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Why are we just focused on the "stupid" developer here - the sort who thinks your later "wow the 'close popup' button is so popular" example is a good reason to
by majormajor 4y ago
Why are we just focused on the "stupid" developer here - the sort who thinks your later "wow the 'close popup' button is so popular" example is a good reason to add more popups?
Do we think the people making calls like that would suddenly have great ideas in the absence of data?
Meanwhile, there are plenty of folks out there who can reason about data in less blindly idiotic ways.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoLet's take a different example. Let's say you have a search box. Option A generates 10 times more searches than option B. This may mean the search box is 10 times more useful than in the B case, or the users require 10 times as many searches to find what they want. Looking at the data, you really can't tell. Even without the data, you can dogfood your application and fairly quickly tell whether the feature is good or bad. I'm not saying anyone is stupid. Naive, perhaps, but not stupid. The problem is that interpreting data is difficult. Incredibly difficult. Scientists, who construct experiments and interpret experimental data for a living, with a decade of education behind their back, get this wrong all the time.
- cardanome 4y ago> Do we think the people making calls like that would suddenly have great ideas in the absence of data? Personally, I would be so bold to suggest that yes the availability of data for people ill equipped to interpret it can lead to WORSE decisions than the absence of data. That is because statistics and the general skill to correctly interpret data is actively counterintuitive. Untrained people will be more likely to generate wrong conclusions than right conclusions. So, yes data in the wrong hands can and will be harmful.