidemiology and more): Squandering journalistic reputations on the Hyperloop, the Economist editionJosephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10760453165301871031noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6976144462093297473.post-15053993201372900892016-06-09T23:01:14.685-04:002016-06-09T23:01:14.685-04:00He probably has help. I understand he's quite ...He probably has help. I understand he's quite well off.Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14705408455380402571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6976144462093297473.post-1453173511313724442016-06-09T22:41:12.353-04:002016-06-09T22:41:12.353-04:00Wow---twins and triplets and divorce. That's ...Wow---twins <em>and</em> triplets <em>and</em> divorce. That's tough! Hard to imagine having time to design a hyperloop with all those kids running around...Andrew Gelmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02715992780769751789noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6976144462093297473.post-22870549784529538582016-06-09T04:59:06.869-04:002016-06-09T04:59:06.869-04:002. The qualifiers are also problematic. This is no...2. The qualifiers are also problematic. This is not just an issue with the Economist. Respectable establishment publication have gotten really bad about treating the mere presence of qualifiers and dissenting opinions as sufficient, even if they aren't informative. We saw this a lot with Mars One, where “overwhelming consensus of aerospace experts dismiss” became “some critics doubt.”<br /><br />It's useful to step back and think of this in terms of knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. There are a lot of aspects of building an intercity vactrain that are so far outside of our range of experience that any cost estimate has to be highly speculative -- independent experts tend to think Musk is being highly optimistic in these parts of his proposal but they can't say conclusively that he's wrong – but when it comes to things like putting large structures up on pylons or down in tunnels, we have a lot of relevant experience.<br /><br /><br />Remember this one?<br />http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/8/14/economists-don-tbelievethehyperloop.html<br /><br /><br /><br />[Michael L. Anderson, an associate professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley.] said that while some of the infrastructure is novel, the elevated guideway was not unlike existing structures such as the Bay Area Rapid Transit's aerial tracks. For the Hyperloop's tracks, that alone would cost in the tens of billions. As for the pipeline for the cars, he said, oil pipelines are $5 million to $6 million per mile, and they are seven times narrower than the Hyperloop's would need to be. In addition, the Hyperloop track could not change direction abruptly the way an oil pipeline could.<br /><br />"It really has to be built to much higher standards than anybody has ever built a pipeline to," Anderson said.<br />Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14705408455380402571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6976144462093297473.post-82398323941237310332016-06-09T04:15:04.345-04:002016-06-09T04:15:04.345-04:001. No, it's not a puff piece (that would be Fo...1. No, it's not a puff piece (that would be Forbes -- http://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahelliott/2012/03/26/at-home-with-elon-musk-the-soon-to-be-bachelor-billionaire/#7178b16d4ead) , but it is a piece with an agenda, one that is familiar both to readers of the Economist and to those who've been following the coverage of the hyperloop: if the government would just get out of the way, our lives would be full of wonderful things. There are cases where this is true, where deregulation and privatization can do great things, but recently it has been used primarily as an excuse to explain away the under-performance of over-hyped technologies and business models. Musk himself has fallen back on this one frequently, despite the fact that all of his post-PayPal businesses rely on billions of government contracts and subsidies.Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14705408455380402571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6976144462093297473.post-47250062464739295902016-06-08T14:40:14.590-04:002016-06-08T14:40:14.590-04:00Mark:
The Economist also fell for that recent &qu...Mark:<br /><br />The Economist also fell for that recent "air rage" study, which was really disappointing because the Economist seemed like one media outlet that _wouldn't_ have a reflexive sympathy for the inequality-in-the-sky storyline.<br /><br />One subtle thing about your criticism is that the Economist article is not a puff piece---or, at least, I don't think the author would think of it that way. The article has lots of qualifiers. Your argument is that the qualifiers aren't enough. That could be. It's an interesting point. I'm so used to seeing junk journalism that exhibits no skepticism at all (as in most of the reporting of the air rage and power pose stories) that I'm not used to criticisms of news reports for being skeptical, but not skeptical enough.Andrew Gelmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02715992780769751789noreply@blogger.com