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Fuck Nuance [pdf]

kieranhealy.org

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Re: Fuck Nuance [pdf]

#2

Post by yummyfajitas »

This article is a truly fantastic critique of how modern social sciences (besides economics) are carried out and publicized in modern society. Any critique one dislikes - typically "your theory predicts X which is false" - can be dismissed by "nuance", "things are more complicated", "that's different in unspecified way", etc.

In statistical terms, these dismissals are little more than a call for overfitting - if I can arbitrarily add more dimensions to a theory, I can make it fit any data set.

This is a fantastic article that can be applied in so many places.

In applied social sciences this critique is far easier to work around. "Yeah, my theory is pretty one-dimensional and does lack nuance. My code is in $REPO - feel free to run an experiment and see if your multidimensional theory generates any alpha over mine."

Re: Fuck Nuance [pdf]

#4

Post by twoodfin »

I realized as I was reading this that I know very little about sociology as a discipline. In particular, I'm unaware of any of its "Great Theories", a la General Relativity for physics, or Darwinian Evolution for biology.

Any candidates? I'm not trying to be snide, I really would like to learn more about this. The Wikipedia page for sociology describes "theories" that sound more like schools of thought.

Re: Fuck Nuance [pdf]

#5

Post by c0da » 

  By calling for a theory to be more comprehensive, or for an explanation to
  include additional dimensions, or a concept to become more flexible and
  multifaceted, we paradoxically end up with less clarity. A further odd
  consequence is that the apparent scope of theories increases even
  as the range of their explanatory application narrows.
This seems analogous to poor imperative programming to me: as your code becomes more complicated, the range of it's application narrows.

Re: Fuck Nuance [pdf]

#6

Post by p4wnc6 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #2

This article is a truly fantastic critique of how modern social sciences (besides economics) are carried out and publicized in modern society. Any critique one dislikes - typically "your theory predicts X which is false" - can be dismissed by "nuance", "things are more complicated", "that's different in unspecified way", etc. In statistical terms, these dismissals are little more than a call for overfitting - if I ca…

Why do you exclude economics? I see economics as practically leading the way with regard to dismissals like you suggest.

One example I have first-hand experience with is the low-volatility anomaly. CAPM-like theories predict a roughly linear, positive-sloping relationship between risk and return.

Yet decades worth of various empirical measurements of the riskiness of assets and portfolios unequivocally demonstrates that it is a negative-sloping relationship (e.g. for your willingness to bear an additional unit of risk, you actually receive less return).

But everyone says basically the same thing. "Things are more complicated in real markets."

It would be reasonable to say that CAPM is a mathematical result, and the evidence suggests the mathematical model required for CAPM simply fails to correspond to reality. But many finance folks, especially in academia, won't admit it. For them, CAPM must also be a descriptive theory.

Two sources that illustrate what I'm talking about:

[0] Baker, Bradley, and Wurgler, "Benchmarks as Limits to Arbitrage: Understanding the Low-Volatility Anomaly" FAJ Volume 61, 2011. http://www.cfapubs.org/doi/pdf/10.2469/faj.v67.n1.4 >

[1] Baker, Malcolm P. and Bradley, Brendan and Taliaferro, Ryan, The Low Risk Anomaly: A Decomposition into Micro and Macro Effects (September 13, 2013). Financial Analysts Journal. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2210003 >

*disclaimer: The authors of these two papers were my bosses in a previous role, and I wrote the code and generated the results for the second paper.

Re: Fuck Nuance [pdf]

#8

Post by hakanensari »

twoodfin wrote: post #4

I realized as I was reading this that I know very little about sociology as a discipline. In particular, I'm unaware of any of its "Great Theories", a la General Relativity for physics, or Darwinian Evolution for biology. Any candidates? I'm not trying to be snide, I really would like to learn more about this. The Wikipedia page for sociology describes "theories" that sound more like schools of thought.

Historical materialism

Re: Fuck Nuance [pdf]

#10

Post by ezrosent »

c0da wrote: post #5

By calling for a theory to be more comprehensive, or for an explanation to include additional dimensions, or a concept to become more flexible and multifaceted, we paradoxically end up with less clarity. A further odd consequence is that the apparent scope of theories increases even as the range of their explanatory application narrows. This seems analogous to poor imperative programming to me: as your code becomes m…

I think this is better understood as a consequence of Bonini's paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonini%27s_paradox).
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