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I see responses like this all the time and to me they are so bizarre. It seems to imply that the only valid way to accrue knowledge is by going to the high pr

by anm89 5y ago

I see responses like this all the time and to me they are so bizarre. It seems to imply that the only valid way to accrue knowledge is by going to the high priests at the university systems and performing the sacred study rituals because self obviously this is the one true way of producing knowledge. Should i put my hand into an open flame? I dont know,tough to say without performing a meta study of existing flame temperature studies to confirm what the best journals think. otherwise theres just no way to know so I'll just have to test it out. Im not against science or the scientific method. In fact im extremely pro. but it's not the only way to come come valid conclusions about things. im going to go ahead and suggest that on average learning about finance is going to be helpful for people to manage their finances. call me a crackpot but It's not particularly important for me to verify this belief with a study. and all of this is before you get into the issues with the non trivial number of junk papers published in social science and psychology journals and the like that at best seem to say that even in cases of more difficult questions where more rigorous methods are valuable, this system of knowledge production fails a non trivial amount of the time.

rflrob 5y ago
Experiment is surely not the only way to acquire knowledge, but it’s one of the easiest ways to reduce the frequency of tricking yourself into reinforcing what you wanted to believe to begin with. As you say, the system of knowledge production is imperfect, so let’s try to use rigorous tools more often, not less. I think we all agree that financial literacy is probably, on average, good. But, as the parent post said, the magnitude is unknown. Is it the “passport to financial freedom”, in which case it’s probably reasonable to spend a lot of class time in school on it? Or is it just nice to have, and outcomes are mostly dependent on other factors, in which case we could just as well use those classroom hours for something else. This is a hard thing to disentangle from good survey data, and nearly impossible from the kind of anecdotal reporting in most of the article. Personally, I think some of the article cuts against its own thesis. “ Leanne Fielden fits the bill for the disadvantaged. She is an unemployed woman living in the deprived Middlesbrough region. […] Her profile belies her own financial expertise. “I’m fortunate that I’ve worked for Barclaycard and Visa. I often help family and friends with money issues,” she says. So she herself has no fear of finance.” If financial literacy were a magic bullet, why is she disadvantaged? Let’s not motte and Bailey this argument from the title (“financial literacy is a passport to financial freedom”) to the more defensible position of “financial literacy is helpful, in most situations”.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  “ Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." -Mike Tyson I take the view that it doesn’t matter how financially literate you are when you have limited wealth to begin with and something in life happens that wipes most of it out. This isn’t to say being financially savvy isn’t useful, but having that literacy doesn’t necessarily insulate you from hardship.
afuchs 5y ago
> ... > and all of this is before you get into the issues with the non trivial number of junk papers published in social science and psychology journals and the like that at best seem to say that even in cases of more difficult questions where more rigorous methods are valuable, this system of knowledge production fails a non trivial amount of the time. As an aside, this hasn't been limited to just soft sciences like the humanities, social sciences, psychology, and the like. Going back several years, a few MIT students created a random paper generator and used it to create and submit papers that were accepted into computer science related conferences [1]. Some, many seemingly motivated by politics, have pulled similar stunts with fields related to social sciences [2]. But this ignores that the same issue is also prevalent in other areas that could be labeled as hard sciences [1]. (Of course, this is ignoring the humongous amount of papers that represent extremely niche incremental advancements that advance the state of the art in very specific but extremely limited areas.) [1] https://news.mit.edu/2015/how-three-mit-students-fooled-scientific-journals-0414 https://news.mit.edu/2015/how-three-mit-students-fooled-scie... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair
- anm89 5y ago
  The compsci papers were obly accepted in a non reviewed setting. Whereas the sokol squared papers were accepted into "reputable" journals

by anm89 5y ago

rflrob 5y ago

Experiment is surely not the only way to acquire knowledge, but it’s one of the easiest ways to reduce the frequency of tricking yourself into reinforcing what you wanted to believe to begin with. As you say, the system of knowledge production is imperfect, so let’s try to use rigorous tools more often, not less. I think we all agree that financial literacy is probably, on average, good. But, as the parent post said, the magnitude is unknown. Is it the “passport to financial freedom”, in which case it’s probably reasonable to spend a lot of class time in school on it? Or is it just nice to have, and outcomes are mostly dependent on other factors, in which case we could just as well use those classroom hours for something else. This is a hard thing to disentangle from good survey data, and nearly impossible from the kind of anecdotal reporting in most of the article. Personally, I think some of the article cuts against its own thesis. “ Leanne Fielden fits the bill for the disadvantaged. She is an unemployed woman living in the deprived Middlesbrough region. […] Her profile belies her own financial expertise. “I’m fortunate that I’ve worked for Barclaycard and Visa. I often help family and friends with money issues,” she says. So she herself has no fear of finance.” If financial literacy were a magic bullet, why is she disadvantaged? Let’s not motte and Bailey this argument from the title (“financial literacy is a passport to financial freedom”) to the more defensible position of “financial literacy is helpful, in most situations”.

BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
“ Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." -Mike Tyson I take the view that it doesn’t matter how financially literate you are when you have limited wealth to begin with and something in life happens that wipes most of it out. This isn’t to say being financially savvy isn’t useful, but having that literacy doesn’t necessarily insulate you from hardship.

afuchs 5y ago

> ... > and all of this is before you get into the issues with the non trivial number of junk papers published in social science and psychology journals and the like that at best seem to say that even in cases of more difficult questions where more rigorous methods are valuable, this system of knowledge production fails a non trivial amount of the time. As an aside, this hasn't been limited to just soft sciences like the humanities, social sciences, psychology, and the like. Going back several years, a few MIT students created a random paper generator and used it to create and submit papers that were accepted into computer science related conferences [1]. Some, many seemingly motivated by politics, have pulled similar stunts with fields related to social sciences [2]. But this ignores that the same issue is also prevalent in other areas that could be labeled as hard sciences [1]. (Of course, this is ignoring the humongous amount of papers that represent extremely niche incremental advancements that advance the state of the art in very specific but extremely limited areas.) [1] https://news.mit.edu/2015/how-three-mit-students-fooled-scientific-journals-0414 https://news.mit.edu/2015/how-three-mit-students-fooled-scie... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair

anm89 5y ago
The compsci papers were obly accepted in a non reviewed setting. Whereas the sokol squared papers were accepted into "reputable" journals