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Heuristics that almost always work

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Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#401

Post by dragontamer »

fastball wrote: post #390
dragontamer wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember hearing hydroxychloroquine conspiracy theories well into the election of November 2020. In particular, when Trump revealed his positive diagnosis, plenty of people were talking about Hydroxychloroquine at that point.

That crap was disproved 5 months earlier, and plenty of people still didn't get the news.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#402

Post by threecoins »

This reminds me about an anecdote about how stock market works I heard when I was young. The story goes like,

It was autumn, and the Red Indians on the remote reservation asked their New Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a Red Indian chief in a modern society, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be.

Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his Tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared.

But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea.

He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked "Is the coming winter going to be cold?" "It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded.

So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more Wood.

A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it Going to be a very cold winter?" "Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "It's definitely going to be a very cold winter. "

The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them tocollect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later, he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"

"Absolutely" , the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever. " "How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked. The weatherman replied, "The Red Indians are collecting wood like Crazy."

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#403

Post by [deleted] »

epolanski wrote: post #287
vincentmarle wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called ergodic theory, the more you repeat an action that could result in catastrophe, the likelihood of that catastrophe occuring will be close to 100% if the number of events is high enough.

But that doesn't imply any higher probability. Say chance of dying when doing alpinism is one in a thousand. The 1000th time you go climbing the chances of dying are still 1/1000. If you get 100 heads in a row, the 101th time you launch a coin the chance of getting heads is still 50%.

[deleted]

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#404

Post by cipheredStones »

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.

If you think a 1/216 chance of sudden death isn't a lot of danger, I don't want to go rock climbing with you!

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#405

Post by fastball »

dragontamer wrote: post #401
fastball wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember hearing hydroxychloroquine conspiracy theories well into the election of November 2020. In particular, when Trump revealed his positive diagnosis, plenty of people were talking about Hydroxychloroquine at that point. That crap was disproved 5 months earlier, and plenty of people still didn't get the news.

...ok? Again, not the point being made by the article so not sure what point you're trying to make.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#406

Post by sin7 »

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.

What am I missing? 6 x 6 X 6 = 216 or about 7 months.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#407

Post by jbay808 »

dTal wrote: post #267
beaned wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the fact that on overage, one out of every hundred places you know will be experiencing a once-in-a-hundred-years event. When you hear once-in-a-hundred-year event, it makes it sound quite rare. One might look around and say (for example, in relation to climate) "why are so many of these happening?" But it is unsurprising statistically. If you know just a thousand distinct geographic places, about 10 of…

There's something intuitively misleading here, though I'm not sure what it is. I am looking at 100 square inches of floor right now and nothing unusual is happening in any of them.

I'd expect some degree of spatial correlation.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#408

Post by 6510 »

zerocrates wrote: post #364
Spinnaker_ wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they replaced them with rocks its probably not worth robbing the place. I mean, it says so on the rock?

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#409

Post by powersnail »

The cat owner

Timmy has a shot gun and a cat. Every time he hears a crack of the floor, he picks up his shot gun and checks the door. It's okay; it's just his cat walking around the house. But this is merely a heuristics, he thinks to himself. Being a rational person, Timmy still rushes to the door with his shot gun every time he hears a crack in the floor. The lack of sleep has invited boldness to his head, but at least so far, he has kept out every bugler who didn't show up to his door.

The city lover

Mary and Susan live in a city, by a busy road. There is a crossing, with proper traffic lights and timers. Susan crosses the road when the green light is on, because that's when all the cars whose route clashes with hers are not moving. But all of them? Mary questions. So far, Susan has been fine, but Mary is a well-informed rationalist who doesn't believe in heuristics. She looks left, and then right, and distrusting her own sense---because we all know that human vision is not 100% reliable---she looks left again, and then right again. She rubs her sore eyes, and decides to go back home. The road is too dangerous.

---

Life would stop being plausible, if we always look out for the 0.001%. In some cases, the cost of not trusting heuristics is low, but then, that heuristics would be quite useless.

Some experts work on the 0.001% case and they are warranted to be paranoid; but even then, their alertness can only be confined to a narrow application. Everything else in life is still based on heuristics.

Re: Heuristics that almost always work

#410

Post by powersnail »

Symmetry wrote: post #286
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…

I finished the piece noticing times that "heuristics that almost work" were a genuine temptation for me to adopt and having more empathy for people who end up adopting them. If you really don't feel like you could ever be tempted to become lazy in the way that the piece illustrates then I admire your integrity but there are actually many of us who are tempted to reduce the rigor with which we investigate things when…

It's not a temptation. It's a necessity. The mere act of getting off bed requires the heuristics that "I can probably safely get of my bed". Everyone uses heuristics that almost always works, because there's no practical alternatives. A doctor who doesn't use heuristics will need to test all patients for cancer, because there's always a chance that there's a tumor behind any symptoms.
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