6 ms·

Reminds me of a funny WWII story: Kenneth Arrow and his statisticians found that their long-range forecasts were no better than numbers pulled out of a hat. Th

by lampiaio 11mo ago

Reminds me of a funny WWII story: Kenneth Arrow and his statisticians found that their long-range forecasts were no better than numbers pulled out of a hat. The forecasters agreed and asked their superiors to be relieved of this duty. The reply was: "The Commanding General is well aware that the forecasts are no good. However he needs them for planning purposes."

empath75 11mo ago
There is a fairly compelling argument that divination in the ancient world was not a useless waste of time, as is commonly assumed, but that having either a process or a person that can make essentially random choices for them allowed people to make hard, consequential decisions where they might otherwise be paralyzed, especially when the penalty for not acting was worse than making a mistake.
- twoodfin 11mo ago
  Fascinating. I suppose it also encourages developing adaptable strategies that accommodate imperfect information, vs. succumbing to wishful thinking or other forms of cognitive bias.
- OisinMoran 11mo ago
  I've also read that a source of randomness like that could help prevent things like over-extracting some land
- tekkk 11mo ago
  Never thought of that. Probably a bit too generous given that it could be just as well waste of time and resources, nevermind the bias of the voodoo doctor. Most of it was just weirdly provided therapy I suppose to relieve stress. But it is funny that humans put a great lot of weight on social contracts and being given explicit orders, maybe even publicly, must help pursuing action instead of rumination. Especially in a world where things seemed to happen randomly anyway.
  - schiffern 11mo ago
    "Evolution doesn't optimize for correctness, it optimizes for minimum error cost." It's a subtle but important distinction.
    - generativenoise 11mo ago
      That is such a good line. Another important note is the time horizon of that error function is often quite short.
- jeffparsons 11mo ago
  Additionally, what has been the correct choice five years in a row might be catastrophically wrong in the sixth year. We need some randomness injected into our behaviour so that some people are always making "suboptimal" choices, to stop everyone from crowding into one local maximum and then getting swept away when the rare but inevitable flood comes along.
- Bjartr 11mo ago
  IIRC, the value of randomness went even further than that. I think it was in the allocation of land for rice paddies. I-ching was used to decide if any given farmer's land was to be used that year or something like that. The benefit wasn't divination selecting better land, but by way of random selection, gave an impersonal excuse to leave fields unplanted some years, which is beneficial in the long term to overall yield.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
cogman10 11mo ago
I think it was a stats class where I learned this, but as it turns out bad weather is less common than good weather. To be a fairly accurate weather person, you merely need to say "there will be no precipitation" and you'll be right like 90% of the time anywhere on earth. What makes that funny is that historically, weather forecasters have been less than 90% accurate. Now, I will say that today's weather models are pretty dang amazing. The 10 day forecast rarely wrong for me.
- mikestorrent 11mo ago
  Your fairly accurate weather person is going to have to stay away from Vancouver / the Pacific Northwest ;-)
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- strangegecko 11mo ago
  I regularly encounter days when today's forecast is wrong and even in conflict with the current situation. E.g. the weather app tells me there's a drizzle all day and currently and yet it's entirely dry. The opposite happens too. Days of rain often shift in increments of days one or two days before as well. I'd say it's location specific how accurate predictions are.
  - jillesvangurp 11mo ago
    Mostly that might be down to micro climate and similar highly regional variation in weather. Here in Berlin, predictions that it will rain or when it will rain are often too pessimistic because the city is a bit warmer and drier than the surrounding areas, which is where the airports are. Tegel, now closed is no the North West, Brandenburg airport is on the South East. They are about 20km apart. The long decommissioned Tempelhof is actually in the middle of the city but I doubt that there still is a weather station there. Airports are the big consumers of, and important sources of weather data used for making predictions (in addition to satellite data, and weather stations elsewhere). It's more important that the predictions are correct there than 10-15 km away in the downtown areas. Additionally, many weather apps aren't really precise about where their focus is. You set the city typically; not a postal code. So they'll predict it will rain in Berlin. But it's a big city and that doesn't mean it's going to rain everywhere in the city. It won't do neighborhood by neighborhood predictions. It's technically correct even if not a drop falls where you are. And of course professional users of weather predictions mainly care about the type of weather they need to plan for, which for airports is things like Thunderstorms, poor visibility, etc. For short term planning, weather radar apps are popular here. Great stuff for guestimating whether you can get home by bike without getting caught up in a big shower. Thunderstorms are very common here throughout the summer but you can see the systems moving west to east hours in advance on the radar apps.
vismit2000 11mo ago
As Dwight D. Eisenhower says: "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

empath75 11mo ago

There is a fairly compelling argument that divination in the ancient world was not a useless waste of time, as is commonly assumed, but that having either a process or a person that can make essentially random choices for them allowed people to make hard, consequential decisions where they might otherwise be paralyzed, especially when the penalty for not acting was worse than making a mistake.

twoodfin 11mo ago
Fascinating. I suppose it also encourages developing adaptable strategies that accommodate imperfect information, vs. succumbing to wishful thinking or other forms of cognitive bias.
OisinMoran 11mo ago
I've also read that a source of randomness like that could help prevent things like over-extracting some land
tekkk 11mo ago
Never thought of that. Probably a bit too generous given that it could be just as well waste of time and resources, nevermind the bias of the voodoo doctor. Most of it was just weirdly provided therapy I suppose to relieve stress. But it is funny that humans put a great lot of weight on social contracts and being given explicit orders, maybe even publicly, must help pursuing action instead of rumination. Especially in a world where things seemed to happen randomly anyway.
- schiffern 11mo ago
  "Evolution doesn't optimize for correctness, it optimizes for minimum error cost." It's a subtle but important distinction.
  - generativenoise 11mo ago
    That is such a good line. Another important note is the time horizon of that error function is often quite short.
jeffparsons 11mo ago
Additionally, what has been the correct choice five years in a row might be catastrophically wrong in the sixth year. We need some randomness injected into our behaviour so that some people are always making "suboptimal" choices, to stop everyone from crowding into one local maximum and then getting swept away when the rare but inevitable flood comes along.
Bjartr 11mo ago
IIRC, the value of randomness went even further than that. I think it was in the allocation of land for rice paddies. I-ching was used to decide if any given farmer's land was to be used that year or something like that. The benefit wasn't divination selecting better land, but by way of random selection, gave an impersonal excuse to leave fields unplanted some years, which is beneficial in the long term to overall yield.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

cogman10 11mo ago

I think it was a stats class where I learned this, but as it turns out bad weather is less common than good weather. To be a fairly accurate weather person, you merely need to say "there will be no precipitation" and you'll be right like 90% of the time anywhere on earth. What makes that funny is that historically, weather forecasters have been less than 90% accurate. Now, I will say that today's weather models are pretty dang amazing. The 10 day forecast rarely wrong for me.

mikestorrent 11mo ago
Your fairly accurate weather person is going to have to stay away from Vancouver / the Pacific Northwest ;-)
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
strangegecko 11mo ago
I regularly encounter days when today's forecast is wrong and even in conflict with the current situation. E.g. the weather app tells me there's a drizzle all day and currently and yet it's entirely dry. The opposite happens too. Days of rain often shift in increments of days one or two days before as well. I'd say it's location specific how accurate predictions are.
- jillesvangurp 11mo ago
  Mostly that might be down to micro climate and similar highly regional variation in weather. Here in Berlin, predictions that it will rain or when it will rain are often too pessimistic because the city is a bit warmer and drier than the surrounding areas, which is where the airports are. Tegel, now closed is no the North West, Brandenburg airport is on the South East. They are about 20km apart. The long decommissioned Tempelhof is actually in the middle of the city but I doubt that there still is a weather station there. Airports are the big consumers of, and important sources of weather data used for making predictions (in addition to satellite data, and weather stations elsewhere). It's more important that the predictions are correct there than 10-15 km away in the downtown areas. Additionally, many weather apps aren't really precise about where their focus is. You set the city typically; not a postal code. So they'll predict it will rain in Berlin. But it's a big city and that doesn't mean it's going to rain everywhere in the city. It won't do neighborhood by neighborhood predictions. It's technically correct even if not a drop falls where you are. And of course professional users of weather predictions mainly care about the type of weather they need to plan for, which for airports is things like Thunderstorms, poor visibility, etc. For short term planning, weather radar apps are popular here. Great stuff for guestimating whether you can get home by bike without getting caught up in a big shower. Thunderstorms are very common here throughout the summer but you can see the systems moving west to east hours in advance on the radar apps.

vismit2000 11mo ago

As Dwight D. Eisenhower says: "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]