All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by MaxBarraclough » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:26 AM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #76

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?

> 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 belo…

> 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.

That's a feature, not a bug. A system which depends on people being saints, isn't going to work.

> changing what kind of news people want to read is surely even harder than changing what kind of news journalists write and publishers publish

Agreed, I think that's the root here.

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

#182

Post by mola » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:42 AM UTC

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.

Thank you for thinking I'm deep an edgy.... But why is long term important? people need to see long term effects to know that it's more profitable. But right now, people see success without ethics, so why should they think long term? There might be a day of reckoning, where these short term gains result in long term catastrophe, but until then, people do what works. And today the only measure of what works is money.

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

#183

Post by timkam » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:59 AM UTC

An observation from inside academia: there are some (potentially many) researchers who use the opportunity to push obscure models and simulations of their research sub-subdomains, even if they have no knowledge about public health, epidemiology, or even strong past real-world success stories of the methods they are advertising. Sometimes, this happens with a "talk to the media first" approach (before subjection of their work to the scrutiny of actual domain experts or even any form of peer review), which is certainly dangerous.

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

#184

Post by magicalhippo » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 11:37 AM UTC

carapace wrote: post #44

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #17

Regarding the "all models are wrong" maxim... Is that statement 100% true for the low-level models that physicists use and develop? In particular, I'm curious if quantum-physics models are 100% right, just not 100% precise.

The Standard Model has no known contradictions in the real world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model In "QED" Feynman states that the predictions are as precise as being able to measure the distance between (points in) New York and Los Angeles accurately to within the width of a human hair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED:_The_Strange_Theory_of_Lig...

Neutrino oscillation[1] is a contradiction of the Standard model as-is, no?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_oscillation

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

#185

Post by Quanttek » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 11:37 AM UTC

cousin_it wrote: post #68

> Journalists must get quotes from other experts before publishing No, this isn't enough. This whole way of thinking isn't enough. It's a big part of the reason for the current situation. Journalists should report what's true, not what Tom, Dick or Harry said. If a journalist isn't qualified to make object-level claims on a given topic, don't write on that topic. For example, if Bob says there's a forest fire, then i…

Uhmm, no? Reality is way too complex for anyone to make a statement about what is "true" - even for domain experts and especially for journalists, whose, at best, entire specialization is "public health". We may be able to state what is "true" for very obvious matters where there are clear dividing lines for a matter to qualify (e.g. forest fire, election results). But when it comes to the sciences, it is incredibly difficult to make any such statement, especially when it comes to emerging research and predictive modeling.

Instead of journalists demonstrating the effect of Dunning-Kruger in a manner similar to what many computer scientists and engineers love to do about unrelated fields, they should rather listen to the experts and try to gather multiple opinions in order to triangulate what is probably correct.

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

#186

Post by kerkeslager » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 1:07 PM UTC

deltron3030 wrote: post #162

kerkeslager wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're smart enough to come up with a point like this, why not use that intelligence to make a less inane point? You're not wrong, you're just correct in a way that responds to a very narrow reading of what your parent comment was saying, and doesn't make any attempt to figure out why they'd be saying it. Clearly the person you're responding to wants a system that makes people better informed, and I think there's…

>So the question is obviously, how do we change the news ecosystem from what it is, to a system that makes people better informed? By bettering basic education. People could learn the relationships and interdependecies of the system and society itself, including the role of information. Why not learn everything through RPGs? This would create a demand for better news sources in the long term.

I don't understand your reasoning for why you think better basic education would increase demand for more informative news sources. Could you explain more?

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

#187

Post by kerkeslager » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

zentiggr wrote: post #148

kerkeslager wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're smart enough to come up with a point like this, why not use that intelligence to make a less inane point? You're not wrong, you're just correct in a way that responds to a very narrow reading of what your parent comment was saying, and doesn't make any attempt to figure out why they'd be saying it. Clearly the person you're responding to wants a system that makes people better informed, and I think there's…

I think the question that needs to be answered before that is "how do you get people to want to be better informed". If that was already true, there never would have been an Enquirer or Weekly World News.

This is a typical capitalist strategy for displacing blame and therefore responsibility: the supply side says they're just putting out what there's a demand for, and blames the demand for their own actions. The truth is, marketing creates demand, and people can't consume content if you don't create it.

Ultimately, I'm not looking to blame the supply side, either: certainly there's some blame for the demand side too. In fact, I don't believe blame is a productive thing to do in this situation or most situations. But I am trying to change it from the supply side, because when you try to create change from the demand side, you run into more issues with affecting free choice which makes this and many other problems more intractable.

I also think you're wrong about why the Enquirer et al exist: some people take these as just humor and get their information elsewhere, and others want to be informed, but due to bugs in the human brain, think that sources like the Enquirer are good sources of information. Neither of these are "people not wanting to be informed".

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

#188

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

Quanttek wrote: post #185

cousin_it wrote: post #68

> Journalists must get quotes from other experts before publishing No, this isn't enough. This whole way of thinking isn't enough. It's a big part of the reason for the current situation. Journalists should report what's true, not what Tom, Dick or Harry said. If a journalist isn't qualified to make object-level claims on a given topic, don't write on that topic. For example, if Bob says there's a forest fire, then i…

Uhmm, no? Reality is way too complex for anyone to make a statement about what is "true" - even for domain experts and especially for journalists, whose, at best, entire specialization is "public health". We may be able to state what is "true" for very obvious matters where there are clear dividing lines for a matter to qualify (e.g. forest fire, election results). But when it comes to the sciences, it is incredibly…

[deleted]

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

#189

Post by cousin_it » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

Quanttek wrote: post #185

cousin_it wrote: post #68

> Journalists must get quotes from other experts before publishing No, this isn't enough. This whole way of thinking isn't enough. It's a big part of the reason for the current situation. Journalists should report what's true, not what Tom, Dick or Harry said. If a journalist isn't qualified to make object-level claims on a given topic, don't write on that topic. For example, if Bob says there's a forest fire, then i…

Uhmm, no? Reality is way too complex for anyone to make a statement about what is "true" - even for domain experts and especially for journalists, whose, at best, entire specialization is "public health". We may be able to state what is "true" for very obvious matters where there are clear dividing lines for a matter to qualify (e.g. forest fire, election results). But when it comes to the sciences, it is incredibly…

Given a choice between an engineer who did some calculations on an unfamiliar topic, and a journalist who triangulated expert opinions but didn't do any calculations, I'll listen to the engineer.

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

#190

Post by alharith » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #124

alharith wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true. MSNBC, NPR and PBS ran stories, podcasts, and discussions for an entire week about the “growing disconnect” during this time.

A disconnect that one can divine for oneself by listening to Fauci talk anytime Trump is not in the room. Birx, too. The difference in messaging and information content when she's on that podium or on Fox programming, versus when she's on normal-people programming, is stark. They're being leaned on and it is starkly apparent when you're not coming in with priors that tend towards conspiracy.

Sorry, this needs to be said: The only conspiracy here is this drivel here that you wrote. Fauci has repeatedly stated, and acted as such, that there is no divide between him and the president. Is it feasible Fauci does not like Trump personally? Of course. But we are adults, and we have to work with people we don't like every day and still be able to perform our duties. Fauci is a professional.