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Heuristics that almost always work

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Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#381

Post by agumonkey »

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 often wonder these days how it was to live in so much risk and unknowns in prehistory. Nothing was sure, understanding of the world was so limited ..

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#382

Post by bhuber »

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.

Don't get on that greased sliding board that ends at the top of a cliff. Once you start sliding, it will be hard to stop because of the grease, and then once you slide off then end you will fall and die.

Do you really think this slippery slope argument is a fallacy? FWIW, wikipedia acknowledges slippery slope can be a legit argument when the slope, and it's chain of consequences, are actually real. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope . Indeed, this is the very basis of mathematical induction.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#383

Post by scoofy »

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.

Who is we? The CDC is actively watching for pandemic signals all the time.

We know pandemics happen, we know their rough power law occurrences. We know the most dangerous vectors of transmission. We can prepare for them. We typically don’t.

Just look at all the aging housing infrastructure on the California coast. We know there will be major earthquakes and we know how often they happen, yet the general populace cares more about how pretty the historic buildings look, even though we know they will kill people.

These are not black swan events.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#385

Post by [deleted] »

alexfrydl wrote: post #145
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…

The problem is that people are not statistics. It may sound reasonable on the surface to say that this heuristic minimizes harm on average because she doesn't perform unnecessary interventions on the 99.9%. However, there are still actual human beings in the 0.1% who are harmed. What you're really saying is that if a group of people is small enough, it's fair for them to suffer preventable harm if preventing it would…

[deleted]

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#386

Post by jquery »

Article was fine, until the Rationalism shout-out at the end (the link to LessWrong was a major red flag). That community is Very Concerned with race and eugenics and genetic determinism and are Just Asking Questions and is largely convinced it knows better than all the experts. There’s a reason Scott Alexander deleted his blog rather than let the light of the NYT shine on it. It would’ve painted him in a very unflattering light, so he decided to “become the story” instead., and his surprise gambit was a massive success at the time. Here at HN the pitchforks were out for the New York Times, and I confess I was even carrying one of those pitchforks.

The rationalist community operates at its best in the semi-dark where its ideas and culture aren’t subject to heavy scrutiny. Would be nice if an intrepid and famous journalist would dig deep but there are dragons lurking there and the operating individuals are exceedingly clever and good at camouflage.

Anyway the rationalist community is a bit of siren song for nerds. I fell for it once and took the bait, so I’m here trying to be more than a mere rock and warning other individuals to be skeptical as they read SA’s seductive prose. Don’t drink the epistemological poison of the rationalist community.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#387

Post by fastball »

borroka wrote: post #370
hacknat wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, w…

I'm confused. You say it's a bad caricature, then provide an anecdotal example that seems to closely match the caricature.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#388

Post by lolc »

XorNot wrote: post #361
lolc wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

The possibility of a pandemic caused by a coronavirus was well recognized before it happened.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#389

Post by ec109685 »

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…

Also, you're not trying to just limit falling debris on yourself, but anyone in your party since you'd hate to lose a friend that way.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#390

Post by fastball »

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…

I think you missed the point. The idea here is that there were people that said before any results were in that hydroxychloroquine was not gonna work, operating with a heuristic that almost always works. And in this case they were correct, which the article doesn't seem to disagree with. The point is that at some point the heuristic will fail, not that it did in the case of hydroxychloroquine.
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