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Heuristics that almost always work

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Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#171

Post by scoofy »

yupper32 wrote: post #127
scoofy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this is a weird example, but i feel like it's like Scott Auckerman says in Comedy Bang Bang, when he introduces the show. He'll do the welcome, and explain the show, and inevitably some guess will retort that this is silly, since everyone knows what the show is about, but he constantly responds with: "every episode is somebody's first episode." These ideas that should be obvious to anyone who's studied advanc…

But it's not interesting, it's not introducing anyone to advanced statistics or formal logic, it's not showing any real world uses that can be applied by anyone coming of age. It's just generalized parables by someone not in any of the fields or positions mentioned, some weak conclusions, and a "Heuristics That Almost Always Works" book title.

I mean most people I know that are "very smart people" including myself regularly exercise the cool customer vibe of "yea right, that'll never happen." I think it's a good parable. I mean, it's not really important, and I didn't learn anything, but it's a good reminder that "probably not" is a lot different than "definitely not."

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#172

Post by gringoDan »

inglor_cz wrote: post #30

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…

Great example of a non-ergodic event. The outcome (odds of dying) when considering of one individual longitudinally is entirely different from the outcome when considering a population of individuals at a single point in time.

https://taylorpearson.me/ergodicity/

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#173

Post by pessimizer »

stevage wrote: post #28
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.

It's an annoying metaphor anyway. If you've defined a swan as a particular type of white bird, it's impossible for a black swan to ever come. "Black swan" is just a tautological term for new thing we've never seen before, but pretending to be a term for known thing that suddenly behaved differently.

Sometimes things happen that, in order to make money or cut costs, we convinced people were impossible.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#174

Post by XorNot »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #89

99.9% right isn't great: that means 1 in 1000 is bad. If this were a medical condition, that'd be a pretty high rate. I work with large-scale testing, and we use a measure called "DPPM", or Defective Part Per Million (manufactured). For my team, a DPPM in 10s is noise/acceptable loss, ~100 we keep an eye on, and 100s-1000 is cause for investigation. Going back to percentage, that translates to 0.001% fail-rate is noi…

I've generally stopped using percentages to communicate these days because it's apparent people don't understand them. Someone will say 80% like it's a sure thing - until you point out the failure rate is 1 in 5.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#175

Post by pjc50 »

yupper32 wrote: post #39

I don't understand how articles like this get upvoted. Who is getting value from this? This reads like some generic LinkedIn CEO post that sounds deep on the surface but actually means nothing.

Everyone thinks they're the person who's right that 1% of the time about the thing everyone else is conservatively wrong about.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#176

Post by doubleunplussed »

travisporter wrote: post #139

> But then you consult a bunch of experts, who all claim they have additional evidence that the thing won’t happen, and you raise your probability to 99.999% I lose the line of reasoning here - 99.9 to 99.999 doesn't happen if you don't have new evidence, so why would you raise your probability? or maybe i'm being too literal?

You think the supposed experts have additional evidence, so you're treating their claim to have evidence as evidence in itself. You're unaware that they have no more evidence than you already did.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#177

Post by vojvod »

mkolodny wrote: post #117
HPsquared wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "slippery slope" principle applies here though: N+1 enables N+2, which enables N+3 and so on.

Slippery slope is a fallacy, not a principle. Just because you took N steps, that doesn't necessarily mean you will take N+1 steps. It's a convincing fallacy because sometimes you do take N+1 steps. But just like in the article, heuristics aren't always right.

Slippery slope arguments aren't inherently fallacious. If you can justify one more climb on the grounds that probability of injury or death is very low then you will be able to justify every subsequent climb on the same basis.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#178

Post by EGreg »

inglor_cz wrote: post #30

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…

I am just wondering what skydivers must think every time they do it ... given so many trials, the odds of nothing happening are going down exponentially right?

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#179

Post by beaned »

inglor_cz wrote: post #30

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…

Reminds me of the fact that on overage, one out of every hundred places you know will be experiencing a once-in-a-hundred-years event.

When you hear once-in-a-hundred-year event, it makes it sound quite rare. One might look around and say (for example, in relation to climate) "why are so many of these happening?"

But it is unsurprising statistically. If you know just a thousand distinct geographic places, about 10 of them would experience such an event each year.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#180

Post by adamc »

The argument in the first example is just wrong. 1) His value might be that it looks like there is a security guard on duty, and that a) encourages customers, b) discourages robbers. A rock cannot do that. 2) He could do that, but he probably won't, because it's boring to just sit there. Once in a while, he will walk around, looking, paying at least a little attention. It makes robbery riskier.
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