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Heuristics that almost always work

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Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#341

Post by lemmsjid »

the_af wrote: post #72

One interesting twist on the doctor example: we know she is almost always right that it's nothing, that it will all go away and that just two aspirins are ok. The article correctly points out that she will miss one or two cases where it was a terrible disease instead, and that her prescription of aspirin and to go away and rest will be misguided. However... doctors must do more than just cure you. They must also "do…

Agreed. I'm a hypochondriac who can manifest all sorts of symptoms simply by reading them on the Internet. To my happiness, I finally found a doctor who calls me on my bullshit. As a result I've had fewer unnecessary tests and medications over time. Maybe at some point we'll both laugh off something that actually is serious. Which one will impact my longevity more? I can't tell you.

It's kind of like driving. You can become increasingly lackadaisical because you haven't had an accident recently, which invites accidents. You can become an excessively nervous driver because you perceive all possibilities, which invites accidents. Pretty much everyone who stays on the road an appreciable amount of time develops some balance between those two extremes.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#342

Post by throw1234651234 »

bluGill wrote: post #322
timClicks wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risks are highest when learners are at a beginner to intermediate stage. They know the basics, and have gained some confidence, but don't know enough to get themselves out of trouble. This is called Stage 1 in the Gordon Model of learning: unconscious incompetence.

No, the risks are greatest when you reach complacency. Beginners, even bold ones, take some care. You mostly see this in things like forklift drivers because it takes years of doing the same thing every day before you really get expert enough to be complacent

There is also something called "Normalization of Deviance", defined better by a quote: "Today, the term normalization of deviance — the gradual process by which the unacceptable becomes acceptable in the absence of adverse consequences — can be applied as legitimately to the human factors risks in airline operations as to the Challenger accident." *

Most of you have probably heard of it in the context of fighter pilots doing riskier and riskier maneuvers, but it seems to apply to drivers who speed a lot. 80 starts seeming really slow to them after doing it for years.

* https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/normalization-of-devian....

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#343

Post by QuercusMax »

pessimizer wrote: post #108
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.

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.

Anyone who's rolled double natural 1s with advantage would never take this bet - and your example is twice as likely to occur!

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#345

Post by aspaceman »

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.

> This reads like some generic LinkedIn CEO post that sounds deep on the surface but actually means nothing.

I felt exactly the opposite. In my career as an engineer I regularly encounter experts who claim to be so, but offer no qualifications or expertise. Having the ability to respond to this type of stuff is valuable.

In my personal life, I've felt that many therapists exhibit this exact response. They choose to give heuristics and platitudes because, often times, they work. But it means they are giving up the expertise which they claim possession of.

I'm reminded of quite the childish thing by this article: "With great power comes great responsibility." If you claim to be an expert, you need to actually be an expert. I consider this the social contract of expertise and prestige.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#346

Post by MatthiasPortzel »

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?

Kahneman addresses this in Thinking, Fast and Slow. (Which I highly recommend, by the way.)

He argues that "expert intuition" is only helpful in an environment where intuition can be trained. That is, where there is obvious, immediate, and frequent, feedback on actions. All the examples given in the post take place in environments where there is no opportunity for the "experts" to receive feedback on their advice.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#347

Post by lolc »

XorNot wrote: post #132
scoofy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are NOT black swan events. These are probably all White Swan events (possibly grey swan events, but i'd have to review stuff that i don't want to right now). E.g. High certainty, just low predictability. From the book, when you know the statistics of a rare event, and then the even occurs, it's absolutely not a black swan event. For an event to be a Black Swan event, you literally need to have no possibly for t…

We know pandemics happen but we have no idea which viruses will become pandemic viruses - until one emerges, we're generally confident that there is not an imminent pandemic.

After SARS and MERS, the risk of another coronavirus-outbreak was well established.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#348

Post by bear8642 »

vojvod wrote: post #177
mkolodny wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>If you can justify one more …

Reminds me of Terry Pratchett quote "No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.”

Full quote is fifth here: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/819104-thud>

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#349

Post by hacknat »

borroka wrote: post #275

I read them as sloppy caricatures that provide little value to the conversation. Let's take the security guard: "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." That is blatantly not true, the guard provide value since the wanna-be robbers don't know w…

Are you reading the deeper lesson though? The individual examples aren't meant to be authoritative. He was trying to illustrate the very thing you are bringing up. Namely that lazy heuristics create information cascades. The information cascades can have positive effects, as you point out, but they can have profoundly negative consequences, which is the point of the whole article.

We shouldn't use or intellectually tolerate lazy heuristics because they can create immense amounts of counter-productive sense-making, and consequent negative social outcomes (a poorly managed pandemic, for example). The reason this article is hitting a nerve is because he is basically describing the current state of sense-making in the US (and maybe even the West more broadly?), which is quite poor — worse in some areas than others, but still quite degraded all around.

On your doctor take, you do know that the other author of this post is a licensed and practicing Physician, right?

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