{"id":42509,"date":"2014-03-18T11:56:36","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T16:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=42509"},"modified":"2014-03-18T11:57:01","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T16:57:01","slug":"occams-compass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=42509","title":{"rendered":"Occam&#8217;s Autopilot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 1969, the US submarine <em>Scorpion, <\/em>homeward bound from the Mediterranean in the South Atlantic, disappeared without a trace.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The search was finally resolved when a Navy researcher, John Pi\u00f1a Craven, using Bayesian <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bayesian_search_theory\">search methods <\/a>and, in effect, a free market approach to sorting through the various hypotheses, found the wreck.\u00a0 It took a while &#8211; but in the end, the path to the sub&#8217;s wreck was perfectly logical.<\/p>\n<p>The media &#8211; inflamed by the Malaysian government&#8217;s political skeeviness &#8211; is spinning conspiracy theories as fast as it can get them on the air these days.<\/p>\n<p>If I had to bet?\u00a0 I&#8217;d say <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/autopia\/2014\/03\/mh370-electrical-fire\/\">this guy has it right<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Just a hunch &#8211; but if I had to bet, I&#8217;d go long on the theory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1969, the US submarine Scorpion, homeward bound from the Mediterranean in the South Atlantic, disappeared without a trace.\u00a0 The search was finally resolved when a Navy researcher, John Pi\u00f1a Craven, using Bayesian search methods and, in effect, a free market approach to sorting through the various hypotheses, found the wreck.\u00a0 It took a while [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42509"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42512,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42509\/revisions\/42512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}