4 ms·

Coin flips are actually okay when you don't know something: Create many small experiments instead of trying the "world formula" solution. Also, create an enviro

Coin flips are actually okay when you don't know something: Create many small experiments instead of trying the "world formula" solution. Also, create an environment where responsibility and decision making authority is as low as possible, not as high as possible - meaning where both the data and the consequences can both be found together. Oh and use "muddling through" more openly, because that's what life is about no matter how much data you collect. So don't pretend that there even IS an "optimal" answer, and/or that you know it and/or even that anyone can find it. Let's admit that we are all just trying things and that failure IS an option. So create systems that a) actually encourage and allow experimenting, and b) let those fail safely.

spangry 10y ago
While I respect what you're saying, and agree to a limited extent, I don't agree with the idea that people, and society, are completely impermeable to analysis. Perhaps you truly are neutral on the question of democrats and republicans, and have no preference regarding Hillary, Trump, Sanders or Kim-Jong Un (given your view that we can only understand something through experiment and direct experience, and not through logic, reasoning and extrapolation). However, if you do happen to have political opinions (that you think are well-reasoned), then you are engaging in this form of 'misguided analysis' that economists also engage in (albeit unknowingly). As for the 'economists' who claim to 'know the optimal answer', I guess I've just been fortunate to have never encountered one. More precisely, I've never run in to one in the various federal economic public policy organisations where I've spent the majority of my career. Where do they hang out? And good luck designing experiments around, say, national healthcare policy that 'fail safely'. I think you'll find that an alarming number of them end up 'failing deadly'.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  I don't agree with the idea that people, and society, are completely impermeable to analysis. Nice strawman - I never said that. This is just like medicine: You can theorize all you want, but in the end only a clinical trial shows you if your plans actually work. The subject is too complex. All you can do with your models is use them as input into the trials. If you skip trials you will get disaster and failure on an unsafe scale. And good luck designing experiments around, say, national healthcare policy If you don't you will still run a trial - only that your trial is a very large population. Good luck with that.

spangry 10y ago

While I respect what you're saying, and agree to a limited extent, I don't agree with the idea that people, and society, are completely impermeable to analysis. Perhaps you truly are neutral on the question of democrats and republicans, and have no preference regarding Hillary, Trump, Sanders or Kim-Jong Un (given your view that we can only understand something through experiment and direct experience, and not through logic, reasoning and extrapolation). However, if you do happen to have political opinions (that you think are well-reasoned), then you are engaging in this form of 'misguided analysis' that economists also engage in (albeit unknowingly). As for the 'economists' who claim to 'know the optimal answer', I guess I've just been fortunate to have never encountered one. More precisely, I've never run in to one in the various federal economic public policy organisations where I've spent the majority of my career. Where do they hang out? And good luck designing experiments around, say, national healthcare policy that 'fail safely'. I think you'll find that an alarming number of them end up 'failing deadly'.

Noseshine 10y ago
I don't agree with the idea that people, and society, are completely impermeable to analysis. Nice strawman - I never said that. This is just like medicine: You can theorize all you want, but in the end only a clinical trial shows you if your plans actually work. The subject is too complex. All you can do with your models is use them as input into the trials. If you skip trials you will get disaster and failure on an unsafe scale. And good luck designing experiments around, say, national healthcare policy If you don't you will still run a trial - only that your trial is a very large population. Good luck with that.