6 ms·

I was just thinking. I remember being part of online community for a game (starsector, if you're interested) and a user had taken it upon themselves to create

by oehpr 5y ago

I was just thinking. I remember being part of online community for a game (starsector, if you're interested) and a user had taken it upon themselves to create effectiveness measurements for the weapons in the vanilla game and in mods. To do this, they created a spreadsheet that mapped out damage per second, range, energy cost, points to use... ect. Numbered them all together, and ranked them with each other. Personally, I thought this was a valuable contribution. Plenty of mods go off the deep end with the kit they added to the game, so to me, this seemed like a valuable tool to help keep their kit in line. But the author? They thought what they had produced was an unassailable statement of fact. Many people came forward, including me, countering that the actual simulation of the game is substantially more complex than the pile of multiplication and addition they had cobbled together. But like OP's article, those criticisms weren't specifically addressing the formulas themselves, so the author didn't really consider them. This is a bit of a puerile example of course, I bet Mr. Caplan is substantially better at multiplication than my hobbyist friend trying to categorize weapons in a silly space ship game.

jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
Isn't most everything in life just piles of multiplication and addition?
- trialtrial1 5y ago
  in the same way that most of tennis is hitting a ball back and forth, yeah
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- deleted 5y ago
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whatshisface 5y ago
Doesn't asking that Caplan spend one second longer on his calculations automatically rule out everything else that anyone has ever said about the subject? That's the most interesting part of this for me - nobody's saying "you're missing some important factors, and let's add them." People are saying, "I don't know that you included all the factors, so I am going to go back to reading opinion columnists for whom 'factor' is not a word." Has everyone thought about the fact that the alternative to spreadsheets is policymakers putting their hands on their hips and saying, "Yep, $30k sounds about right for this month?"
- labcomputer 5y ago
  > nobody's saying "you're missing some important factors, and let's add them. Ok, so I’ll say it. Caplan doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. And neither did the people who he asked to check his spreadsheets. What he is trying to do, in an informal hand-waving way, is something known as causal inference. There are formal, robust ways to do causal inference, which Caplan is not using. No amount of checking his arithmetic or adding more factors is going to fix that. This would be a good place to start: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2943670/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2943670/ > Has everyone thought about the fact that the alternative to spreadsheets is policymakers putting their hands on their hips and saying, "Yep, $30k sounds about right for this month?" Well, I can’t speak for everyone else, but I don’t think about that because what you claim as fact is actually a false dilemma. The actual alternative is to do good science using the correct methods.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    The practice is not the “do good science using the correct methods”. The practice is “call for increased education spending for *waves hands* reasons”. Listen, this is the old Internet trick: people show up demanding rigorous models and evidence when they see something they don’t like, but what they like they demand nothing of.
    - pas 5y ago
      That's ... not a fallacy. It's simply extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in action. (Eg. if your Bayesian prior is already edukashion gud, and someone says giv muniez to teacherz, you can say yes, ok, dollar. But if someone says no no, it's a waste of resources you can say okay the burden of proof is on you now, have fun.)
Der_Einzige 5y ago
BTW - Starsector is an excellent, truly amazing game, and the absurd amount of data that a single run can produce also makes it a great candidate for anyone who wants to do Data Science/AI on things in the game. Basically, Mount and Blade in space but frankly, I think it's a better take on the formula. Excellent modding community (though I'm upset that the Knights Templar and Blackrock mods are still not updated...)

by oehpr 5y ago

jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago

Isn't most everything in life just piles of multiplication and addition?

trialtrial1 5y ago
in the same way that most of tennis is hitting a ball back and forth, yeah
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
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whatshisface 5y ago

Doesn't asking that Caplan spend one second longer on his calculations automatically rule out everything else that anyone has ever said about the subject? That's the most interesting part of this for me - nobody's saying "you're missing some important factors, and let's add them." People are saying, "I don't know that you included all the factors, so I am going to go back to reading opinion columnists for whom 'factor' is not a word." Has everyone thought about the fact that the alternative to spreadsheets is policymakers putting their hands on their hips and saying, "Yep, $30k sounds about right for this month?"

labcomputer 5y ago
> nobody's saying "you're missing some important factors, and let's add them. Ok, so I’ll say it. Caplan doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. And neither did the people who he asked to check his spreadsheets. What he is trying to do, in an informal hand-waving way, is something known as causal inference. There are formal, robust ways to do causal inference, which Caplan is not using. No amount of checking his arithmetic or adding more factors is going to fix that. This would be a good place to start: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2943670/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2943670/ > Has everyone thought about the fact that the alternative to spreadsheets is policymakers putting their hands on their hips and saying, "Yep, $30k sounds about right for this month?" Well, I can’t speak for everyone else, but I don’t think about that because what you claim as fact is actually a false dilemma. The actual alternative is to do good science using the correct methods.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  The practice is not the “do good science using the correct methods”. The practice is “call for increased education spending for *waves hands* reasons”. Listen, this is the old Internet trick: people show up demanding rigorous models and evidence when they see something they don’t like, but what they like they demand nothing of.
  - pas 5y ago
    That's ... not a fallacy. It's simply extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in action. (Eg. if your Bayesian prior is already edukashion gud, and someone says giv muniez to teacherz, you can say yes, ok, dollar. But if someone says no no, it's a waste of resources you can say okay the burden of proof is on you now, have fun.)

Der_Einzige 5y ago

BTW - Starsector is an excellent, truly amazing game, and the absurd amount of data that a single run can produce also makes it a great candidate for anyone who wants to do Data Science/AI on things in the game. Basically, Mount and Blade in space but frankly, I think it's a better take on the formula. Excellent modding community (though I'm upset that the Knights Templar and Blackrock mods are still not updated...)