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I think you are also applying a biased viewpoint. Your are assuming rational decision making always leads to "correct" decisions. Statistics and rationality me

by Maken 10y ago

I think you are also applying a biased viewpoint. Your are assuming rational decision making always leads to "correct" decisions. Statistics and rationality merely work by measuring current events against your previous experiences and inferring the most probable outcome of your possible actions. That means that your previous life experiences and how you have interpreted and classified them are key in what your brain is going to expect from future events and in consequence how you are going to react to them. In your example you are assuming these people are acting "irrationally" because they aren't taking the "correct" decision by your own judgment. The reality is that likely they are acting based on very different premises from your own, extracted from their own life experiences and those of their ancestors. Given the outcome, they were clearly wrong on their conclusions, but that only means that rationality and statistics are useless if you are basing your reasonings on wrong premises and there is no mechanism to stop you from feeding them the wrong data, not that these seemly absurd actions didn't have a somewhat rational justification. About cognitive biases, well, your brain makes decisions based on the data it has available, and whenever it is insufficient it can't simply delay decision making until its confidence level is acceptable, hence it needs some heuristics to guarantee it gets a result whenever enough previous experience is lacking.

haberman 10y ago
> Your are assuming rational decision making always leads to "correct" decisions. I didn't say anything of the sort. > The reality is that likely they are acting based on very different premises from your own, extracted from their own life experiences and those of their ancestors. That is true. That doesn't imply however that their beliefs draw solid statistical conclusion from those experiences. For example, take rituals like rainmaking that are intended to change the weather. These were performed over many years and generations, and yet (we presume) never brought about any actual statistical improvement over not performing them. Those people would have experienced that (lack of) improvement directly. And yet they continued to believe it.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  "For example, take rituals like rainmaking that are intended to change the weather. These were performed over many years and generations, and yet (we presume) never brought about any actual statistical improvement over not performing them. Those people would have experienced that (lack of) improvement directly. And yet they continued to believe i" That's a great example given it is long-term, repetitive, and even non-experts should understand it. I'm going to try to remember it.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_theory The occasional spectacular random success is far more memorable than a string of failures, because the string of failures simply proves the ritual wasn't done correctly. Or there's some other unknown reason why it didn't work. It's also known that rewarding a behaviour at random is better at reinforcing it than constant reward - perhaps because the reward stimulus is fresh each time it's re-experienced.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      Damn. That's good counterpoints. Forgot about that. I shouldn't given I have to counter it all the time in risk management. Yeah, example might not work.
      - haberman 10y ago
        How are those counterpoints? None of the effects mentioned are rational statistically speaking. If anything they reinforce the example, because they show that some likely thought processes that would support belief in rainmaking are inherently anti-statistical.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        You're assuming people are rational beings. Most evidence is to the contrary with beliefs passed down generations and many decisions intuitive with its mechanisms varying. There's also rational thought but makes up little of most people's day as intuition suffices. Also, there's documented biases in human mind that apply here: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/perceived_risk_2.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/perceived_ris... The one-off event of rain forming becomes the story that everyone remembers most and is passed down with dogma. It gets lots of momentum. Day-by-day data generated for years and analytically processed isn't quite memorable. This is same reason people are more afraid of airplanes despite cars killing more. More relevant, it's the same kinds of bias that makes people think they'll win it big in the lottery despite all evidence to the contrary. I've walked in on 50yd lines when PowerBall is up. They'll always say "But such and such up North won $100mil. You never know. It can't hurt to try." Illogical as hell given that time and money could produce real benefit with high certainty. Yet, they continue doing it to try to re-create that one-off moment someone else experienced. And then someone else experienced it again. :)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- powera 10y ago
  You are assuming that rational decision making can't lead to mass-slaughtering cattle. Also you're assuming that everyone has accurate evidence about the impact of weather rituals. In a society without written records, how is that supposed to magically happen?
  - mannykannot 10y ago
    At most, he is assuming that there is no rational explanation in this particular case of mass slaughter. FWIW, I am going to assign that a high confidence score until I see actual evidence to the contrary. Saying "maybe there's an explanation" for every case does not advance the discussion. Saying "maybe there's an explanation" for every datum that does not fit your prior assumptions pretty much rules out statistical thinking, even if you otherwise have the capability.
- zoke 10y ago
  Am thinking of wearing your baseball hat backward or upside down when your team is behind. I know this does not actually help them win but it feels good to be part of the group doing it. So we comply with the ritualistic behavior in a sort of group angst, when we win we feel it worked and when we loose we feel some sort of existential support system.
Retra 10y ago
You'll need to explain what you mean by "correct" if "rational" isn't it. Rational decisions are those that maximize success, and if you've managed to find a rational decision that doesn't, it ceases to be rational given that information.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Most likely definitions from the context: "correct" means producing optimal outcomes, or producing beliefs most closely aligned with objective reality. "Rational" means obtained from available data using a rational process, whether or not the data is good. So someone with bad priors can come to bad conclusions through entirely "rational" means.
  - msandford 10y ago
    Totally correct. That's why reasonable people don't agree on politics at all. Group A has one set of priors, group B has another and despite them both being basically rational, the priors lead them down totally different roads as to how to "fix things"
- Maken 10y ago
  "Correct" ones would be those which actually maximize your outcome, while "rational" ones would be the ones are which you infer they will maximize your outcome from the information you have available.

by Maken 10y ago

haberman 10y ago

> Your are assuming rational decision making always leads to "correct" decisions. I didn't say anything of the sort. > The reality is that likely they are acting based on very different premises from your own, extracted from their own life experiences and those of their ancestors. That is true. That doesn't imply however that their beliefs draw solid statistical conclusion from those experiences. For example, take rituals like rainmaking that are intended to change the weather. These were performed over many years and generations, and yet (we presume) never brought about any actual statistical improvement over not performing them. Those people would have experienced that (lack of) improvement directly. And yet they continued to believe it.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
"For example, take rituals like rainmaking that are intended to change the weather. These were performed over many years and generations, and yet (we presume) never brought about any actual statistical improvement over not performing them. Those people would have experienced that (lack of) improvement directly. And yet they continued to believe i" That's a great example given it is long-term, repetitive, and even non-experts should understand it. I'm going to try to remember it.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_theory The occasional spectacular random success is far more memorable than a string of failures, because the string of failures simply proves the ritual wasn't done correctly. Or there's some other unknown reason why it didn't work. It's also known that rewarding a behaviour at random is better at reinforcing it than constant reward - perhaps because the reward stimulus is fresh each time it's re-experienced.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Damn. That's good counterpoints. Forgot about that. I shouldn't given I have to counter it all the time in risk management. Yeah, example might not work.
    - haberman 10y ago
      How are those counterpoints? None of the effects mentioned are rational statistically speaking. If anything they reinforce the example, because they show that some likely thought processes that would support belief in rainmaking are inherently anti-statistical.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        You're assuming people are rational beings. Most evidence is to the contrary with beliefs passed down generations and many decisions intuitive with its mechanisms varying. There's also rational thought but makes up little of most people's day as intuition suffices. Also, there's documented biases in human mind that apply here: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/perceived_risk_2.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/perceived_ris... The one-off event of rain forming becomes the story that everyone remembers most and is passed down with dogma. It gets lots of momentum. Day-by-day data generated for years and analytically processed isn't quite memorable. This is same reason people are more afraid of airplanes despite cars killing more. More relevant, it's the same kinds of bias that makes people think they'll win it big in the lottery despite all evidence to the contrary. I've walked in on 50yd lines when PowerBall is up. They'll always say "But such and such up North won $100mil. You never know. It can't hurt to try." Illogical as hell given that time and money could produce real benefit with high certainty. Yet, they continue doing it to try to re-create that one-off moment someone else experienced. And then someone else experienced it again. :)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
powera 10y ago
You are assuming that rational decision making can't lead to mass-slaughtering cattle. Also you're assuming that everyone has accurate evidence about the impact of weather rituals. In a society without written records, how is that supposed to magically happen?
- mannykannot 10y ago
  At most, he is assuming that there is no rational explanation in this particular case of mass slaughter. FWIW, I am going to assign that a high confidence score until I see actual evidence to the contrary. Saying "maybe there's an explanation" for every case does not advance the discussion. Saying "maybe there's an explanation" for every datum that does not fit your prior assumptions pretty much rules out statistical thinking, even if you otherwise have the capability.
zoke 10y ago
Am thinking of wearing your baseball hat backward or upside down when your team is behind. I know this does not actually help them win but it feels good to be part of the group doing it. So we comply with the ritualistic behavior in a sort of group angst, when we win we feel it worked and when we loose we feel some sort of existential support system.

Retra 10y ago

You'll need to explain what you mean by "correct" if "rational" isn't it. Rational decisions are those that maximize success, and if you've managed to find a rational decision that doesn't, it ceases to be rational given that information.

nitrogen 10y ago
Most likely definitions from the context: "correct" means producing optimal outcomes, or producing beliefs most closely aligned with objective reality. "Rational" means obtained from available data using a rational process, whether or not the data is good. So someone with bad priors can come to bad conclusions through entirely "rational" means.
- msandford 10y ago
  Totally correct. That's why reasonable people don't agree on politics at all. Group A has one set of priors, group B has another and despite them both being basically rational, the priors lead them down totally different roads as to how to "fix things"
Maken 10y ago
"Correct" ones would be those which actually maximize your outcome, while "rational" ones would be the ones are which you infer they will maximize your outcome from the information you have available.