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Heuristics that almost always work

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Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#361

Post by XorNot »

lolc wrote: post #347
XorNot wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Neither of those became pandemic viruses though. And the specific year over year risk was essentially unknown until a new virus emerged at such point we had a couple of months to determine what we thought would happen.

That's the specific event risk: pretty obviously if we had maintained effective pandemic response measures, and maybe focussed on general infectious agent spread control measures as a society (i.e. a year over year goal to reduce influenza cases, update building codes to require less touchable surfaces to navigate) then we'd be better off then we are.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#362

Post by glenstein »

hacknat wrote: post #349
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 t…

Right. I think it has to be boiled down to a simple parable to be sufficiently clear, but it is really attacking a belief that is quite common.

I like this essay on Overconfident Pessimism[0] because I think it gets at the same thing, especially in the context of confident dismissals of important future technological changes:

>There may also be a psychological double standard for "positive" and "negative" predictions. Skepticism about confident positive predictions — say, that AI will be invented soon — feels like the virtuous doubt of standard scientific training. But oddly enough, making confident negative predictions — say, that AI will not be invented soon — also feels like virtuous doubt, merely because the first prediction was phrased positively and the second was phrase negatively.

[0]. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gvdYK8sEFqHqHLRqN/overconfid...

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#363

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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.

Like all fallacies, it's only a fallacy when it's fallacious.

Otherwise, it's just a regular d argument.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#364

Post by zerocrates »

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #353
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…

You have a very weird idea of what security guards do. They don't sit in front of the entrance all night, scaring off would-be robbers. They are inside the building, in their booth, probably looking over some monitors. They do not provide a deterrent, they just call the cops if something does happen. Robbers have no clue if they are there or not. The heuristic works fine.

Well, robbers might in fact know if a particular place has security guards, and they would definitely notice once society replaced them all with rocks.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#365

Post by stavros »

toss1 wrote: post #266
jaggederest wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also known as complacency. Working in a woodshop, one of the things you are most vulnerable to is failing to respect the danger you're in. This is why many experienced woodworkers have been injured by e.g. a table saw - you stop being as careful after such long exposure.

Yup, complacency can kill you. In this case [0], a skydiver forgot to put on his parachute... https://reverentialramblings.com/2018/08/15/the-skydiver-who...

Oh man, that's terrible. I can certainly understand how someone without a checklist that is verified by two people can do that, especially if you have a backpack on to mask the fact that the parachute is missing.

Many times if I wear a tight jacket in the car, I forget to put my seat belt on, because I unconsciously mistake the pressure of the jacket for the seatbelt's, even though putting on a seat belt is usually the first thing I do.

Poor guy.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#366

Post by _Nat_ »

lemmsjid wrote: post #314
somethingAlex wrote: post #203

I'm surprised how many people are just nitpicking the examples like they are supposed to be rigorous analogies. The point that I walked away with is that oftentimes experts use these same heuristics even when people assume they are not. People think that experts don't have to use them because they have better tools and skills at their disposal. However, for reasons involving human factors, they oftentimes do use them…

I wanted to take the overall point but I did get bogged down in the examples. The overall tone of the essay is philosophical and allegorical. For an essay with that tone to really make its point it needs to be crystalline in its clarity and feel a real depth of reasoning, otherwise it will lose the reader. Instead it makes rather extreme points in the examples that don't have to do with what I imagine the author want…

A simpler analogy may've been a smoke-detector that doesn't actually activate when there's smoke. It'd be cheap, super-efficient (no battery needed!), light-weight, no false-alarms, and still usually work correctly 100% of the time for most people.

Another simple analogy may've been a regularized neural-network that's super-efficient because it always returns a nominal-result, not needing to do any calculations. It could work ~>99.9% of the time because the nominal-result is ~>99.9% prevalent.

The author was trying to point out scenarios where lazy-neglect may seem viable. By contrast, some readers may want to give those in the examples the benefit-of-the-doubt, as they might actually be taking no-action as a conscientious decision. While we often want to give folks the benefit-of-the-doubt, that's presumably not how the author intended those examples to be read.

The author was presumably trying to paint pictures in which folks might thrive through neglectful practices, rather than trying to characterize all folks who superficially resemble those in the thought-experiments as being neglectful.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#367

Post by niyikiza »

ahmed_ds wrote: post #217

You are webmd. You take in symptoms from people with mild discomfort. You give a wide range of causes and diseases based on the symptoms. You include both spectrum of extreme events. You are worthless as a medical advice provider. --- You are a talking head in CNBC. You have seen only two global financial crisis in your life time. You talk about a global recession that is about to happen every week. You try your best…

Scott actually did a great writeup on Webmd specifically: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-...

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#368

Post by zerocrates »

dragontamer wrote: post #332
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…

The Hydroxychloroquine discussion is pretty bad as well. We were confidently against Hydroxychloroquine because it was well tested in the RECOVERY trial in June 2020 [1]. The time to be optimistic was during the trial-phase of the test. Once that time passed, everything beyond that point was unnecessary and unhelpful hype. ------ What's amazing to me, is that the RECOVERY trials showed that Dexamethasone cut the deat…

Perhaps it's the very fact that dexamethasone was useful (and therefore used) that explains why you never hear about it.

Since you mentioned the political context, it's not necessarily just "something that works" that you're looking for in a political sense, but "something that works that THEY don't want you to have." If everyone agrees on it, there's no action, no wedge.

The fact that most people are going to recover anyway is also fertile ground for snake oil, as everyone runs their own uncontrolled experiment and declares success when they survive, and most do.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#369

Post by jrochkind1 »

tshaddox wrote: post #290
jrochkind1 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

OK, the next 3 months are no more dangerous for you than if you hadn't spent the last 12 months doing it. What you did in the past has no bearing on the chances going forward. I'm not sure if it's more clear to say it like that or not. Clearly, humans have a lot of trouble speaking and thinking clearly about statistics.

The next three months are no riskier than your first three months were. They don't become more risky because they will add up to 15 months total -- once you've already finished the first 12 without incident.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#370

Post by borroka »

hacknat wrote: post #349
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 t…

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

Your observation is indeed much more interesting than the whole article, since it shows a reasonable (and not a caricature with zero value) heuristic. You are saying that I (who may or may not be a physician, but for argument's sake let's say I am not) should not have an opinion that is different, when discussing the behavior of doctors, from the opinion expressed by a licensed and practicing physician. Valuable heuristic?

As for the article itself, my problem with is was not on the problems that reasonable heuristic can generate, but with the useless caricatures.

A doctor who does not visit any patient and simply gives aways a couple of aspirins, is criminally negligent. A doctor who does not call for an MRI for any common symptoms (think headache) that may have been caused, among many other possible causes (dehydration, stress, tension etc.), also by something much more serious (brain cancer) is using a reasonable heuristic, which sometimes may go wrong because for very aggressive cancers, a couple of weeks of delay in starting treatment or having surgery can make the difference between life and death.

A personal case. I went to a doctor with a dermatitis and the doctor recommended, guess what?, a topical steroid cream, which is recommended by dermatologist like a barber recommends a haircut. The heuristic is, dermatitis of unclear origins --> let's try a steroid cream. After I did a bit of research on my own (5 minutes, maybe less), I found out that for my conditions the steroid cream should be absolutely avoided since it makes the condition worse. The question is and I let you choose the answer: (1) was the doctor using a reasonable heuristic?; (2) was the doctor incompetent and/or an idiot; (3) was the doctor negligent (there is some overlap with (2))? Should I wait for the opinion of a "licensed and practicing Physician" or I can have my opinion?

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