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Lived experience, while important, should be treated like anecdotes. While anecdotes are valuable, the plural of anecdote != data. Should we help people whose

by bhupy 6y ago

Lived experience, while important, should be treated like anecdotes. While anecdotes are valuable, the plural of anecdote != data. Should we help people whose lived experience is worse than ours? Absolutely. Does the mere existence of people whose lived experience contradicts that of the aggregate majority suggest that we ought to upend our systems? No, and that's the point. In general, when we see (overwhelming) empirical outcomes that don't confirm our priors, we ought to shift our priors. We do this in the context of climate change, there's no reason we shouldn't also do this in the context of the economy and labor markets.

adamsea 6y ago
For sure. I think the question is what does the empirical evidence say in this case. And, for complex issues where drawing conclusions from data is nontrivial, using judgement.
anemoiac 6y ago
Lived experience is certainly anecdotal, and I agree that anecdotes don’t simply transform into data when aggregated. That’s not the point I was trying to make. You ask, “Does the mere existence of people whose lived experience contradicts that of the aggregate majority suggest that we ought to upend our systems?” First of all, I’ve said nothing regarding “upending our systems.” More importantly — just as anecdotes != data, neither can data replace the role of lived experience. If many people feel like they’re struggling today, that doesn’t contradict data saying that they should be making more money in less time - to me, it suggests that there may be more to the “equation” of positive lived experience than income. In other words, while I don’t think that it’s feasible to precisely compare the “difficulty” of living across different eras, it’s certainly possible that people can be making more money than ever before and also struggling en masse. The whole of life can’t be explained by simple economic data. Scratch that - the whole of economic life can’t even by explained by economic data... I expanded on this concept in a reply to another comment of yours, but you may not have seen it.

by bhupy 6y ago

adamsea 6y ago

For sure. I think the question is what does the empirical evidence say in this case. And, for complex issues where drawing conclusions from data is nontrivial, using judgement.

anemoiac 6y ago

Lived experience is certainly anecdotal, and I agree that anecdotes don’t simply transform into data when aggregated. That’s not the point I was trying to make. You ask, “Does the mere existence of people whose lived experience contradicts that of the aggregate majority suggest that we ought to upend our systems?” First of all, I’ve said nothing regarding “upending our systems.” More importantly — just as anecdotes != data, neither can data replace the role of lived experience. If many people feel like they’re struggling today, that doesn’t contradict data saying that they should be making more money in less time - to me, it suggests that there may be more to the “equation” of positive lived experience than income. In other words, while I don’t think that it’s feasible to precisely compare the “difficulty” of living across different eras, it’s certainly possible that people can be making more money than ever before and also struggling en masse. The whole of life can’t be explained by simple economic data. Scratch that - the whole of economic life can’t even by explained by economic data... I expanded on this concept in a reply to another comment of yours, but you may not have seen it.