5 ms·
McNamara Fallacy
- dookahku 2y agothis reminds me of when Yahoo banned work from home in the late 2000s because they said the VPN data said they weren't working
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- uoaei 2y agoThis comes up constantly in debates around philosophy of science, particularly physics, but also the mind.
- pflenker 2y agoI see that a lot in hiring. We can measure grades and experience, we can count diplomas or certifications, so we focus on these things and disregard soft skills like the ability to work with other people.
- itsoktocry 2y ago>so we focus on these things and disregard soft skills like the ability to work with other people. Because it's been shown, time and time again, that people can't really judge "good" soft skills versus "bad".
- silvestrov 2y agomore likely: it is much easier for awful people to temporarily pretend to be a nice person than it is to trick grades.
- pflenker 2y agothat’s literally what TFA is about.
- pflenker 2y agoIt’s not a black and white thing. You can increase the likelihood of finding someone suitable for the work by various means. For example, if someone who will actually work with the person closely is involved in the hiring process you increase the likelihood of spotting someone who might not be a good fit. It’s a tricky topic and for sure not a binary yes/no thing, but giving up on it because it can’t be done is the wrong response (and also what the article is about)
- swframe2 2y agoI think more generally, the issue is that people want to believe lies.
- antisthenes 2y agoIt's only a fallacy if you have garbage or incomplete data. Someone with poor reading comprehension will read this as "trusting the data over a more holistic approach", when the actual criticism would be something like "making decisions based on metrics than can be easily measured, rather than ALL metrics is a mistake". Generally speaking, if you have comprehensive and complete data and domain competence, it is not a mistake to make a decision based on objective metrics.
- yusefnapora 2y agoHave you ever been in _any_ situation in which you've had complete data?
- antisthenes 2y agoAbsolutely, it happens all the time. I'm surprised to even hear this question on a nerdy computer platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory Plenty of games with complete information. Here's a famous one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess
- arp242 2y agoAny real-world situation (outside of simple trivial matters)? War, health care, immigration, economics, running a business, those kind of things. Chess is just a game and not very important. No one is talking about games here. Getting a good overview of what happens at scale is exceedingly hard, and on pretty much all of this you need to take in more inputs than what can be strictly quantified.
- antisthenes 2y ago> Any real-world situation (outside of simple trivial matters)? I knew someone would come along and move the goalposts. Why don't you provide an example then? Or you come up with an example where having additional and relevant data is explicitly _worse_ for the outcome.
- sp332 2y agoA long, informed, and funny essay about this recently https://docseuss.medium.com/the-biggest-threat-facing-your-team-whether-youre-a-game-developer-or-a-tech-founder-or-a-ceo-is-8cd1ad359508 https://docseuss.medium.com/the-biggest-threat-facing-your-t...
- YouWhy 2y agoOne of my acquaintances wrote this piece a couple of years back, asking if Meta/FB's use of product engagement metrics as a signal for IC performance was a case of the McNamara fallacy: https://4qbits.com/posts/2022-02-04-the-meta-fb-downturn-as-a-case-of-the-mcnamara-disease.html https://4qbits.com/posts/2022-02-04-the-meta-fb-downturn-as-...
- moribvndvs 2y agoThe technological society[0] in practice 0 - https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSociety https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSoci...
- smitty1e 2y agoYou can't mention RSM without mentioning PPBS, which he begat and continues to bleed money at a Pentagon near you => https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Output_budgeting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Output_budgeting