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No one cared about my spreadsheets

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Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#361

Post by renewiltord »

pas wrote: post #286
renewiltord wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice is not the “do good science using the correct methods”. The practice is “call for increased education spending for *waves hands* reasons”. Listen, this is the old Internet trick: people show up demanding rigorous models and evidence when they see something they don’t like, but what they like they demand nothing of.

That's ... not a fallacy. It's simply extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in action. (Eg. if your Bayesian prior is already edukashion gud, and someone says giv muniez to teacherz, you can say yes, ok, dollar. But if someone says no no, it's a waste of resources you can say okay the burden of proof is on you now, have fun.)

I'm not claiming it's a fallacy, my dude. I'm claiming it's a trick.

Since the prior is uninformed, it's obvious this isn't "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" since both claims are extraordinary. It’s just that one is political desirous. Ain’t fooling nobody with the attempt at rational cover.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#362

Post by ekianjo »

henrikschroder wrote: post #147
ekianjo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Caplan is right it should be a personal choice not subsidized by government

That sounds like a utilitarian dystopia. Where I'm from, universities don't charge tuition, but you still get a small allowance as a student, and you can add on to that with a student loan to cover living costs. Loan interest and repayments are the same for everyone and based on your salary, it's all backed by the government, and if you don't pay back your loans before the age of 65, your loan is forgiven. Given all…

> The goal of society is happiness, not productivity.

Who are you to decide?

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#363

Post by renewiltord »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #306
renewiltord wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating that Colorado right now is Finland.

No one said that, or anything remotely like that or that implies that. I guess you have a PhD and embody the "exhibit A" counter example eh? Educated yet no better than the uneducated at communication and comprehension. Or let me guess, you only took technical classes. As close to 100% stem as the system would let you. I don't really want to make personal attacks like that but this kind of comment is exactly an examp…

Take a chill pill, my dude. Go out, smell the roses. It’s a beautiful day. Not one to go argue on the Internet.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#364

Post by whatshisface »

pas wrote: post #286
renewiltord wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice is not the “do good science using the correct methods”. The practice is “call for increased education spending for *waves hands* reasons”. Listen, this is the old Internet trick: people show up demanding rigorous models and evidence when they see something they don’t like, but what they like they demand nothing of.

That's ... not a fallacy. It's simply extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in action. (Eg. if your Bayesian prior is already edukashion gud, and someone says giv muniez to teacherz, you can say yes, ok, dollar. But if someone says no no, it's a waste of resources you can say okay the burden of proof is on you now, have fun.)

How much evidence you'd demand to change your mind depends on whether your prior was 50%, 90% or 99.999999999%. You shouldn't need more evidence to change back to 50/50 than it took to get you to your current beliefs - otherwise you'd have two equal cases and prefer the one you heard earlier for no reason other than that you heard it first.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#365

Post by isitmadeofglass »

tsimionescu wrote: post #187
donohoe wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just look at the data in the spreadsheet instead of speculating? I kinda think this is exactly part of the point he is making.

If someone said they came up with a spreadsheet that quantitatively proves that Homer's Odyssey is a worse piece of art than the Mona Lisa, would you go through their quantitative analysis, or simply dismiss their argument on the face of it? Education's value to society and the individual is inherently unquantifiable with today's tools. Maybe someday we will have a mathematical model of the human mind and a theory of…

> If someone said they came up with a spreadsheet that quantitatively proves that Homer's Odyssey is a worse piece of art than the Mona Lisa, would you go through their quantitative analysis, or simply dismiss their argument on the face of it?

Are you kidding me? I would look at the damn spreadsheet. Nothings preventing you from building extremely intesting ML to objectively quantify artwork, and if you’ve created a reliable measure to compare the two I would want to see what you’ve created.

What sort of a closed minded attitude is it to say “why would I bother looking into the facts that support a conclusion I am not willing to believe could possibly be true”

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#366

Post by Jemaclus »

watwut wrote: post #218
Jemaclus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> otherwise none of the skills or knowledge are transferable. While I understand the source of this statement and why people often say this, I'm not entirely sure I agree with this, at least anecdotally. For example, I have a degree in Theater. Which, on the surface, doesn't transfer well to, say, software engineering or law or accounting or teaching or social work. But is that really true? To pick a popular theatre-…

While I think that a lot of you learned can be transferrable, many of your points weaken your argument. Things like "they show up on time", "they work well with others", "they can take direction". I mean, common, almost anything you do has these.

Sure! You're 100% correct! But two quick points here:

1) I wasn't advocating necessarily for a degree, but specifically in rebuttal to the idea that non-STEM majors aren't useful in STEM areas, and

2) One of the benefits of a college degree is that you now have a physical piece of paper that says "I started and finished a 4+ year-long project that proves I can do all of those things," whereas folks without a degree don't have that "proof". I'm NOT saying that you NEED it, but it's useful social proof that says "Hey, I can do all of the things in that list, and here's something that more or less proves it."

But yes, you're right. I could arbitrarily pick History as a major and give you a different but equally impactful list of soft skills that you learn while getting a degree in History! I was specifically pushing back on the parent's assertion that the social sciences (and arts) don't transfer to other domains, which I think is a patently absurd statement.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#367

Post by mdoms »

mvhvv wrote: post #317
mdoms wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assumptions and reductions are always required, there is no researcher in the world that reads every book or paper released in their field It's good practice to read the ones you're commenting on.

I read the article, and I even read through the presentation linked in the article. I didn't read the book, but I'm also not giving a qualitative review of the book. I'm talking about why people don't think it's worth engaging with to begin with. It's not that his critics are afraid or incapable of engaging with him, but that he's being dismissed out of hand because (regardless of whether it's true or not) he present…

> I'm talking about why people don't think it's worth engaging with to begin with.

But that's not what the author is talking about in his article - you did read it, right? His book is drawing criticism from people who haven't read it. It's fine to choose not to engage with something, but if you're going to comment on it you should read it.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#368

Post by regularfry »

zaarn wrote: post #328
regularfry wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and the same argument applies again. It doesn't matter how effective they are, the same logic applies: money you spend on thing A cannot then be used on thing B. That is a choice. I should add that changing things to make them more effective also costs money.

But can you then spend anything? Because spending anything is also a decision on what is more important? By the argument you propose, spending money seems immoral. But spending money on education and homelessness isn't immoral in most moral frameworks, hence the argument must be faulty. Something must be spend and that means allocating how much to spend on what. Preventing future harm on countless people is morally b…

> But can you then spend anything?

Yes, of course you can.

> Because spending anything is also a decision on what is more important?

Yes, that is literally true. Or at least, it's true in a rational economic framework, which is the most common shared fiction when people are discussing these things. When a rational actor spends $X, that means they expect to receive a value of more than $X. Between two things that cost $Y, the rational actor will prefer the one with a higher net present value.

The decision that society makes about allocation of money is equivalent to a decision of how to represent the intangible portions of the value of a given investment so that the things we as a society deem important have enough money spent on them.

> But spending money on education and homelessness isn't immoral in most moral frameworks, hence the argument must be faulty.

"Giving benefits only encourages dependence on the state and discourages people from improving their own situation" is a very frequent argument from conservative types. One assumes it's made in good faith.

From upthread:

> It's a totally valid thing to wonder whether it's the best use of that money there is.

You have a particular answer to that question in your head, and that's fine. It does not invalidate the question, nor guarantee that the assumptions leading to your conclusion are universal in time or space.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#369

Post by Hermitian909 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #199
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…

"His spreadsheets don't answer many questions I might have about such systemic changes" Just curious, have you read over his spreadsheets?

Yes

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#370

Post by tsimionescu »

isitmadeofglass wrote: post #365
tsimionescu wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone said they came up with a spreadsheet that quantitatively proves that Homer's Odyssey is a worse piece of art than the Mona Lisa, would you go through their quantitative analysis, or simply dismiss their argument on the face of it? Education's value to society and the individual is inherently unquantifiable with today's tools. Maybe someday we will have a mathematical model of the human mind and a theory of…

> If someone said they came up with a spreadsheet that quantitatively proves that Homer's Odyssey is a worse piece of art than the Mona Lisa, would you go through their quantitative analysis, or simply dismiss their argument on the face of it? Are you kidding me? I would look at the damn spreadsheet. Nothings preventing you from building extremely intesting ML to objectively quantify artwork, and if you’ve created a…

> What sort of a closed minded attitude is it to say “why would I bother looking into the facts that support a conclusion I am not willing to believe could possibly be true”

It's not about not believing the conclusion itself, my point is that it's absurd to claim there is a meaningful objective sense in which the Mona Lisa is better or worse art than the Oddisey. The question itself is meaningless. Of course you can invent a model which assigns some quantitative art goodness value to pieces of art - your model could say "the more color it has, the better the artwork": perfectly objective, entirely useless.

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