6 ms·

> It seems to me that both Alexander and the author of this post are, actually, members of the same church - the church of those who believe that people can dra

by ordu 7mo ago

> It seems to me that both Alexander and the author of this post are, actually, members of the same church - the church of those who believe that people can draw correct conclusions from a smattering of data without the necessary scholarship and expertise, and that you can understand something complicated without putting in all the effort required to understand it. It's the Church of Dunning–Kruger Dilettantism. We are all like that, we have no other options, haven't we? I mean, either we try to understand the world around us, or we are not. We can't be experts in everything, so in most cases we are go by Danning-Kruger Dilettantism. Scott made the dilettantism into a profession, he has its methods and he sharpens them. He debates things with other dilettantes, and it helps them to improve themselves. To me, personally, it is one of the main attractions of the blog. I'm dilettante in a lot of topics, but still I don't want to simply ignore them, because I'm not an expert. > What is interesting to me is that someone who's not particularly knowledgeable on the subject of crime took the time to write a long rebuttal to another post about crime written by someone else who knows just as little. It is not about crime really. The author we discussing talks about methodology, they are on a meta level of a discussion, the crime discussion is just one data point for a meta-discussion. Your post is the part of the same meta-discussion about methodology, though your attack comes from the other direction.

pron 7mo ago
> We can't be experts in everything, so in most cases we are go by Danning-Kruger Dilettantism. Or care enough to find out what the experts say? Surely that's the best way to start understanding the world around us. And if the experts don't agree on an answer, the people who know less probably won't contribute much, but at least it raises the level of discussion. > Scott made the dilettantism into a profession, he has its methods and he sharpens them. He debates things with other dilettantes, and it helps them to improve themselves. I won't judge the methods people use to improve themselves, but I can say that this is not a good method of getting closer to the truth, just in case that is also something they're interested in beside self betterment. No amount of thought or debate can substitute scholarship. > The author we discussing talks about methodology Methodology of what? Self-improvement or getting to the bottom of why people think there's a rise in crime? Because if it's the latter, a better methodology than either would surely begin with studying the subject more seriously.
- ordu 7mo ago
  > Or care enough to find out what the experts say? And what do expert way about crime? I don't care about crime levels, so I have no idea where to look really. It seems that no one knows where to look, as in comments on Scott's blog, so on HN. Could you find an expert take on this discrepancy between reported levels of crime and perceived levels of crime? If you can't, and no one can, so maybe it is a good question to try our abilities to work with data and draw conclusions? > this is not a good method of getting closer to the truth I do not care about crime, but I know that I can't ask expert all the question I have. So I just have no other options. > a better methodology than either would surely begin with studying the subject more seriously. You can't be expert in all topics at once, so this is not an option. Probably you can create a think tank, inviting experts in different areas into it, which can answer all your questions. But where do you get the money for that?
  - pron 7mo ago
    > And what do expert way about crime? There have been numerous studies on crime perception and fear of crime in the last 50 years. Here's just a small touch of what an internet search brought up in ten minutes: * https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/SUBJECTIVE-PROBABILITY-OF-VICTIMIZATION-AND-CRIME-Block-Long/bd43972708defc50380a98668fad4fa2c0b35aba https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/SUBJECTIVE-PROBABILITY... * https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/59/2/435/5067283 https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/59/2/435/5067283 * https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/communication-and-mass-media/mean-world-syndrome https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/communication-and-ma... * https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/crimestatisticsfocusonpublicperceptionsofcrimeandthepoliceandthepersonalwellbeingofvictims/2015-03-26/chapter2publicperceptionsofcrime https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand... * https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/law/news/article/1953/crime-has-fallen-so-why-don-t-we-believe-it-two-school-of-law-academics-set-the-record-straight https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/law/news/article/1953/crime-has-fal... * https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0094-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0094-8 For example, one of these sources, in the British Journal of Criminology begins with: For over 40 years, the fear of crime has been a stable of North American, British and European criminological research. Hundreds of publications have sought to illuminate the social and emotional risks associated with worry about crime (Ferraro 1995; Hale 1996; Visser et al. 2013). > If you can't, and no one can, so maybe it is a good question to try our abilities to work with data and draw conclusions? Not like that. You'll find that most questions for which there's good data (and even if there isn't) that more than one person is interested in already have experts thinking about. If there aren't, and you're qualified (i.e. have the requisite context) people will pay you to work on the problem through something called "research grants". > You can't be expert in all topics at once, so this is not an option. Probably you can create a think tank, inviting experts in different areas into it, which can answer all your questions. But where do you get the money for that? Well, in Europe we have these things only we call them universities, not a "think tanks", and while far from perfect, they're the actual best way humanity has come up with for trying to answer hard questions. They work like this: people spend some years getting the needed context in various fields, and then different people spend years studying different areas. These people publish their findings periodically, and so people who aren't experts in a particular field can read what the experts wrote. Because people make mistake, multiple people explore every question, and then they argue with each other, but when they do, they already know what they're talking about. This turns out to work better than people starting with a blank slate trying to ponder their way to an answer in the course of days or weeks. Of course, because many things that interest people are non linear systems, there are many things we can't really get definitive answers for, and it's a fun exercise to think about the (currently) unanswerable questions. But to do it well, you need to start from the current state of knowledge and at least survey what the experts have so far rather than start from scratch with some pieces of data you may not have the right context to analyse. That's why Scott Alexander isn't taken seriously. He's playing a game based on the plot of the film Memento: He makes sure he has just the right pieces to make something interesting for him yet simple enough to think through in days or weeks and maybe reach a conclusion (and a conclusion perhaps could not be reached without erasing enough information to paint a simple-enough picture). Some people find it entertaining, and I can see why; it evokes natural philosophy, which has certainly produced a lot of entertaning prose. But ultimately it's a game of fantasy science.

by ordu 7mo ago

pron 7mo ago

> We can't be experts in everything, so in most cases we are go by Danning-Kruger Dilettantism. Or care enough to find out what the experts say? Surely that's the best way to start understanding the world around us. And if the experts don't agree on an answer, the people who know less probably won't contribute much, but at least it raises the level of discussion. > Scott made the dilettantism into a profession, he has its methods and he sharpens them. He debates things with other dilettantes, and it helps them to improve themselves. I won't judge the methods people use to improve themselves, but I can say that this is not a good method of getting closer to the truth, just in case that is also something they're interested in beside self betterment. No amount of thought or debate can substitute scholarship. > The author we discussing talks about methodology Methodology of what? Self-improvement or getting to the bottom of why people think there's a rise in crime? Because if it's the latter, a better methodology than either would surely begin with studying the subject more seriously.

ordu 7mo ago
> Or care enough to find out what the experts say? And what do expert way about crime? I don't care about crime levels, so I have no idea where to look really. It seems that no one knows where to look, as in comments on Scott's blog, so on HN. Could you find an expert take on this discrepancy between reported levels of crime and perceived levels of crime? If you can't, and no one can, so maybe it is a good question to try our abilities to work with data and draw conclusions? > this is not a good method of getting closer to the truth I do not care about crime, but I know that I can't ask expert all the question I have. So I just have no other options. > a better methodology than either would surely begin with studying the subject more seriously. You can't be expert in all topics at once, so this is not an option. Probably you can create a think tank, inviting experts in different areas into it, which can answer all your questions. But where do you get the money for that?
- pron 7mo ago
  > And what do expert way about crime? There have been numerous studies on crime perception and fear of crime in the last 50 years. Here's just a small touch of what an internet search brought up in ten minutes: * https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/SUBJECTIVE-PROBABILITY-OF-VICTIMIZATION-AND-CRIME-Block-Long/bd43972708defc50380a98668fad4fa2c0b35aba https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/SUBJECTIVE-PROBABILITY... * https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/59/2/435/5067283 https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/59/2/435/5067283 * https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/communication-and-mass-media/mean-world-syndrome https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/communication-and-ma... * https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/crimestatisticsfocusonpublicperceptionsofcrimeandthepoliceandthepersonalwellbeingofvictims/2015-03-26/chapter2publicperceptionsofcrime https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand... * https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/law/news/article/1953/crime-has-fallen-so-why-don-t-we-believe-it-two-school-of-law-academics-set-the-record-straight https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/law/news/article/1953/crime-has-fal... * https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0094-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0094-8 For example, one of these sources, in the British Journal of Criminology begins with: For over 40 years, the fear of crime has been a stable of North American, British and European criminological research. Hundreds of publications have sought to illuminate the social and emotional risks associated with worry about crime (Ferraro 1995; Hale 1996; Visser et al. 2013). > If you can't, and no one can, so maybe it is a good question to try our abilities to work with data and draw conclusions? Not like that. You'll find that most questions for which there's good data (and even if there isn't) that more than one person is interested in already have experts thinking about. If there aren't, and you're qualified (i.e. have the requisite context) people will pay you to work on the problem through something called "research grants". > You can't be expert in all topics at once, so this is not an option. Probably you can create a think tank, inviting experts in different areas into it, which can answer all your questions. But where do you get the money for that? Well, in Europe we have these things only we call them universities, not a "think tanks", and while far from perfect, they're the actual best way humanity has come up with for trying to answer hard questions. They work like this: people spend some years getting the needed context in various fields, and then different people spend years studying different areas. These people publish their findings periodically, and so people who aren't experts in a particular field can read what the experts wrote. Because people make mistake, multiple people explore every question, and then they argue with each other, but when they do, they already know what they're talking about. This turns out to work better than people starting with a blank slate trying to ponder their way to an answer in the course of days or weeks. Of course, because many things that interest people are non linear systems, there are many things we can't really get definitive answers for, and it's a fun exercise to think about the (currently) unanswerable questions. But to do it well, you need to start from the current state of knowledge and at least survey what the experts have so far rather than start from scratch with some pieces of data you may not have the right context to analyse. That's why Scott Alexander isn't taken seriously. He's playing a game based on the plot of the film Memento: He makes sure he has just the right pieces to make something interesting for him yet simple enough to think through in days or weeks and maybe reach a conclusion (and a conclusion perhaps could not be reached without erasing enough information to paint a simple-enough picture). Some people find it entertaining, and I can see why; it evokes natural philosophy, which has certainly produced a lot of entertaning prose. But ultimately it's a game of fantasy science.