Pioneers get the arrows, the settlers get the land
sifter.org
sifter.org
The original author has a set of trusted sources and the other party has a set of trusted sources and there is no overlap of trust?
Since the original author dismisses sources being from academics, experts, officials, or the media I would be curious to know what sources they do trust?
I still have to question what their interpretation of "analysis" is. If experts are not to be trusted as sources, then where exactly is the author obtaining their "analysis"? Are they suggesting that the way they live their life is by conducting primary research?
The only interpretation I see is that the author has a set of sources they trust that produce "analysis" that the author sees as reliable. Their opponent in the argument has exactly the same same thing but from sources that the author does not trust. That certainly is a pickle.
Of course, the author would likely see me as "believing in dangerous quackery" but I am dumbfounded.
Does the author want me to believe that they consult raw weather station data before deciding to take an umbrella? Since the raw weather station data comes from expert sources can it even be trusted?
The reality I suspect is that the author would say:
I know a guy who forecasts the weather and I trust him because he published some numbers from someplace along with his analysis. Numbers I can't really understand and no expert can be relied on to interpret but for some reason, this guy and his numbers have me convinced I am well grounded.
Further, I would never trust that National Weather Service, those hacks use experts, charts, graphics, and text and I can't be sure they are not fabricating the weather unless I see raw numbers that again I can't trust as being correct nor interpret and no one other than "my guy" can either.
I don't personally know him and am not speaking for him, of course, but my understanding (based on following him for years) is repeatable analysis. Start e.g. from publicly available CDC data, and show that your results follow from them, or at the very least do not contradict them.
Much of the time, if you try to do that, it is either impossible or a lot of unspecified assumption (some of which are often ridiculous) come to light.
And to his credit, he has published his own covid models with data sources before; I started following him when he was no. 5 or so on the Netflix prize leaderboard, and he was doing it publicly (which of course meant everyone could include his ideas in their model, which promptly kicked him out of the top ten shortly after).
Thinking back on things, by any chance was he "The guy on a team of just him with a crappy laptop that blogged about his submissions and thought process?"
If so, I must admit that I do think he started many people (me included) on the right path by introducing how to actually think about and start making progress on the contest.