Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

rssdss.design.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 216 posts

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#71

Post by watwut »

guscost wrote: post #50
martingoodson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not taking a position on the Imperial College model. I'm explicitly advocating that all models should have their assumptions examined. And that policy makers should use a range of model and not depend on just one.

You will have nothing to add if the “2.2 million deaths in the US” scenario, which was blasted across every newspaper front page a few weeks ago, turns out to have been impossible all along? If that scenario was “completely wrong” too, it seems like it would serve as a perfect example of the consequences of this kind of (still hypothetical) misinformation.

Wasn't ot explicitely worst case? No measures taken and so on? The imperial articles are free to download and all I have read had assumptions stated very clearly.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#72

Post by skat20phys »

oivey wrote: post #58
YZF wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm finding myself in disagreement with rule #6. Using a model effectively is about a lot more than just the domain knowledge. I'd value analysis from a mathematician/statistician more highly than from an infectious disease physician. There's the stuff that informs models, i.e. the observations, the experimentation etc. and then there's the science of modelling itself which isn't really in the same domain.

Don’t discount domain experts. Models are meant to predict the real world. In order for them to be accurate, the model itself needs to capture how the real world works, and the math underlying the model has to be correct. Domain experts are the most likely to have experience in both areas. Drawing an example, a physicist models the universe and knows the math and model behind electromagnetism. A mathematician probabl…

I'm at the point where it shouldn't matter who did it, what should matter is its integrity. I'd prefer everything was anonymously posted at some level so author background didn't go into consideration regarding how it was received.

I agree with you completely, but the flip side of the coin is that experts can be blinded by assumptions that the field has. Sometimes outsiders aren't aware of these basic assumptions and so are less biased.

There's also the simple issue that sometimes expertise comes from places you least expect for reasons you might not anticipate.

For me there's as many problems in this pandemic related to appeals to authority (at least in the US) -- problems with testing related to FDA regulation and the CDC, problems with lack of healthcare providers due to long-term rent-seeking monopolies in licensing and practice scope, problems related to academic fraudulence and incentives (see: Didier Raoult) -- that I think it's dangerous to raise appeal to authority as anything but a bias.

For me there's multiple levels of problems to this, the first of which is the conspiracy and anti-science culture surrounding the pandemic. Above that is an appeal to medical and scientific expertise and authority that has sometimes been helpful but sometimes harmful. Above that still is an appeal to rigorous thinking and risk management, which transcends expertise boundaries.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#73

Post by mola »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #65
rossdavidh wrote: post #56

So, I basically agree with everything this article says, but it seems to miss a basic point. If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. Journalists, and the newsmedia corporations and organizations that employ them, don't run with the most inflammatory headline possible as an accidental fluke of a mistake that they were too careless to catch. Even public sector newsmedia organizations use measu…

> If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. This is clearly true, but I wonder if must always be so. In academia, lying in a publication can be career-ending, which acts to broadly 'scare them straight'. For academics, it's desirable to be highly read and cited, but to be seen to be dishonest is the end of the road. Could it be possible to create similar incentives for journalists?

It's easy to lie without lying. As a society we replaced any sort of value for our value proxy, money.

So truth ethics etc. are all secondary values.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#74

Post by renewiltord »

rossdavidh wrote: post #56

So, I basically agree with everything this article says, but it seems to miss a basic point. If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. Journalists, and the newsmedia corporations and organizations that employ them, don't run with the most inflammatory headline possible as an accidental fluke of a mistake that they were too careless to catch. Even public sector newsmedia organizations use measu…

The problem is on the demand side, not solely on the supply side. People desire reinforcement not challenge. That is natural. I suspect it is true of us all. Those who are capable direct their potential to be challenged in specific ways, allowing themselves to have biases reinforced in the unimportant places. And they have access to the knowledge in their specific areas.

This is the reason for the enduring power of the filter bubble: it is a stable equilibrium because it serves both the purposes of the demand and supply side.

You can test this by making high-reliability websites that state honest priors. You'll get an audience but the audience will be pretty specific to your subject matter and not be popular. No information source has had all of the following characteristics:

* Broad-based popular support

* High information content

* Novel information, i.e. information you can't get elsewhere

* Sustained presence

This may actually be desirable. Novel reliable information is an advantage, but it may not be a present sufficient advantage, and species survival may depend on presently boosting those capable of acquiring and utilizing information advantage. i.e. a time may come when we need to be good at it - if we have more people with this characteristic then, it'll lead to better outcomes.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#75

Post by chrischattin »

mola wrote: post #73
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. This is clearly true, but I wonder if must always be so. In academia, lying in a publication can be career-ending, which acts to broadly 'scare them straight'. For academics, it's desirable to be highly read and cited, but to be seen to be dishonest is the end of the road. Could it be possible to create similar incentives for journalists?

It's easy to lie without lying. As a society we replaced any sort of value for our value proxy, money. So truth ethics etc. are all secondary values.

This sounds good in an edgy r/im14andthisisdeep sort of way. But in reality, having integrity and ethics in business is actually more profitable over the long term.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#76

Post by JadeNB »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #65
rossdavidh wrote: post #56

So, I basically agree with everything this article says, but it seems to miss a basic point. If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. Journalists, and the newsmedia corporations and organizations that employ them, don't run with the most inflammatory headline possible as an accidental fluke of a mistake that they were too careless to catch. Even public sector newsmedia organizations use measu…

> If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. This is clearly true, but I wonder if must always be so. In academia, lying in a publication can be career-ending, which acts to broadly 'scare them straight'. For academics, it's desirable to be highly read and cited, but to be seen to be dishonest is the end of the road. Could it be possible to create similar incentives for journalists?

> In academia, lying in a publication can be career-ending, which acts to broadly 'scare them straight'. For academics, it's desirable to be highly read and cited, but to be seen to be dishonest is the end of the road. Could it be possible to create similar incentives for journalists?

The problem is that these incentives for academics aren't created out of purity of heart, but because of the system to which they belong; you will no longer be highly read and cited once it is clear that your results can't be trusted. Unfortunately, this seems not to be true in journalism—you can purvey intentionally, and explicitly, wrong information, and it will still be consumed actively by those whose biases are confirmed by it. We can discuss how to change that, but changing what kind of news people want to read is surely even harder than changing what kind of news journalists write and publishers publish.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#77

Post by wayoutthere »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #65
rossdavidh wrote: post #56

So, I basically agree with everything this article says, but it seems to miss a basic point. If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. Journalists, and the newsmedia corporations and organizations that employ them, don't run with the most inflammatory headline possible as an accidental fluke of a mistake that they were too careless to catch. Even public sector newsmedia organizations use measu…

> If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. This is clearly true, but I wonder if must always be so. In academia, lying in a publication can be career-ending, which acts to broadly 'scare them straight'. For academics, it's desirable to be highly read and cited, but to be seen to be dishonest is the end of the road. Could it be possible to create similar incentives for journalists?

This doesn't really solve the Fox News problem: if an audience agrees with what you're saying, they will begin to trust you regardless of the facts. Many people have no way of knowing what the truth really is when they get their news exclusively from the a small group of propagandists coordinating a message.

Who gets to decide when someone is lying? What happens when that power to determine truth from lies is obtained by a bad actor to create a new truth?

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#78

Post by JadeNB »

chrischattin wrote: post #75
mola wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to lie without lying. As a society we replaced any sort of value for our value proxy, money. So truth ethics etc. are all secondary values.

This sounds good in an edgy r/im14andthisisdeep sort of way. But in reality, having integrity and ethics in business is actually more profitable over the long term.

> > It's easy to lie without lying. As a society we replaced any sort of value for our value proxy, money.

> But in reality, having integrity and ethics in business is actually more profitable over the long term.

Both your parent's view and your view could spring from a belief about how the world is, rather than from non-anecdotal hard data. I'd like to believe the more optimistic version, but I find it hard to do so. Do you have some data to support it?

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#79

Post by wayoutthere »

chrischattin wrote: post #75
mola wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to lie without lying. As a society we replaced any sort of value for our value proxy, money. So truth ethics etc. are all secondary values.

This sounds good in an edgy r/im14andthisisdeep sort of way. But in reality, having integrity and ethics in business is actually more profitable over the long term.

That really depends on the size of the fish and the size of the pond. If you're a whale in an ocean of minnows (hello Amazon) you can effectively dictate the terms of business, ethics be damned.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#80

Post by parasubvert »

alharith wrote: post #63
rossdavidh wrote: post #56

So, I basically agree with everything this article says, but it seems to miss a basic point. If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. Journalists, and the newsmedia corporations and organizations that employ them, don't run with the most inflammatory headline possible as an accidental fluke of a mistake that they were too careless to catch. Even public sector newsmedia organizations use measu…

I don’t think the deficiencies of major news organizations have ever been as blindingly obvious to me as they have been over the past month. I knew it was bad. I didn’t realize exactly how bad it was. For them, even a national crisis is just an occasion to twist against Trump. Yes Trump is far, far, far from perfect, but there’s a huge difference between honest, factual reporting and these transparent efforts to use…

The anti-Fauci stuff is mostly posted by GOP-partisan organizations though as a way of bolstering Trump.

On the other hand, it is pretty standard mainstream news when in the same presser, the doctors are saying the opposite of what the President is saying.

Post reply on HN