4 ms·

The funny thing is that I come from a physics degree background and hence have a tendency to stick with the more scientifically accurate "I think, maybe, probab

by adwf 13y ago

The funny thing is that I come from a physics degree background and hence have a tendency to stick with the more scientifically accurate "I think, maybe, probably, possibly, almost always", rather than going for absolutes. However, when you enter into the business world, you tend to find that this kind of language comes across as weak and uncertain. Even though you are merely trying to be correct and not give false impressions! So now I actually appreciate more confident, strong language, because when I read a blog post or article like this, I can take the caveats as being there, but unsaid. I sometimes think that if everyone took this assumption, Hacker News would decimate its comment count!

jacques_chester 13y ago
So, you got me to thinking. As a side-effect of his work on expert forecasting[1], Tetlock discovered that people put more stock in those who made confident predictions than those who qualified their predictions. To the point that he basically says: if a person is a famous pundit, they are more likely to be wrong, because the media prefers bold predictions to maybes and perhapses. In business you can be bold or not bold. If you're not bold, you are at a social disadvantage. Then you can be right or wrong. If you are right, everyone hails you as a visionary. If you are wrong, nobody remembers. So in fact, in business, the rational strategy for an individual is to speak confidently and let the dice fly high. [1] I reviewed his book a while back. http://chester.id.au/2012/07/29/review-expert-political-judgement/ http://chester.id.au/2012/07/29/review-expert-political-judg...
- adwf 13y ago
  Yes it's actually quite an awkward point for me at the moment. I have a side-project that I've been developing for a while. My attachment to it means that I know every single bug and flaw within the product. But at the same time I know that if I add caveats to any marketing (it's a bit alpha/beta, etc.), then it will come across as unconfident. On the other hand, if I just say it's amazing and will change your life, I'll probably (can't resist the language even now...), do far, far better.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    I know how you feel. The way I deal with it is to find the claims I can confidently make and stick with those. A lot of the time you can do that by looking at the business value side of things. For example, I can't truthfully say that my code is bug free or the best or whathaveyou. But I can say "My product improves <business problem>." I guess the trick is to have two hats. The first hat is the problem domain hat. This is where you make confident, accurate claims about your product. The second is the solution domain hat. This is where you park your professional anxieties about whether you've crossed and dotted everything.
- eved1973 13y ago
  That reminds me of a story I heard about doctors who are asked to determine the gender of a baby during a pregnancy scan. They will announce the gender to the parents verbally (It's a boy!), but put the other gender in their files. If you do end up having a boy, it doesn't go further. If you end up having a girl, and question the doctor, he/she points to the file and says "You must have misunderstood what I said".
- dennisgorelik 13y ago
  People don't care much if pundits are right or wrong. Instead people care that pundits are clear (confident statements help with clarity). Qualifiers are substituted by getting multiple opinions from different pundits.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    I suppose I should have added that the confident pundits were usually wrong because they tended to make more extreme predictions. Most of the time, stuff doesn't change dramatically. Predicting big shifts all the time means that your overall hit rate is terrible, because big shifts are not the most common case. Luckily there's an extreme predictor for every extreme event, so simple selection happily promotes some loudmouths to guru every now and then.
001sky 13y ago
Edge cases seem to be where all the fun is, tho... =D
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  What I like about fuzzy logic is that it pushes a lot of paradoxes down a level. Instead of having paradoxes bubble up to the top level and derailing discussion, you instead turn fuzziness into an abstract object which is polymorphic to other logical objects. This gives you the handles you need to grasp and wrestle with the vagueness of the actual world without either needing to give up rigour or rely on hacks and undocumented conventions about the mapping from the real world into the logical world. If you've got the patience, I can give as an example a long review I wrote of Sidney Dekker's Drift into Failure, where in part I argued that his argument largely vanishes if reframed in terms of fuzzy logic: http://chester.id.au/2012/04/09/review-drift-into-failure/ http://chester.id.au/2012/04/09/review-drift-into-failure/ Edit: Hmm, I really look like a spammer in this thread. Not intentional. No more than usual, anyhow.

by adwf 13y ago

jacques_chester 13y ago

So, you got me to thinking. As a side-effect of his work on expert forecasting[1], Tetlock discovered that people put more stock in those who made confident predictions than those who qualified their predictions. To the point that he basically says: if a person is a famous pundit, they are more likely to be wrong, because the media prefers bold predictions to maybes and perhapses. In business you can be bold or not bold. If you're not bold, you are at a social disadvantage. Then you can be right or wrong. If you are right, everyone hails you as a visionary. If you are wrong, nobody remembers. So in fact, in business, the rational strategy for an individual is to speak confidently and let the dice fly high. [1] I reviewed his book a while back. http://chester.id.au/2012/07/29/review-expert-political-judgement/ http://chester.id.au/2012/07/29/review-expert-political-judg...

adwf 13y ago
Yes it's actually quite an awkward point for me at the moment. I have a side-project that I've been developing for a while. My attachment to it means that I know every single bug and flaw within the product. But at the same time I know that if I add caveats to any marketing (it's a bit alpha/beta, etc.), then it will come across as unconfident. On the other hand, if I just say it's amazing and will change your life, I'll probably (can't resist the language even now...), do far, far better.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  I know how you feel. The way I deal with it is to find the claims I can confidently make and stick with those. A lot of the time you can do that by looking at the business value side of things. For example, I can't truthfully say that my code is bug free or the best or whathaveyou. But I can say "My product improves <business problem>." I guess the trick is to have two hats. The first hat is the problem domain hat. This is where you make confident, accurate claims about your product. The second is the solution domain hat. This is where you park your professional anxieties about whether you've crossed and dotted everything.
eved1973 13y ago
That reminds me of a story I heard about doctors who are asked to determine the gender of a baby during a pregnancy scan. They will announce the gender to the parents verbally (It's a boy!), but put the other gender in their files. If you do end up having a boy, it doesn't go further. If you end up having a girl, and question the doctor, he/she points to the file and says "You must have misunderstood what I said".
dennisgorelik 13y ago
People don't care much if pundits are right or wrong. Instead people care that pundits are clear (confident statements help with clarity). Qualifiers are substituted by getting multiple opinions from different pundits.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  I suppose I should have added that the confident pundits were usually wrong because they tended to make more extreme predictions. Most of the time, stuff doesn't change dramatically. Predicting big shifts all the time means that your overall hit rate is terrible, because big shifts are not the most common case. Luckily there's an extreme predictor for every extreme event, so simple selection happily promotes some loudmouths to guru every now and then.

001sky 13y ago

Edge cases seem to be where all the fun is, tho... =D

jacques_chester 13y ago
What I like about fuzzy logic is that it pushes a lot of paradoxes down a level. Instead of having paradoxes bubble up to the top level and derailing discussion, you instead turn fuzziness into an abstract object which is polymorphic to other logical objects. This gives you the handles you need to grasp and wrestle with the vagueness of the actual world without either needing to give up rigour or rely on hacks and undocumented conventions about the mapping from the real world into the logical world. If you've got the patience, I can give as an example a long review I wrote of Sidney Dekker's Drift into Failure, where in part I argued that his argument largely vanishes if reframed in terms of fuzzy logic: http://chester.id.au/2012/04/09/review-drift-into-failure/ http://chester.id.au/2012/04/09/review-drift-into-failure/ Edit: Hmm, I really look like a spammer in this thread. Not intentional. No more than usual, anyhow.