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People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

freakonomics.com

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Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#211

Post by kro39nxkdk »

Read this book to understand the argument:

Willful Ignorance: The Mismeasure of... https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470890444

The first example given is a health one: models say taking this medicine fixes X. But patients fail to take it all the time.

Humans are not to be treated as cold hard facts.

Our reliance on stats, regardless of getting the equation “right”, is very similar to our history of “follow the scripture”.

We’re chasing an outcome of following the numbers and ignoring the process we’re using to get there

It’s a simple process that fails humanity over and over: conform to authorities narrative

Folks like Demore might be following correct mathematical process, but they and their data have no real authority over others in a so-called free society

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#212

Post by sametmax »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #149
sametmax wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High intelligence is nowhere closed to be the most important factor to be successful in our society, gene propagation wise. Or being happy. It's merely a tool.

> gene propagation wise Can we avoid the social darwinism, please?

Can we avoid the godwin point please ?

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#213

Post by hutzlibu »

taeric wrote: post #183
hutzlibu wrote: post #176

I admit I only skimmed the article, but I still throw in a potential controversal counterthought (even though I don't disagree with the article from what I read): People* are dumb. Why? They have been breed like that for many generations. Because all the classic Civilisations and Empires needed lots of dumb workers and peasants who were able to do their simple work, but not smart enough, to organize any opposition ag…

Oddly, I think if you were to take that in a slightly different direction, you'd get more traction. Specifically, take your * and have it say * by "people" I mean collections of people. Individuals often show remarkable intelligence. Even that, of course, ignores that there is some wisdom in crowds. I'd guess there is a sense of "inertia" in how people behave/think. With more people, more inertia. Slower changes and…

You got me wrong. I never said that groups in general are stupid.

I meant specifically a average group of average people today. And stupid in the sense that they fail to see any big picture(and also the picture in front of their eyes is usually quite blurry). Quite problematic in a globalised world.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#214

Post by [deleted] »

extralego wrote: post #204
skadamat wrote: post #80

I would really really encourage everyone here to watch Alan Kay's recent talks on how poorly we understand systems and why it's critical we get better at managing them. Some good ones: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1R2jH4PQEo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI Some people have strong opinions about Alan Kay's CS / programming work and I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand h…

For similar reasons, I highly recommend a book called Capital: Critique of Political Economy. And likewise, some people may have strong opinions about the author’s work. I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand his points + context.

[deleted]

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#215

Post by savanaly »

jknz wrote: post #152
rvern wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is one of the greatest arguments for small government or no government. People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter. This gigantic externality means that the democratic market will sev…

> Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter. Typically, voting results are highly skewed towards 50/50, say in most elections in democratic regimes with fair elections. This was the case for Brexit or the popular vote in the US 2016 election for instance. For an electi…

I don't think that 1/300 million part was about the likelihood of influencing the election, but rather about what percentage of the gains go to the person (not more than the percentage that that person represents of the population, presumably).

Even if you had guaranteed ability to affect the outcome of an election, supposing you knew that by spending many hours researching the correct policy to vote for you could save each person in USA $1, it would not be worth it for you to spend the time figuring it out. Although from a social perspective it would be a worthy thing to spend time on.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#216

Post by Zelphyr »

ucaetano wrote: post #156
rvern wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is one of the greatest arguments for small government or no government. People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter. This gigantic externality means that the democratic market will sev…

> People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. This isn't strictly true, and I'd love to see you provide extensive data on such a exceptional claim. There is a lot of evidence showing that harsher punitive measures often have little to no impact on crime and wrongdoing.

I don't think he was referring to harsh sentences or punitive measures when someone breaks the law. I think its more that when its life and not the Government that is going to punish you for failing, you're going to work harder at not failing. In addition to the punishment provided by the Government there is also fall back mechanisms (bankruptcy protection, social security, medicare/medicaid, etc...) that they provide.

I would counter that without those punishments and protections, its possible that fewer people would do things like start businesses, for example. I don't really know. I'd love to see some data on this.

Seems to me that instead of rushing to one extreme or the other (no Government vs big Government), finding a good balance between the two is going to be the most productive for us all.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#217

Post by HenryTheHorse »

extralego wrote: post #204
skadamat wrote: post #80

I would really really encourage everyone here to watch Alan Kay's recent talks on how poorly we understand systems and why it's critical we get better at managing them. Some good ones: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1R2jH4PQEo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI Some people have strong opinions about Alan Kay's CS / programming work and I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand h…

For similar reasons, I highly recommend a book called Capital: Critique of Political Economy. And likewise, some people may have strong opinions about the author’s work. I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand his points + context.

I can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic or earnest.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#218

Post by extralego »

HenryTheHorse wrote: post #217
extralego wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For similar reasons, I highly recommend a book called Capital: Critique of Political Economy. And likewise, some people may have strong opinions about the author’s work. I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand his points + context.

I can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic or earnest.

Read it and you will wonder no more.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#219

Post by Klathmon »

relic wrote: post #207
expertentipp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s as if a person working in geriatric care claimed thet people are old. I rarely call or contact the support, the though of being treated as a dumb person make me solve the problem myself of abandon the service/product instead.

Well to be fair a lot of people contacting a front-line service center for a non-specialized product/service can't even articulate their problem accurately, if at all. I'm sure it'd be pretty easy to get jaded about people after hearing "I don't know if it's on or not, it just doesn't work...fix it" enough times.

That person calling in more than likely knows significantly more than you about some other topic, and that's the point.

Someone calling in that doesn't know the difference between the PC tower and the monitor and doesn't care to learn isn't "stupid" any more than you are stupid for not knowing an alternator from an AC compressor, and chances are you won't remember even if shown once or twice because you pay someone else to know and maintain/fix that stuff.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#220

Post by rhizome »

rvern wrote: post #135
ppeetteerr wrote: post #34

This is probably the greatest argument for big government. If we were to eliminate the supervision of the establishment over the safety and security of everyday life, it would be very time consuming to handle every single aspect of it. There is always the issue of an overreaching government, and that's where the left/right party split comes in. Each party either creates more regulation and protection or take some awa…

No, this is one of the greatest arguments for small government or no government. People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter. This gigantic externality means that the democratic market will sev…

People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger

People are not fundamentally rational, and people do not know how rational they themselves are in any given context.

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