Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Heuristics that almost always work

astralcodexten.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 541 posts

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#391

Post by shusaku »

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?

For sure. It basically shuts down the idea that you can assess your confidence in an expert based on experience! Instead you have to understand the underlying principles, which is no easy task. To me the solution is to delegate the oversight; hire someone else to understand and assess the reliability of the experts. Obviously that has a whole mess of problems too…

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#392

Post by blue11 »

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/…

I'm very glad to hear that your son had a happy outcome!

"Ear infection" is often not even a heuristic. Pediatricians sometimes say that when it's not obvious what's wrong with a small child that has a little a bit of fever and is crying. Parents need to hear a reason and "ear infection" sounds more convincing than "probably nothing", and sometimes parents can be, well, difficult. I've even heard a pediatrician admit as much once. On another occasion, a nurse practitioner diagnosed our child with an ear infection without even bothering to check the ears.

Emergency physicians, on the other hand, are always thinking about the worst case scenarios and trying to rule them out.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#393

Post by dragonwriter »

shusaku wrote: post #391
crent wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For sure. It basically shuts down the idea that you can assess your confidence in an expert based on experience! Instead you have to understand the underlying principles, which is no easy task. To me the solution is to delegate the oversight; hire someone else to understand and assess the reliability of the experts. Obviously that has a whole mess of problems too…

> To me the solution is to delegate the oversight; hire someone else to understand and assess the reliability of the experts. Obviously that has a whole mess of problems too…

Mainly, it has the exact same problem you chose it in order to avoid, you now have to understand and assess the reliability of an putative expert in the domain of understanding and assessing the reliability of experts in your original target domain.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#394

Post by bee_rider »

sfink wrote: post #257
OscarCunningham wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could calculate it by taking the average lifetime of a tree and dividing by the length of time slept and the number of trees in squashing distance.

Only if tree death is uniformly distributed over a tree's lifetime for some bizarre reason. And it isn't. The logic in the story is BS. First, you would never, ever get into a car with that logic. Second, trees just aren't that ephemeral. People who live in a forest would be very aware of when they do or don't fall (or more problematically, drop large branches.) It's not as straightforward as just avoiding storms or…

I think your explanation is pretty plausible, I wonder why people are downvoting it.

Like these guys probably have homes, with bedding of some sort, maybe they'd rather sleep next to their wives than some caterpillars. If I was giving somebody from a far-off place a tour of my workplace and, on the bus ride home, they suggested it was getting dark and we should camp on the sidewalk I'd probably not go for it. If they were really insistent I'd probably amplify the danger of sleeping on the sidewalk to shut them up.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#395

Post by DaveExeter »

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…

Jared Diamond tells a similar story about tree falls in the jungle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/science/jared-diamonds-gu...

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#396

Post by Aeolun »

gilgad13 wrote: post #261
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.

While this is true, in the context of alpine climbing where I first heard this statement, the bold alpinists who die young are very much not beginner-intermediates. I've interpreted this differently than just the "Bathtub Curve"[1] applied to dangerous pursuits. Rather, there is a certain amount of objective risk in alpine environments, and the more time you put yourself in that environment, especially in locations y…

(Example) When you go climbing somewhere, you have like a 40% of getting killed that you can mitigate completely by skill, and an additional 0.1% chance that something goes wrong by some fluke, that you can’t mitigate at all.

Pretty good if you go climbing 10 times a year. Pretty bad if you go 1000 times.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#397

Post by thrown_22 »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#398

Post by eyelidlessness »

Heuristics are literally an evolutionary mechanism, the same reason we don’t stop and observe every blade of grass. If we did we’d be easy prey, and extinct. As would other species capable of the same contemplation.

They’re also very seldom so weighted. 99.9% confidence in anything is so uncommon that it’s not even a marketable confidence. How many nines? Not this many.

And many of the examples in the article are clearly strawman arguments where the exemplary person would never express the same level of confidence. Or if they would, they’d expose themselves as incompetent or a fraud.

I feel like I’ve spent more time and mental energy on this than it deserves, but to round it out: heuristics are intended to be hypotheses, and intended to be tested. They’re not rules. The only reason anyone would treat them as rules is if they’re 99.9% confident. If anything is that sure, you’re either dealing with business that cares about that probability margin or you’re gambling against yourself.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#399

Post by HWR_14 »

mort96 wrote: post #233
HWR_14 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I am saying their analysis of risk is incorrect, and therefore if that's the only reason they aren't climbing then they should climb more often.

I think you're reading it wrong. After a long life of rock climbing, there's no significant risk of doing it one last time or 10 last times (ignoring the effect of old age itself and whatever). But when you're in earlier stages of your life, you're asking a different question: You're asking, is this something I want to do hundreds or thousands of times in my life, knowing that each of those times has a small chance o…

That would be a reason to have not climbed more than a specific rate ever. It wouldn't be a reason to scale down the rate of climbing as you age.
Post reply on HN