Heuristics that almost always work • Hacker News Board

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#21

Post by nabla9 » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #4

>The only problem is: he now provides literally no value. He’s excluded by fiat the possibility of ever being useful in any way. He could be losslessly replaced by a rock with the words “THERE ARE NO ROBBERS” on it except for the value of having a security guard visible so that 99% of the robbers who might conceivably want to rob a Pillow Mart decide to go rob Quilting Heaven down the road instead.

Simple metaphors and examples always have holes in them. They exist to illuminate the point author is making. They are not the argument.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#22

Post by zwieback » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

Heuristics? For amateurs and lazy folk. We find metrics that reliably measure something, find or make a gauge that measures that metric, then make sure our gauge stays good over time by doing R&Rs or recalibrations.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#23

Post by DiggyJohnson » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

Great article, really enjoyed it. I second the Talib connection.

But anyways... Does anyone else struggle with Substack's typeface, specifically it's width and spacing between characters? I'm a bit of a typeface nerd, and I genuinely like or enjoy most of our common fonts. Substack is the only site that I find the typeface to significantly affect the reading experience.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#24

Post by gegtik » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

What I'm getting here is we should listen to the 0.1% when they're right.

I'll leave it up to the reader to determine when that is

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#25

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #14

PaulHoule wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of a rock you just need an inflatable security guard. What's frightening about all this is that this article has gotten 15 upvotes despite 100% of the comments so far being about what a pointless article this is.

People mostly seem to object to the security guard example as missing a part of the analysis.

I suspect a lot of them are stopping when they see that when is bogus and aren't bothering to poke holes in the rest of them. Readers have their own heuristics, but that doesn't mean the rest of the examples aren't full of holes.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#26

Post by moralestapia » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

One could add:

The Barking Dog

Barks at everything all the time, people learn to ignore it. Then, when there's real danger, no one cares, providing literally no value and becoming only an annoyance.

It's kind of like a dual for the security guard one.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#27

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

This is like the turkey on the day before Thanksgiving. "They fed me today. They fed me yesterday. They fed me the day before that. Of course they're going to feed me tomorrow!" Except they aren't.

So, yeah. Our heuristics fail on black swan events. There needs to be a balance between "trust your heuristics" and "watch out for black swans".

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#28

Post by stevage » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

rthomas6 wrote: post #16

This is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been writing books about. He calls them black swan events, because if you took a sample of 1000 swans, chances are you'd conclude that all swans are white, but it just isn't so. People tend to round down the probability of very rare events to zero, even when the upside of them is small and the downside is catastrophically bad. Examples: the 2008 housing crisis, Fukushima, and ou…

It's such an annoying metaphor for those of us who live in a country where all swans are black.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#29

Post by stevage » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

I think my main takeaway is how profitable it would be to be one of these naysayers. Good career move.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#30

Post by inglor_cz » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

This story reminded me of a story written by a Czech biologist who studied animals in Papua-New Guinea and went to a hunt with a group of local tribesmen.

The dusk was approaching, they were still in the forest and he proposed that they could sleep under a tree. The hunters were adamant in their refusal: no, this is dangerous, a tree might fall on you in your sleep and kill you. He relented, but silently considered them irrational, given that his assessment of a chance of a tree falling on you overnight was less then 1:5000.

Only later did he realize that for a lifelong hunter, 1:5000 are pretty bad odds that translate to a very significant probability of getting killed over a 30-40 year long hunting career.