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Heuristics that almost always work

astralcodexten.substack.com

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Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#281

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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/…

> 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.

This one is difficult. The first doctor with the first diagnosis was likely doing the right thing. Although tragic, it's exceedingly rare for someone that young to present with a brain tumour.

If a doctor was ordering CT scans every time someone arrived with ear infection symptoms, they statistically be causing more harm than good. CT scans raise an individuals risk of cancer ever so slightly. Not a big deal for individuals, but scaled up to an entire population it's actually a real creator of cancer risk.

Now obviously if you have some serious symptoms then the incremental risk of a CT scan is less than the risk of missing a serious diagnosis. However, jumping straight to the CT scan without good reason would be a mistake. So now doctors are in a position where they must integrate diagnostic history into the equation. Showing up to multiple doctors with an "ear infection" that isn't responding to any treatments warrants deeper investigation. If the issue isn't resolved, proceeding to imaging makes sense.

This is why it's important to begin return visits with a summary of what's been done so far. If you get a doctor who wants to re-start the diagnostic process without accounting for previous work done so far, unfortunately the only real solution is to move on to someone else.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#282

Post by tshaddox »

bmc7505 wrote: post #219

"Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy though…

Surely there's some point where the ability of the individual to not expend energy inefficiently becomes balanced with the ability of the organism to evade tigers. It's clearly not true that the individual who thinks they hear a tiger more often (without bound) will be more successful at surviving/reproducing.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#283

Post by sanxiyn »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #277

The problem here is "the bigger picture". The security guard can improve his heuristic by studying criminology (or rather just talking to other security guards who have been robbed). what sounds were made, are sounds of the wind different to breaking glass? Have burglaries been on the increase lately? When did he last check the car park was there a suspicious car there? What I am trying to say is that each of the exa…

Eh... yes, this post is attacking a straw man, but that's okay, since the post is explicitly about attacking a straw man (spelled "rock" in the post)?

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#284

Post by vojvod »

mkolodny wrote: post #235
vojvod wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slippery slope arguments are inherently fallacies. They don't prove that something will happen. Just because you can justify the next climb on the same basis, that doesn't mean you will. You could decide that you've already tested the odds one too many times.

"You could decide that you've already tested the odds one too many times" was the original point. Someone responded that the N previous times don't matter and N + 1 has barely any risk. Another poster countered that that argument as stated applies not just for N + 1 but for (N + 1) + 1 etc and therefore the slippery slope principle applies.

Of course if you add in "you could decide that you've already tested the odds one too many times" then it's a fallacy to invoke slippery slope because an off-ramp is explicitly specified. In this case slippery slope was mentioned only because N was dismissed as irrelevant.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#285

Post by Minor49er »

ghostly_s wrote: post #33

What is the impetus for this writing style that repeats different versions of the same analogy 10 times when one would have sufficed? Surely Substack doesn't have a word count minimum.

I'm not sure, but I see a lot of this in marketing and management books

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#286

Post by Symmetry »

TameAntelope wrote: post #215

Oh man, next time I need an illustration of how the "villians/heroes" narrative can completely destroy any complexity in a human being, I now have a very well written example! These people don't exist. Not a single one. Every time you're tempted to think someone fits one of these roles, remember how complex you are, and then think about how complex you likely appear to others. The rift you can see between your intern…

I finished the piece noticing times that "heuristics that almost work" were a genuine temptation for me to adopt and having more empathy for people who end up adopting them. If you really don't feel like you could ever be tempted to become lazy in the way that the piece illustrates then I admire your integrity but there are actually many of us who are tempted to reduce the rigor with which we investigate things when we know what is almost certainly going to be the answer.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#287

Post by epolanski »

vincentmarle wrote: post #152
kbuchanan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great example. This is the very reason I have scaled back the amount of time I rock climb as I've gotten older -- not because any individual outing is dangerous, but there's an element of Russian roulette wherein the mere act of doing it more often dramatically changes the risk.

This is called ergodic theory, the more you repeat an action that could result in catastrophe, the likelihood of that catastrophe occuring will be close to 100% if the number of events is high enough.

But that doesn't imply any higher probability. Say chance of dying when doing alpinism is one in a thousand.

The 1000th time you go climbing the chances of dying are still 1/1000.

If you get 100 heads in a row, the 101th time you launch a coin the chance of getting heads is still 50%.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#288

Post by operator-name »

banku_brougham wrote: post #162
operator-name wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's the need to take the examples in the article hyper literally. You can call them strawmen if you'd like but simplification for the sake of presenting a point (which you seem to have ignored) is necessary.

aka exactly what straw man means

I'm not arguing it isn't, only that the comment does does something similar by ignoring the point of the article.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#289

Post by PaulHoule »

H8crilA wrote: post #234
bmc7505 wrote: post #219

"Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy though…

Nassim Taleb would love this quote. "Yes, the VIX is overpriced. Although you can't make a living by shorting it. Both statements are true at the same time."

There was that time I "invested" in an inverse VIX ETF. It was doing great until the day the VIX spiked and it got liquidated.

Funny enough after the liquidation I had about as much money left over as I put in originally. So I didn't lose much skin and got a great story to tell.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#290

Post by tshaddox »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #144
pessimizer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'll die if a roll of three dice comes up sixes, you're not really in a lot of danger. If you do it every day, you have about 15 months to live.

If you've already done it for 12 months without it happening though, the next 3 months are no more dangerous for you than for someone starting from scratch.

That's true, but usually when we are deciding which actions to take, we're not comparing "I take actionA" versus "I take actionB," rather than comparing "I take actionA" versus "some random other person takes actionA."
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