6 ms·

Welcome to the club. Now you know how Economists, healthcare professionals, skateboarders, basket weavers and anybody else whose domain knowledge runs deeper th

by Fricken 10y ago

Welcome to the club. Now you know how Economists, healthcare professionals, skateboarders, basket weavers and anybody else whose domain knowledge runs deeper than the average joe's feels whenever their area of technical expertise becomes the subject du jour for the public at large.

rickdg 10y ago
Yeah, but my kid knows cyber.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
iagovar 10y ago
This. Everyone has the same problem. And it even gets worse in the Internet, where people just pretend to know things that they don't.
- Cthulhu_ 10y ago
  Well OTOH, in the land of the blind, one-eye is king - this goes for a lot of subjects. If you can give a general introduction to AI or the latest update, you can write for thousands of online outlets, each of which attracts some views and therefore money. Simple economics. Volume pays more than quality.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    >If you can give a general introduction to AI or the latest update, you can write for thousands of online outlets, each of which attracts some views and therefore money. Oh really? Where?
zackchase 10y ago
As someone with an economics background (BA), and medical research career (concurrent with ML), I can say (subjectively), that this feels different.
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  Can you also put into words why? Sincere question, not being snarky; I also know the feeling of something feeling off but not knowing how to express it in words (yet).
  - bante 10y ago
    (I'm not the person you replied to) In more established field it tends to be that people outside the field exaggerate things because the can't put them into the context of the field i.e. they lack domain knowledge. In "tech" it seem like it's the people in the field that exaggerate things because they can't put them into the context of the world.
  - iwintermute 10y ago
    Not op, but also from economics background - the issue with economics in public perception for me is that is't became modern "religion"/ideology and moved far from proper science. Especially "mainstream" economics theory. So the issue is not that it's getting misinterpreted due to lack of understanding. The issue there is that it's getting unscientific and politicised purposefully.
    - FabHK 10y ago
      Great book on this is James Kwak's "Economism" - the abuse of purported economic insight for political purposes. As just one simple example, good old Hekscher-Olin trade theory (a neat general equilibrium model with 2 countries, 2 goods, and 2 factors of production, capital and labor) "shows" that free trade is a good thing, leading to a Pareto improvement. But of course, that's predicated on a whole host of assumptions that might or might not hold, and furthermore predicated on the assumption that the "winners" compensate the "losers", through redistribution. So, the economic case for free trade more or less includes the case for redistribution and compensation of those negatively affected by it - but that's often conveniently left out by proponents.
      - VHRanger 10y ago
backpropaganda 10y ago
I'm sure you meant to refer to underwater basket weaving.
ThomPete 10y ago
In Danish we have a word "fagidiot" which means idiot of your field. It's the kind of things that make it impossible for someone who's been in the army to enjoy a movie if they don't use the machine gun properly or a designer to appreciate the casting in the end if the typography is not kerned properly. The things that matter to someone who spent a lot of time in any given field are rarely the important things to anyone else. Edit: And no it's not pronounced with a hard g but with a soft g.
- nostoc 10y ago
  What a beautiful word.
- JSoet 10y ago
  Similar, but more similar to lots of the people mentioned in the original post is the german phrase "Gefährliches Halbwissen" or 'dangerous half-knowledge': when you know just enough to seem knowledgable about a subject, but actually have a very basic surface knowledge. (ps. I'm not a native german speaker, so sorry if I misrepresented the phrase, but this is how it was explained to me)
CuriouslyC 10y ago
On a deeper level, economists generally don't know what they're talking about. They create linear models of nonlinear systems, they assume Gaussian distribution when fat tails are common and their assumptions about rationality don't align with people's actual behavior. Trusting the models of economists to manage economies gives us the ability to trade a little bit of efficiency for a large amount of risk.
- mcguire 10y ago
  References: Steve Keene, Debunking Economics. Ignore everything but the actual arguments. Richard Thaler, Misbehaving.

by Fricken 10y ago

rickdg 10y ago

Yeah, but my kid knows cyber.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

iagovar 10y ago

This. Everyone has the same problem. And it even gets worse in the Internet, where people just pretend to know things that they don't.

Cthulhu_ 10y ago
Well OTOH, in the land of the blind, one-eye is king - this goes for a lot of subjects. If you can give a general introduction to AI or the latest update, you can write for thousands of online outlets, each of which attracts some views and therefore money. Simple economics. Volume pays more than quality.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >If you can give a general introduction to AI or the latest update, you can write for thousands of online outlets, each of which attracts some views and therefore money. Oh really? Where?

zackchase 10y ago

As someone with an economics background (BA), and medical research career (concurrent with ML), I can say (subjectively), that this feels different.

vanderZwan 10y ago
Can you also put into words why? Sincere question, not being snarky; I also know the feeling of something feeling off but not knowing how to express it in words (yet).
- bante 10y ago
  (I'm not the person you replied to) In more established field it tends to be that people outside the field exaggerate things because the can't put them into the context of the field i.e. they lack domain knowledge. In "tech" it seem like it's the people in the field that exaggerate things because they can't put them into the context of the world.
- iwintermute 10y ago
  Not op, but also from economics background - the issue with economics in public perception for me is that is't became modern "religion"/ideology and moved far from proper science. Especially "mainstream" economics theory. So the issue is not that it's getting misinterpreted due to lack of understanding. The issue there is that it's getting unscientific and politicised purposefully.
  - FabHK 10y ago
    Great book on this is James Kwak's "Economism" - the abuse of purported economic insight for political purposes. As just one simple example, good old Hekscher-Olin trade theory (a neat general equilibrium model with 2 countries, 2 goods, and 2 factors of production, capital and labor) "shows" that free trade is a good thing, leading to a Pareto improvement. But of course, that's predicated on a whole host of assumptions that might or might not hold, and furthermore predicated on the assumption that the "winners" compensate the "losers", through redistribution. So, the economic case for free trade more or less includes the case for redistribution and compensation of those negatively affected by it - but that's often conveniently left out by proponents.
    - VHRanger 10y ago

backpropaganda 10y ago

I'm sure you meant to refer to underwater basket weaving.

ThomPete 10y ago

In Danish we have a word "fagidiot" which means idiot of your field. It's the kind of things that make it impossible for someone who's been in the army to enjoy a movie if they don't use the machine gun properly or a designer to appreciate the casting in the end if the typography is not kerned properly. The things that matter to someone who spent a lot of time in any given field are rarely the important things to anyone else. Edit: And no it's not pronounced with a hard g but with a soft g.

nostoc 10y ago
What a beautiful word.
JSoet 10y ago
Similar, but more similar to lots of the people mentioned in the original post is the german phrase "Gefährliches Halbwissen" or 'dangerous half-knowledge': when you know just enough to seem knowledgable about a subject, but actually have a very basic surface knowledge. (ps. I'm not a native german speaker, so sorry if I misrepresented the phrase, but this is how it was explained to me)

CuriouslyC 10y ago

On a deeper level, economists generally don't know what they're talking about. They create linear models of nonlinear systems, they assume Gaussian distribution when fat tails are common and their assumptions about rationality don't align with people's actual behavior. Trusting the models of economists to manage economies gives us the ability to trade a little bit of efficiency for a large amount of risk.

mcguire 10y ago
References: Steve Keene, Debunking Economics. Ignore everything but the actual arguments. Richard Thaler, Misbehaving.