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Well, is it calculable? If yes, then a sufficiently complex spreadsheet ought to be able to do the job. However with no auditing, we don’t know whether Brian’s
by SllX 5y ago
Well, is it calculable? If yes, then a sufficiently complex spreadsheet ought to be able to do the job.
However with no auditing, we don’t know whether Brian’s did, or even approached the level of complexity needed to in his calculations. He tried to bring math to a subject that is typically argued through rhetoric and that’s respectable enough.
- civilized 5y agoCounterfactuals can be calculated, but the results will depend on other counterfactuals. There's no getting away from speculating about counterfactuals. If the speculative estimates that went into Caplan's spreadsheets were essentially made up, then it's garbage in garbage out.
- SllX 5y agoSure, but I’m not making that call, nor endeavoring to although I might look at these spreadsheets when I have some time. Just pointing out that if this is calculable, then a sufficiently complex spreadsheet ought to be able to do the job.
- thetallstick 5y ago> If the speculative estimates that went into Caplan's spreadsheets were essentially made up When Caplan released the spreadsheet and asked people to "check his math" I am pretty sure what he was really asking was for people to test that exact conditional.
- civilized 5y agoI think he actually believes the math. The person who would do it as a troll, as a reductio ad absurdum against the inputs, is me. Except I'm too lazy.
- 8note 5y agoDebugging spreadsheets is pretty notoriously difficult for showing that it does the expected thing, let alone figuring out what assumptions have been made and how valid they are
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoI think the interesting point is that apparently very few people even tried. I don't know how everyone is dancing around that in this thread but that's what Caplan seems fascinated by in this blog post. He's not saying he's right because nobody checked them, or that everyone ought to have. He's fascinated that nobody chose to challenge his conclusions on quantitative grounds. And he gives some anecdotes that suggest that this is because people in the field are not interested in crafting optimal policy -- which does almost by definition require some amount quantitative approaches -- they are interested in publishing.
- tsimionescu 5y agoNo, why would you expect something like "the value of education" to be calculable? Do you think the value of art is calculable? Sure, in some vague far away future where we can predict human behavior through maths, it is probably possible, though likely forever intractable. But we are so obviously too far from that for it to be worthwhile to check a spreadsheet.