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Surprisingly popular

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Re: Surprisingly popular

#81

Post by JohnBooty »

cygx wrote: post #17

Let's look at another toy example, using made-up numbers: Q: Is the earth flat? Yes: 10% No: 90% Q: What do you think most people will respond to that question? Yes: 3% No: 97% Analysis: Yes: 10% - 3% = 7% No: 90% - 97% = -7% Conclusion: The earth is flat, I guess ;)

Yes, it's definitely vulnerable to situations where a large number of people have been "seeded" with the specific belief that they are part of a minority that holds the correct answer.

Still, the article says this:

    Because of the relatively high margin of 10%, there can 
    be high confidence that the [surprisingly popular answer 
    is correct]
I would maintain this holds true, even though we can name some easy counterexamples like flat-earthism.

One, I'm sure that nowhere near 10% of an educated population believes in flat-earthism.

Two, I think this technique is certain to yield the correct answer quite a bit more often than it will yield an incorrect one. Since it claims to achieve "high confidence" and not "absolute confidence" I think it would still be a pretty valuable metric in many instances.

Re: Surprisingly popular

#82

Post by pvaldes »

lonelappde wrote: post #73
benj111 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about people who aren't sure? If you give an answer but its a guess, you'd be less likely to say people agree with you.

assuming a binary question (very important) if you aren't sure, if you thought most people thought differently from you, why would you hold on to your belief that lacks both primary and secondary support? "My best guess is X but I believe most people would contradict me" suggests that you consider yourself an expert who knows better than most people.

The problem with this technique is that is useless

We live in cultural bubbles, tending to cluster close to people like we (People that speak the same language, with similar points of view, economic levels, cultural answers engraved for solving the same problem, eating the same food, cooked in the same way, exposed to the same publicity, popular songs, sport teams and ideological propaganda). People make most of their friends in the same school whereas being teached the same things by the same teacher.

Therefore, we are notoriously bad guessing what other people think... out of our cultural bubble.

If you ask people questions like "Will your neighbors enjoy doing pig meat barbeques?", "Are this mushrooms poisonous" or "Is ok to put soap directly in your bath water?" they can provide a reliable answer, but the results can't be extrapolated out of the cluster. Are useles to find the truth. All cultures choose to ignore big chunks of human knowledge or do some things plain wrong. A poisonous mushroom can be made edible after cooking by an obscure technique culturally spread. Many jews will dislike pig meat. Many japanese will not find ok to put soap in the bath. The majority of people in the planet don't know and will not care about what is the capital of Guangdong, Entre Ríos, or Philadelphia.

If your starting variables are unconstrained (the people answering the question is anonymous and from an unknown pool) the technique is a sociological dice that will return different results each time (AKA pseudoscience)

Re: Surprisingly popular

#83

Post by defertoreptar »

ggggtez wrote: post #76
defertoreptar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how 10% of people responded "yes" and so few thought people would respond "yes," I would agree that "yes" is in fact surprisingly popular.

The article suggests "surpisingly popular"==correct answers from experts. It could just as easily be crazy answers from crazy people.

We cannot evaluate that claim based on hypothetical figures. 10% claiming the Earth was flat would be a very biased sample in the real world. It would more likely be 98% and 99%, resulting in only 1% surprisingly popular.

Re: Surprisingly popular

#84

Post by sireat »

whatshisface wrote: post #59
brownbat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's a bit like "second order" wisdom of the crowds. First order: "How many jelly beans are in this jar?" Second order: "What percentage of people will get the wrong answer to this question about Pennsylvania's capital?" There's also the interplay with the Keynesian beauty contest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest In some sense the stock market is an infinite regress of these "what will ot…

Shares do actually have a fundamental value, based on their lifetime dividends, buybacks and liquidation. So unlike, say, Bitcoin or the Dollar, there is something to be gained from knowing the zeroth-order reality.

Historically most shares did have a fundamental value.

When Buffet was starting out in 1950-1960s, shareholders had stronger rights and many shares did pay dividends. The worst case scenario would be gaining a controlling share and forcing some sort of payback.

Today there are many classes of shares which are disturbingly close to buying random cryptocoin.

Think about buying non-voting shares of Google,Facebook,Zynga, etc. Or how about buying whatever that travesty that ADR of Alibaba is ? What are you getting when you buy Alibaba in US?

What are you getting really when you buy those kind of shares?

You have very little of hope of getting dividends.

You have no hope of getting controlling shareholders to give up their controlling "some animals are more equal" shares.

So there is very little intrinsic value in those.

Thus the only value is the "castles in the air" valuation.

Re: Surprisingly popular

#85

Post by whatshisface »

sireat wrote: post #84
whatshisface wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shares do actually have a fundamental value, based on their lifetime dividends, buybacks and liquidation. So unlike, say, Bitcoin or the Dollar, there is something to be gained from knowing the zeroth-order reality.

Historically most shares did have a fundamental value. When Buffet was starting out in 1950-1960s, shareholders had stronger rights and many shares did pay dividends. The worst case scenario would be gaining a controlling share and forcing some sort of payback. Today there are many classes of shares which are disturbingly close to buying random cryptocoin. Think about buying non-voting shares of Google,Facebook,Zynga…

You've raised a very good point, and that's something I spend a lot of time thinking about. Zynga is a great example because there's a serious chance that they could go out of business before paying a single penny to shareholders.

However, for those with fear of that situation, there are saner equities on the market.

Re: Surprisingly popular

#87

Post by ncmncm »

JohnBooty wrote: post #79
ncmncm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pittsburg/Philadelphia should be the capital.

There is already widespread belief, in the rest of the state, that the Philadelphia area (as the largest concentration of population and wealth) has an unfairly outsized influence over Harrisburg. The result of moving the capital to Philadelphia would surely strain the legitimacy of the state government even more. Moving it to Pittsburgh would accomplish the same exact thing except it would be arguably even less just…

No, I mean really Pittsburg/Philadelphia, like Minneapolis/St. Paul, Seattle/Tacoma, or Raleigh/Durham.

Yes, the distance between respective city centers is farther than those others, but that makes it more inclusive.

Re: Surprisingly popular

#88

Post by cecilpl2 »

news_hacker wrote: post #66
cecilpl2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are four groups of people: A - "Philadelphia is the capital, and others will agree." B - "Philadelphia is the capital, but most others won't know that". C - "Harrisburg is the capital, and others will agree." D - "Harrisburg is the capital, but most others won't know that." This technique eliminates groups A and C from consideration, and measures the difference in size between groups B and D. Both groups B and…

This is a great summary / reduction of the article. I appreciated how you broke it down into groups and made the example more concrete.

Thanks :)

Re: Surprisingly popular

#89

Post by cecilpl2 »

lonelappde wrote: post #72
news_hacker wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great summary / reduction of the article. I appreciated how you broke it down into groups and made the example more concrete.

It's not a summary/reduction, it's a a better article with more information.

Wow, thank you!! :)

Re: Surprisingly popular

#90

Post by cecilpl2 »

killjoywashere wrote: post #75
cecilpl2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are four groups of people: A - "Philadelphia is the capital, and others will agree." B - "Philadelphia is the capital, but most others won't know that". C - "Harrisburg is the capital, and others will agree." D - "Harrisburg is the capital, but most others won't know that." This technique eliminates groups A and C from consideration, and measures the difference in size between groups B and D. Both groups B and…

if you don't post this to Wikipedia, may someone else post it on your behalf (i.e. do you accept Wikipedia's license on your words above?)

I posted it. Thanks :)
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