3 ms·

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violence.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violence.pdf Pinker does not know how to count. What is this doing here?

whitepoplar 10y ago
I agree. NNT makes a surprisingly cogent argument for why Pinker is incorrect. In NNT's words: "Charlatan!".
cossatot 10y ago
I don't think that this paper is the nail in the coffin that NNT or his groupies present it as. There are a lot of arbitrary transformations in the data that, while acceptable and in many cases enlightening, are by no means the only way of analyzing it. For example, having a bounded function between the population min and max and then a dual function that goes to infinity may help, but it's not immediatly obvious why. I find the rescaling of the data to be a fraction of the population (as Pinker did) to be more natural than their functional normalization, in spite of their objections. I also think that analyzing data in a cumulative fashion, rather than simply as events that occurred in a point in time (with uncertainty) is far more appropriate in the ease of simultaneously handling both short-duration events (WWII, US Civil War) and protracted violent conflicts (i.e. Mongol invasion, Hundred Years War). Then, breaks in slope in the cumulative w/ time function can be much more easily discerned. (Also do this with your budgeting/accounting instead of your monthly expenditures or whatever to see if your spending habits are changing). But again, looking at the cumulative function is great for getting a running tally through time but has problems with normalization. The point here is not necessarily that they did anything wrong, but that it's an ambiguous situation with lots of what Andrew Gelman refers to as 'researcher degrees of freedom'[1], and it's necessary to read all of it critically, and realize what researchers are doing and why. edit: [1]: http://andrewgelman.com/2012/11/01/researcher-degrees-of-freedom/ http://andrewgelman.com/2012/11/01/researcher-degrees-of-fre...
- pierre_d528 10y ago
  Mr. cossatot, Would you flesh out your ideas and submit them to Mr. Taleb? You proving Mr. Taleb wrong would be quite an achievement and probably an instructive one. If you cannot, please keep unjustified opinions to yourself.
oxymoron 10y ago
It's a bit unfair to claim that a person can't have _anything_ interesting to say in regards to _any_ subject because you disagree with the statistical methods in one of his books, isn't it? Moreover, not all of Better Angels relies on a statistical argument, and so it might still be the case that Pinker has some interesting insights into the nature of violence.
- pierre_d528 10y ago
  I think that your pseudo is a bit too long, could you remove the first 3 letters? You see? Also, the motto of Harvard is "Veritas" not "Bullshitass".
  - oxymoron 10y ago
    So which parts of Chapter 7 and 8 - the ones that deals with the applicable neurology and psycology - do you disagree with? I presume that the chapter on inner demons felt very relatable when you read it, pierre? :) Please do elaborate on your concerns with the Blank Slate and The Sense of Style while your at it.

whitepoplar 10y ago

I agree. NNT makes a surprisingly cogent argument for why Pinker is incorrect. In NNT's words: "Charlatan!".

cossatot 10y ago

I don't think that this paper is the nail in the coffin that NNT or his groupies present it as. There are a lot of arbitrary transformations in the data that, while acceptable and in many cases enlightening, are by no means the only way of analyzing it. For example, having a bounded function between the population min and max and then a dual function that goes to infinity may help, but it's not immediatly obvious why. I find the rescaling of the data to be a fraction of the population (as Pinker did) to be more natural than their functional normalization, in spite of their objections. I also think that analyzing data in a cumulative fashion, rather than simply as events that occurred in a point in time (with uncertainty) is far more appropriate in the ease of simultaneously handling both short-duration events (WWII, US Civil War) and protracted violent conflicts (i.e. Mongol invasion, Hundred Years War). Then, breaks in slope in the cumulative w/ time function can be much more easily discerned. (Also do this with your budgeting/accounting instead of your monthly expenditures or whatever to see if your spending habits are changing). But again, looking at the cumulative function is great for getting a running tally through time but has problems with normalization. The point here is not necessarily that they did anything wrong, but that it's an ambiguous situation with lots of what Andrew Gelman refers to as 'researcher degrees of freedom'[1], and it's necessary to read all of it critically, and realize what researchers are doing and why. edit: [1]: http://andrewgelman.com/2012/11/01/researcher-degrees-of-freedom/ http://andrewgelman.com/2012/11/01/researcher-degrees-of-fre...

pierre_d528 10y ago
Mr. cossatot, Would you flesh out your ideas and submit them to Mr. Taleb? You proving Mr. Taleb wrong would be quite an achievement and probably an instructive one. If you cannot, please keep unjustified opinions to yourself.

oxymoron 10y ago

It's a bit unfair to claim that a person can't have _anything_ interesting to say in regards to _any_ subject because you disagree with the statistical methods in one of his books, isn't it? Moreover, not all of Better Angels relies on a statistical argument, and so it might still be the case that Pinker has some interesting insights into the nature of violence.

pierre_d528 10y ago
I think that your pseudo is a bit too long, could you remove the first 3 letters? You see? Also, the motto of Harvard is "Veritas" not "Bullshitass".
- oxymoron 10y ago
  So which parts of Chapter 7 and 8 - the ones that deals with the applicable neurology and psycology - do you disagree with? I presume that the chapter on inner demons felt very relatable when you read it, pierre? :) Please do elaborate on your concerns with the Blank Slate and The Sense of Style while your at it.