The Local Maximum with Max Sklar

Aaron and I start by responding to listener emails, and talking about how our predictions are faring on Metaculus and PredictIt. Then we go over our short list of technological trends of the decade which includes:
- The ubiquity of mobile and cloud computing
- Consolidation of Social Networks
- Status of Wearables and Audio
- Populist Movements of all kinds fuels by mass communication
- Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency
- AI, Machine Learning, and Personal Assistants
- Success and Failures of the “Uber for X” trend

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Alex Andorra, host of the new podcast Learning Bayesian Statistics joins The Local Maximum today to talk about these fascinating issues:
- The growing role of Bayesian Analysis in Science and Technology
- How the pollsters and journalists cover election data, and how it can be improved
- Ways to look at election polls from a Bayesian standpoint
- Strategic voting, comparative political systems, and social choice theory
- Approaches to explaining these topics in audio (podcast) form!

localmaxradio.com/98

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Today we dive into the world of Computer Science with David Kopec, author of Classic Computer Science Problems in Python. Topics include misconceptions about computer science, what the general public should know, stumbling blocks for students, graph algorithms, and genetic algorithms.

localmaxradio.com/97

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit localmaximum.substack.com

Ep. 96 - Climate Protests, Pascal’s Wager, and the Duplicitous Science Press

Max gives a first hand account of the climate protests during the Yale Harvard football game which delayed the game by almost an hour. He breaks down the arguments made by climate activists, and relates it to Pascal’s Wager, a concept in probabilities that relates to infinite values, and how it can be abused. Max and Aaron discuss a couple of news articles on scientific discoveries and break down how they analyze them.

localmaxradio.com/96

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Panelists Craig Lorentzen and Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley discuss inspiration, lessons learned, and career shifts they’ve obtained from playing video games as kids and as adults.

localmaxradio.com/95

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Today Max talks about his long-term fascination with the concept of infinity, including several different forms and definitions that infinity can take on. Then, we do a deep dive into what it means to extend the real number line and divide by zero.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit localmaximum.substack.com

In our second November news update, we cover articles and stories on:
- The consolidation of the internet
- The dispute over whether Facebook centralized or decentralized speech
- Calls to “re-decentralize” the internet with personal servers, and the practicality of that
- How podcasting has been caught up in some internet trends, and left out of others.
- A/B testing and shrinking emphasis on it

Also, we go off on a bunch of tangents!

localmaxradio.com/93

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This news update covers Ranked Choice Voting in New York City, Twitter’s decision to ban political advertising as we enter the 2020 political campaign season, and Waymo and Uber fighting it out for dominance in the self driving car market.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit localmaximum.substack.com

Max talks to Adweek reporter Shoshana Wodinsky about the fraud, the scandal, the propaganda, that goes out through online ad industry.

localmaxradio.com/91

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In this solo show, Max talks about Narrative building, and the confirmation bias that can be associated with it. To illustrate his points:
The recent hearings in Congress of Mark Zuckerberg over the Libra Project
A professor who claims to have the winning system to predict the presidential election
Stefan Molyneux’s use of a combination of statistical and linguistic tricks to build his society narrative.

localmaxradio.com/90

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit localmaximum.substack.com