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

No one cared about my spreadsheets

econlib.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 413 posts

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#341

Post by caffeine »

periheli0n wrote: post #337
roenxi wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging the benefits of anything only on the financial bottom line is risky. Many extremely valuable things are valuable because they are cheap to the point of irrelevancy. Which is why it is a valid question to ask whether the resources are worth it. > For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex information to base their voting decisions on. It has worked pretty well for the la…

> It has worked pretty well for the last 2,500 years with voters possessing extremely questionable education. Early democracies often restricted the right to vote to specific parts of the population. Also if anything has become clear in the last 5 years it’s that educated people are much less likely to be deceived by false populist promises.

> Also if anything has become clear in the last 5 years it’s that educated people are much less likely to be deceived by false populist promises.

Agree with the basic premise that the main political division is not between “right” and “left” but “educated people” (ie progressive college-educated) vs “uneducated people” (the working classes.)

Disagree that it’s clear who is right. We will have to wait 20-30 years to see. (Personally I think the working classes are wiser than the progressive elites, but that’s just one opinion..)

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#342

Post by alisonkisk »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #44

To all the people who are criticizing the author doing it in Python, I think spreadsheets are actually superior to this for public policy. They are easier for the average person to grasp and play around with than is python. Almost any person who works in an office, can download a spreadsheet, look at the formulas, and then change a single cell and immediately see the results.

No post body was provided.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#343

Post by shawabawa3 »

rendall wrote: post #335

This reminds me of the debunking of the Losada ratio, which was purportedly the precise ratio of positive to negative emotions you should experience to be mentally and emotionally healthy: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/19/mathematics-... No one had previously even bothered to check the numbers before it became a fundamental tenet of the field.

> which was purportedly the precise ratio of positive to negative emotions you should experience to be mentally and emotionally healthy

This doesn't make any sense. It's not a matter of some formula using bad maths, it's the fact that maths isn't applicable to something so obviously subjective

I'm surprised it needed debunking at all when the premise is so obviously and immediately flawed

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#344

Post by mvhvv »

stereolambda wrote: post #271
mvhvv wrote: post #131

With a grain of salt, as someone who has not read the spreadsheets (and has no interest in doing so). The author just seems to misunderstand the relativity of ideology. In particular they bemoan their critics as "..go[ing] with their ideology and status-quo bias, using the latest prestigious papers as fig leaves", but they don't acknowledge that their own findings obviously require some major ideological assumptions…

I also don't align with the author ideologically, but I have to protest somewhat. Assuming that the inputs and the model are sound (which I'm not saying they are, going by some other commenters' judgements), the spreadsheets tell us something regardless of whether we subscribe to making policy decisions with pure monetary terms ROI. Mainly that we need a damn good non-monetary arguments to make young people learn som…

I agree it's a positive move to bring formal logic and statistics into other fields, but (at least where I'm from) the social sciences do engage heavily with epistemology. And as a STEM major myself, I'll admit it's often in critical ways that the hard sciences fail.

The problem with many attempts to apply statistics is that even for the best quality science, the conclusion is only ever relative to the foundational assumptions. I don't mean they're intentional manipulations, but that it's very clear that Caplan is so far off the mark here that his work is difficult to take seriously.

I think a common critique of the trolley problem is an apt analogy here. Not an ethical argument about a specific choice, but that the thought experiment itself is flawed. It presents an absurd binary that neatly removes the human experience and incommensurability of individual life and insists on it's own utilitarian nature.

The problem with the spreadsheets, as with the trolley problem is that these kinds of analyses are founded on ad hoc assumptions that conveniently remove important context.

There is always a better approach. There are issues with our education system that don't work for many children, and wages do not correlate evenly with education across the board, but the conclusion that we should therefore slash public education funding and transition high schools to vocational training is doesn't follow from that unless you make those trolley-problem-style simplifying assumptions.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#345

Post by Aeolun »

sjy wrote: post #310
periheli0n wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way around the idea that education, like everything else, costs resources, time and money, that can be spent on other things. It's a totally valid thing to wonder whether it's the best use of that money there is. Judging the benefit of education only on the financial bottomline is bound to underestimate its real value. For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex in…

The effects of education on democratic participation, workforce participation and public health are all explicitly assessed in Caplan’s book, particularly chapter 6. This comment tends to prove the point he makes in the article: “Quantitative social science is barely relevant in the real world … If you’re lucky, researchers default to common sense. Otherwise, they go with their ideology and status-quo bias, using the…

Of course it is. If literally nobody wants to hear your answer, you might well (to use an example from a previous article) replace your audience with a rock saying “it’s not true. Go away.”, and have the same effect.

I’m predisposed to saying education is insanely beneficial though. I want everyone to have all of it for free.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#346

Post by qqqwerty »

rrherr wrote: post #84
sgdjgkeirj wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point. Caplan makes a huge deal about the fact that a students that drops out one semester before finishing the degree takes a huge penalty to their salary. This is what he calls the “sheep skin effect”. He claims that because such a student gets almost all of the education, their penalty must correspond to the signaling component. But this is where his math runs against common sense. If you are an emp…

> If you are an employer and see a student that dropped out of college without a very good reason, then that is a very strong negative signal. This is an argument for Caplan’s signaling theory, not against it. You literally said that whether or not a job applicant graduated is a very strong signal to employers.

I think the term "negative signal" muddies the water here.

Caplan is walking on a bit of a tightrope. He is arguing that colleges provide minimal education benefits, and that its primary value is in the signaling provided by the degree.

But if Caplan is correct, why would someone drop out in their senior year? If the only real benefit is the degree, and if the degree comes with a lifetime of increased wages, surely a rational actor would stick it out. I think this is where his argument has some cracks.

The first possible explanation for the dropouts is that college provides additional value to society by filtering out those who can handle the process vs those who can't. This is "filtering" not "signaling". Caplan does not model this value to society anywhere. And second, is that it is likely that more learning (or life experience, or whatever) is happening at college than Caplan is giving credit for. i.e. if some students are dropping out of college, than that likely means some students are struggling (but succeeding) to graduate, and likely learning some valuable lessons in the process.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#347

Post by cycomanic »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #324
cycomanic wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is his argument to dismiss the high correlation between many economic indicators and education spending both historically and geographically? I had a look at the spreadsheets but I don't clearly see what are the factors that go into his calculation of benefit to society calculation except for crime rates. I mean how about R&D necessary to grow the economy, competitive advantages for attracting immigrants, par…

The usual argument when a correlation goes against your theory is to say "aha! but what if the causation goes the other way?" and that's pretty much what the author does. He sees higher education as a luxury good. Something that rich societies do when they become rich, because they are rich. If you look at some of the top comments in this thread you might see some evidence in favor of his position. Most people are no…

The problem with the argument of turning around the causality is that there are several examples of countries to have spend significantly on education to then move out of poverty, i.e. where the poverty only reduced after the focus on education. I think you need to come up with some convincing cases that show why the causality should be reversed.

Regarding education being a luxury good, I agree you could argue that some of the comments here consider it that. However, that does not mean it is this way from a societies point of view.

Regarding your points: [1] My argument was more, that immigrants typically try to go to places where they envision a better future, for themselves, but importantly also for their children. Thus a society that offers good education for future children is obviously attractive. I do agree that education is used as a restriction to immigration, or better more modern societies do not have so much need for unskilled labor, but want skilled immigrants. I guess another point for getting an education, it lets you emigrate to other countries much more easily. [2] Sure, that's a general point about everything not just education. However, it is also still unclear if we have reached diminishing returns for education.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#348

Post by amelius »

robbedpeter wrote: post #29
epgui wrote: post #14

I bet a spreadsheet that thoroughly analyzed the profitability of going out for a run every day would also find a negative ROI.

Then you'd lose that bet. Running, even just a little, results in such clear improvements to general health and lowering of all cause mortality that the spreadsheet creator would have to work really hard to push the effects into the negative, and anything you did to frame running as a negative would be trivially dismissed.

I honestly think spreadsheet makers could argue both sides without problems.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#349

Post by UncleMeat »

sbierwagen wrote: post #197
Hermitian909 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, in part, Caplan has made a fairly classic error in attempting to figure out the optimal strategy for an individual within an existing system, where small numbers of individuals deviating generally doesn't matter, and then using those results to make a policy recommendation about how to change the system en masse in a way that will radically change the system. His spreadsheets don't answer many questions I mi…

>would the reduction in college graduates reduce our nation's economic competitiveness? Google had 20k FTEs in 2008, 135k FTEs in 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-ti... In those 12 years, Google did not launch a single new product that they didn't shut down a year later. 115 thousand people, most of them college graduates, did nothing useful for more than a decade. Their primary accompl…

> In those 12 years, Google did not launch a single new product that they didn't shut down a year later.

Okay. I know people like to shit on Google. But this is beyond the pale. Google Cloud by itself is a lot larger than a huge number of entire companies.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#350

Post by jccalhoun »

lamacase wrote: post #19
zwieback wrote: post #7

Has anyone here read the book? I have a hard time imagining that a technical education (e.g. engineering, physics, forestry, chemistry) would be worthless if someone wants to work in that field. Social sciences however... but of course I'm biased there.

I have read the book. He says that engineering degrees are basically the one exception. They're like trade schools. Also, e.g. a social science degree is useful if you're going to be a social science professor/academic, but otherwise none of the skills or knowledge are transferable. He also says that having any degree is "worth it" to an individual, monetarily. It's just not worth it to society to require everyone to…

I've never heard of the book until this thread. How does he define "worth" to society? That seems like a big issue that I wouldn't think it related to proving the math wrong?
Post reply on HN