5 ms·

The point I was trying to make was not that good judgement under uncertainty is impossible. As you mentioned, I'm a statistician... as such, I'm 100% certain I

by dlss 10y ago

The point I was trying to make was not that good judgement under uncertainty is impossible. As you mentioned, I'm a statistician... as such, I'm 100% certain I would never say that :p What I was trying to say was that the methods commonly used in social sciences departments, and the watered down versions used in popular social science writing (perhaps typified by OP's essay) are basically a waste of time if your goal is understanding rather than entertainment. That's not to say I think that real world action (including ethical action) is impossible, or that it's not worth doing. That's to say I have a strong, somewhat professional, opinion on how it should be done. I am not alone in this. There are groups of statistically minded people who are making headway avoiding the traps of "common sense". http://www.givewell.org http://www.givewell.org might be a good introduction, perhaps reading about how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation allocates funding would also be helpful if you'd like details. They do around ~500 times more measurable good per dollar donated than the average charity (source: http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/insecticide-treated-nets http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/ins... etc). That this level of improvement was possible is a harsh critique of the sort of watered down social sciences methods we're discussing. > I am suggesting that asking "why" is the only way we can have independent and clear thinking. I mean, I get that you're saying that... but oh man is a citation needed there. "What"/"How" is normally the question that leads to insight and paradigm change in my experience. I don't usually cite Kuhn, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re... might be worth a read for you. Why almost invariably leads to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias and/or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error , both in my experience and according to the literature. > However, if you understood the impact of ghettos, the impact of prisons (which is a form of segregation through spatial/societal exile), and the history of racial segregation through financial policies like redlining[2], you'd understand that you'd be setting a policy that was the exact same reason why these high crime areas happened in the first place. You'd be amplifying a feedback loop. > The only way to understand is to do some research and understand what the major factors for crime are. Is it a lack of jobs? A drug-trade fueled underground economy? A lack of education? A lack of strong familial/social structures? What improvement would have the biggest impact in the area? I'm so confused. You think the reason people have proposed stop and frisk is because they haven't considered what the major factors correlating with future crime are? (ie what makes a high risk area, how to city plan around that, etc) I would be very surprised if that were the case. If it's a stupid policy (and I'm more than willing to believe that it is) I would have thought it would be an example of shoddy social sciences thinking (ie people who shouldn't have asked "why") How do you think government officials decide which policies to enact? They went to some of our nations best schools (yes, that's meant to be a critique of those schools). It's not like doing what social science has been doing, only harder, will somehow change the results we're seeing. Or at least that's my best guess. As we start talking about academia being dumb I have read more :p ---- If you haven't read it "Politics is the Mind-Killer" (http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/) is short and rather amazing as well. (Not wanting to go funny headed is the main reason I've avoided reading about stop and frisk). Just for fun here's a quiz letting you guess which interventions do the most good (as you might imagine "common sense" isn't going to be much help) https://80000hours.org/articles/can-you-guess/ https://80000hours.org/articles/can-you-guess/

brenschluss 10y ago
> the methods commonly used in social sciences departments What methods? Could you clarify? There's an immense diversity within 'social sciences' departments; are you including all forms of history/theory, including the history of technology as well? > There are groups of statistically minded people who are making headway avoiding the traps of "common sense". http://www.givewell.org http://www.givewell.org might be a good introduction I'm familiar with Givewell. As a non-profit, Givewell does good work, but they perform a form of meta analysis of other non-profits, and do not do direct work. As a result, Givewell isn't a good example of "real world action", I'd love to see another example of 'real world action' that you think makes good judgment under uncertainty that isn't a form of meta-analysis. As a software developer AND architect (the bricks and mortar kind, not the software kind), I find that my logic-oriented education is often less-than helpful on the construction site. What's more important is a holistic (or cybernetics[1]) way to understand a series of entangled questions - why people use space, how they interact with a building, how a structure is constructed, what technologies are used, construction time and cost, risk, relationship to building codes, building inspectors et cetera. So to me, a form of thought that thinks asking "why" is "insanity or cult formation" is very well-meaning but ill-informed in terms of much forms of action. It works on the screen, but it doesn't work when it interfaces with complexity. Or take it this way. Logic-based thinking works in a highly controlled environment, where the logical axioms are pure and easy. Heuristic-based action works in a highly complex environment, where there are no axioms, rules are always bent, and things are always interconnected in highly unpredictable ways. > "What"/"How" is normally the question that leads to insight and paradigm change in my experience. Sure, I've read SSR. So to clarify, your argument is that spending time on 'why' is "at best wasteful", and thus "what"/"how" is better? I think we agree here, but I'd say that it seems like you're in disagreement with your previous answer. > I'm so confused. You think the reason people have proposed stop and frisk is because they haven't considered what the major factors correlating with future crime are? > How do you think government officials decide which policies to enact? They went to some of our nations best schools (yes, that's meant to be a critique of those schools). It's not like doing what social science has been doing, only harder, will somehow change the results we're seeing. First of all, yes, I do! History has proven that people have been consistently wrong in thinking about policy. At some point, the country was against miscegenation as a policy, for goodness's sake. Why wouldn't they be now? You assume a neat synchronous relationship between knowledge and policies, so lack of knowledge is the reason why good policies are not being enacted, and thus if bad policies are being enacted, then the current forms of knowledge practice (what you call "social science") are inadequate. I don't think you've considered the results of politics, of democracy, of messy decision-making practices between groups of people who disagree. This often manifests as a temporal delay. Take climate change, for example. Every sane scientist in the field agrees that climate change is a real thing. Yet there are not enough policies actively addressing the issue. Couldn't I say: "You think the reason people haven't addressed climate change is because they haven't considered what the major factors correlating with future climate change are? They must have since they went to good schools, so if there aren't policies, then it must be that our current science about climate change is bunk." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics --- > "Politics is the Mind-Killer" Politics is endlessly fascinating to me; if you want a merger between politics-thinking and statistics or modeling, The Parable of the Polygons (http://ncase.me/polygons/ http://ncase.me/polygons/) (which is a model of the Schelling Segregation Model) is an interesting project.

by dlss 10y ago

brenschluss 10y ago

> the methods commonly used in social sciences departments What methods? Could you clarify? There's an immense diversity within 'social sciences' departments; are you including all forms of history/theory, including the history of technology as well? > There are groups of statistically minded people who are making headway avoiding the traps of "common sense". http://www.givewell.org http://www.givewell.org might be a good introduction I'm familiar with Givewell. As a non-profit, Givewell does good work, but they perform a form of meta analysis of other non-profits, and do not do direct work. As a result, Givewell isn't a good example of "real world action", I'd love to see another example of 'real world action' that you think makes good judgment under uncertainty that isn't a form of meta-analysis. As a software developer AND architect (the bricks and mortar kind, not the software kind), I find that my logic-oriented education is often less-than helpful on the construction site. What's more important is a holistic (or cybernetics[1]) way to understand a series of entangled questions - why people use space, how they interact with a building, how a structure is constructed, what technologies are used, construction time and cost, risk, relationship to building codes, building inspectors et cetera. So to me, a form of thought that thinks asking "why" is "insanity or cult formation" is very well-meaning but ill-informed in terms of much forms of action. It works on the screen, but it doesn't work when it interfaces with complexity. Or take it this way. Logic-based thinking works in a highly controlled environment, where the logical axioms are pure and easy. Heuristic-based action works in a highly complex environment, where there are no axioms, rules are always bent, and things are always interconnected in highly unpredictable ways. > "What"/"How" is normally the question that leads to insight and paradigm change in my experience. Sure, I've read SSR. So to clarify, your argument is that spending time on 'why' is "at best wasteful", and thus "what"/"how" is better? I think we agree here, but I'd say that it seems like you're in disagreement with your previous answer. > I'm so confused. You think the reason people have proposed stop and frisk is because they haven't considered what the major factors correlating with future crime are? > How do you think government officials decide which policies to enact? They went to some of our nations best schools (yes, that's meant to be a critique of those schools). It's not like doing what social science has been doing, only harder, will somehow change the results we're seeing. First of all, yes, I do! History has proven that people have been consistently wrong in thinking about policy. At some point, the country was against miscegenation as a policy, for goodness's sake. Why wouldn't they be now? You assume a neat synchronous relationship between knowledge and policies, so lack of knowledge is the reason why good policies are not being enacted, and thus if bad policies are being enacted, then the current forms of knowledge practice (what you call "social science") are inadequate. I don't think you've considered the results of politics, of democracy, of messy decision-making practices between groups of people who disagree. This often manifests as a temporal delay. Take climate change, for example. Every sane scientist in the field agrees that climate change is a real thing. Yet there are not enough policies actively addressing the issue. Couldn't I say: "You think the reason people haven't addressed climate change is because they haven't considered what the major factors correlating with future climate change are? They must have since they went to good schools, so if there aren't policies, then it must be that our current science about climate change is bunk." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics --- > "Politics is the Mind-Killer" Politics is endlessly fascinating to me; if you want a merger between politics-thinking and statistics or modeling, The Parable of the Polygons (http://ncase.me/polygons/ http://ncase.me/polygons/) (which is a model of the Schelling Segregation Model) is an interesting project.