3 ms·
Why measure something if you don’t intend to change it?
by dd36 4y ago
Why measure something if you don’t intend to change it?
- astrange 4y agoSo you can make sure not to accidentally change it.
- lapetitejort 4y agoAnd if one party trends more towards violent extremism, they get boosted the same as before?
- astrange 4y agoWhat's that got to do with accidental effects of unrelated software changes?
- gentoo 4y agoif your hate speech filter hits one party harder than the other, that doesn't necessarily mean it is broken
- throwaway50601 4y agoThe point is to have these statistics remain the same for the individual groups in between changes, not to measure them against each other.
- dd36 4y agoSo then why make any changes?
- throwaway50601 4y agoWhy not? If it doesn't matter but it's controversial there's no reason not to change it.
- astrange 4y agoWhat if you're changing the spam filter?
- boringg 4y agoThere are many reasons to measure things if you don't intend to change them.
- dredmorbius 4y agoYou might want to ask that of, say, astronomers, paleontologists, or even simply journalists. Observing and measuring leads to understanding. As others here have noted, sometimes you want to measure to ensure that you're not inadvertently affecting an outcome or phenomenon.
- nosianu 4y ago> You might want to ask that of, say, astronomers, paleontologists, or even simply journalists. You compare scientists with businesses. One of them's job and passion is to collect knowledge for the sake of knowledge. For the other one it would be cost without gain and eliminated if they didn't do anything with it! No idea what journalists are doing in that list, what do they measure? If they want something measured they'd ask or look at other's services. Unless you mean the business that the journalists work for, but hen it's just that, a business.
- dredmorbius 4y agoI gave examples based on well-understood instances for which the reader is presumed to have the capacity to draw inferences to business-related concepts. Businesses also rely on astronomy and geology, in instances. The former is used for navigation (though far less than in the past, I'll grant), and there are certain extractive sectors with interests in geology. Risk-management as well (insurance and catastrophic risk, whether from landslides, earthquakes, volcanos, tsunami, or other phenomena). You'll also find businesses keeping tabs on weather, climate, competition (competitive intelligence), demographic data, politics, legal cases, laws, social and cultural movements, etc., etc., etc., which in many cases they have comparatively little capacity to change directly. You're also jumping late into a thread which has already given numerous other rationales for why such activities might be undertaken. Sometimes approaching a discussion from the PoV of seeing what you can learn from it rather than automatically adopting a presumptive stance of opposition or disagreement affords benefits. I recommend it strongly.