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Heuristics that almost always work

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Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#291

Post by Jupe »

jozvolskyef wrote: post #264
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/…

It is a tough call this one. If my calculations are correct, based on data from[1], male infant head CT scans cause one excess death per ~3k scans. There must have been something else than a remote possibility to warrant ordering it. [1]: https://www.ajronline.org/doi/full/10.2214/AJR.12.10294

I interpret the linked article different. Can you elaborate?

For example (from the summary):

===============================

"CONCLUSION. Radiation exposure from the use of CT in the evaluation and management of severe traumatic brain injury causes negligible increases in lifetime attributable risk of cancer and cancer-related mortality. Treating physicians should not allow the concern for future risk of radiation-induced cancer to influence decisions regarding radiographic evaluation in the acute treatment of traumatic brain injury."

(edited: formatting)

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#292

Post by contravariant »

crent wrote: post #199
dwohnitmok wrote: post #183

The last sentence of the edit the author provides is the key insight of this piece. > the existence of experts using heuristics causes predictable over-updates towards those heuristics. That's the essence of this piece. If you expect that consultation with experts will leave you with a more accurate picture of things than before consultation, you should first be sure that their heuristics are not equivalent to readin…

Which is the rub, right? How can a non-expert reasonably come to a conclusion of whether or not an expert's prediction is baseless or is actually solid/insightful?

Simple, baseless predictions have no grounds.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#293

Post by operator-name »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #272
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.

> You can call them strawmen if you'd like but simplification for the sake of presenting a point If you simplify away the parts that make the argument invalid, that's literally the definition of a strawman argument.

I don't disagree, I'm simply questioning the benifit of nitpicking the strawmen instead of addressing the argument itself.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#294

Post by Retric »

tshaddox wrote: post #282
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.

Sure, but that balance point still involves a lot of needless running before the energy costs become an issue.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#295

Post by [deleted] »

PaulHoule wrote: post #289
H8crilA wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#296

Post by epolanski »

wahern wrote: post #76
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.

A coworker and I were once stuck in an office building for an hour or two. We were working as consultants at a client's building and ended up working rather late. Not particularly late by software programmer standards, but clearly exceptionally late by the culture of the client company. At some point in the evening all the exit doors, including the front door, became armed, and this was conspicuously noted as when we…

Also, security guards aren't putting their lifes on risk for someones tv. Most guards would just call the police and wait.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#297

Post by tshaddox »

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.

That's true, but the (poorly expressed) analogy is specifically referring to the security guard's decision whether to leave his office and investigate a noise. Of course, the mere existence of the security guard in an office (if known to potential burglars) does likely provide some deterrent, but I think the analogy is referring specifically to cases where a burglar would make an attempt regardless of the burglar's knowledge of the existence of a security guard.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#298

Post by epolanski »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #74
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 who agree upvote and have nothing more to say, people who disagree come to post their objections.

Also, people upvote what they finf interesting rather than what they agree with.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#299

Post by rcthompson »

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'd like to see the average life expectancy graph rephrased as "probably of dying today given current age".

Back of the envelope calculation: Life expectancy of 72 years times 365 gives about 26k days, so your average chance of death on a given day is on the order of 1 in 26,000.

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