Post #4141483
2026-07-27 16:04 UTC
@404mediaco@mastodon.social how exactly does one "predict" an event that supposedly occurred in the past? "Pre" "dict" literally means to "say before".
Replies (1)
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@khm@hj.9fs.net 2026-07-27 16:20
the claim (linguistic diversity peaked ~3k years ago) is based on a statistical model they created, and they have no other evidence to support the claim. thus it is a prediction -- they're saying what they believe happened before they have evidence for it. I'm not sure why this paper was published, but this is not my field so maybe "we made a bayesian model" is innovation in their department? CC: @404mediaco@mastodon.social @hyc@mastodon.social