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Heuristics that almost always work

astralcodexten.substack.com

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Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#221

Post by tablespoon »

_Nat_ wrote: post #194
tablespoon wrote: post #58

> The Futurist > He comments on the latest breathless press releases from tech companies. This will change everything! say the press releases. “No it won’t”, he comments. This is the greatest invention ever to exist! say the press releases. “It’s a scam,” he says. He's got the name backwards on this one. What he's describing is more of an anti-futurist. IMHO, futurists and the ones that make implausibly grand predict…

Legitimate futurists are objecting to some pop-culture nonsense with NFT's, cryptocurrency, etc., often describing such things as scams. I suspect that the author may've had that in mind there. It may be sorta like the problem with science: there's real science and pop-culture science-flavored junk, and pop-culture audiences may perceive real scientists as dismissive because they're always so critical of the latest p…

> It may be sorta like the problem with science: there's real science and pop-culture science-flavored junk

It's kind of an aside, but I think a lot of people (most?) who strongly identify with "science" really identify with science fiction.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#225

Post by icu »

I heard an analyst say, "All models are wrong, some are useful."

After this article I've updated it to be, "All models are wrong, some are useful in certain circumstances."

I would say another heuristic should be something like, "Don't be so quick to dismiss criticism", or "Never over rely on a model."

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#226

Post by SomewhatLikely »

pards wrote: post #131

The doctor rings true. I had 3 separate doctors on 3 separate occasions diagnose my 21 month old son with an ear infection, instead of the plum-sized malignant brain tumour that it was. From their point of view, pediatric brain tumours are very rare and ear infections are common. Their 99% heuristic almost killed him. That was 2010. He survived and is now a vibrant 13 year old, but only because of one curious intern/…

As in the examples in the article, it's those early in their career who are less likely to be following the heuristic.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#227

Post by hortense »

beaned wrote: post #179
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…

Note that the size of the place is important.

"highest temperature ever recorded in town X" does not mean much.

"highest temperature recorded in country Y" on the other hand is more significant, especially if the country is large.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#228

Post by dsr_ »

kqr wrote: post #142
wongarsu wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of course directly leads to Pascal's Mugging: I can simply say "I'm a god, give me $10000 or you will burn in hell for all eternity". Now if you follow Pascal's Wager or GP's logic you have to give me the money: I'm probably lying, but the potential downside is too great to risk upsetting me.

There's actually a rational explanation for that: humans don't care very much about burning in hell for all eternity, when it comes down to it. There's actually a similar though experiment that might seem even more bizarre: I could tell you "give me $100 or I will kill you tomorrow" and you probably wouldn't give me the $100. That's because when it comes down to it, humans don't see the loss of their life as that big…

Here's the thing: if you have just killed five people, "give me $100 or I will kill you tomorrow" becomes a much more effective threat.

One-time games and repeated games have different strategies.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#229

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #208
montebicyclelo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment talks about scaling back the amount of rock climbing they do in order to reduce risk.. And now you are saying that they should go one more time, because a single climb is low risk?

Yes. I am saying their analysis of risk is incorrect, and therefore if that's the only reason they aren't climbing then they should climb more often.

I disagree, their analysis is perfectly correct.

The more frequently you take a risk, the greater the chance that risk materialises.

Parent wants to lower their overall risk, but doesn't want to stop climbing entirely. So they climb less often.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#230

Post by totetsu »

323 wrote: post #149
HWR_14 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the mere act of doing it more often dramatically changes the risk. Kind of. However, you already know that the first N outings didn't have a disaster. So those should be discarded from your analysis. Doing it N times more has a lot of risk, doing it the N+1th time has barely any.

This is called the Turkey fallacy: the turkey was feed by humans for 1000 days, and after each feed event he updated his belief that humans care for him until it's now almost a statistical certainty.

Surely sometime about the turkey getting fatter each time complicates this example.
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