What are the "big issues" that would be caused by forcing SSL? It sounds like visitors from Iran (and other countries that block SSL sites) might be unable to access HN. What else?
(To clarify, I'm interested in the general topic of whether it's a good idea to have all-SSL websites.)
Well, when I said big issues, the only actual issue that came to mind for me was Iran. I'm not aware of any other issues it could cause - would be interested in knowing more about this too, what else could theoretically go wrong?
Helpfully, the final paragraph of the article seems to contain its takeaway message:
"So, comparing A/B testing and multi-armed bandit algorithms head to head is wrong because they are clearly meant for different purposes. A/B testing is meant for strict experiments where focus is on statistical significance, whereas multi-armed bandit algorithms are meant for continuous optimization where focus is on maintaining higher average conversion rate."
Like any business owner, at the end of the day I care more about conversion rates than about statistical significance.
I'm not a scientist trying to advance the sum of humanity's knowledge. I'm a business owner trying to find the shortest path between what my customers need and what I can profitably offer them.
In a way, statistical significance strikes me as a bit of a fool's errand, because significant results in one context may not be generalizable to another, which means even if we know for a near certainty what worked best, it's hard to apply that knowledge reliably in the future.
Of course, with MAB we could still wait for statistical significance if we want it, before turning off variations that are performing worse. And we can certainly still try to draw conceptually useful conclusions by designing our test variations in ways that facilitate easy comparison.
But with MAB and Myna it sounds like we can pretty well count on higher conversion rates at the end of the day, as well, and that counts for a lot in a business context.
I'm grateful to the VWO team for writing up their analysis and findings, and being so frank about the relative advantages of A/B and MAB. Their summary above tells me what I need to know.
Does it suffer from the same disadvantages as other bandit optimization approaches?
Yes.
That said, the people there are very smart and are doing something good. But I would be very cautious about time-dependent automatic optimization on a website that is undergoing rapid improvement at the same time.
Yeah, but from what I gathered from the article, the discussion going isn't about the custodianship of the entire country (although it's titled to give that idea), but the custodianship of a special economic zone governed according to Romer-istic policies and principles. Nicaragua could still serve as the protectorate of this SEZ.
Yes, Nicaragua would be the protectorate, but the terms of the contract for the economic zone ultimately can only be enforced by someone with a large enough military to impose justice of the last resort -- or at least have the opportunity to do so. Cities can't do that. Legal clout comes from military cloud. Cities have no military clout. Therefore, they have no legal clout, except as provided for by some country.
