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Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

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Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#51

Post by peteradio »

ekianjo wrote: post #42
shubb wrote: post #35

The related problem that I see actually more often is the "you don't have big data" problem. You know, in data science, you see people spending hours writing pandas scripts that replicate a few clicks in excel for a one of analysis. You see datasets of a few gigabytes being processed with spark when SQL would be fine. You see ML techniques being thrown at questions that could be answered simply and reliably with basi…

Talking to people is not going to help you either. You end up getting a lot of noise and making sense of what you hear is difficult. When you keep probing you will get to hear stuff thats not really critical and just often made up because you ask too many questions. Classical trap of market research.

You both make good arguments, there must be a middle here. I doubt you can uncover what your customer wants very well without just talking to them, but maybe they wind up misleading you sometimes. A/B testing to discover a customer wants a whole different paradigm isn't possible.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#52

Post by dalbasal »

viridian wrote: post #46

This entire discussion makes a good case for why the general populace would benefit from being taught the basics of philosophy. In this case the topic of value is the often fraught relationship between empiricism and rationalism , and the impacts each have on the scientific process, research, education, and how we go about understanding the world. To operate with one with a complete absence of the other is to expose…

Idk how if studying philosophy helps. Most philosophers were/are themselves committed to one school or theory, with gaps galore.

In any case, I think empirical science's defeat of rationalism ( eg Galileo Vs Church) has all sorry of ramifications. Social sciences like economics and psychology have a lot of trouble bridging the gaps.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#53

Post by eufyvodsk »

viridian wrote: post #46

This entire discussion makes a good case for why the general populace would benefit from being taught the basics of philosophy. In this case the topic of value is the often fraught relationship between empiricism and rationalism , and the impacts each have on the scientific process, research, education, and how we go about understanding the world. To operate with one with a complete absence of the other is to expose…

The problem with this is that philosophy isn't a magical panacea that illuminates the way towards a more ideal state. It can be used to justify a sea of mutually exclusive claims that may not be in accordance with reality, and that's to say nothing about the quality of the arguments themselves.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#54

Post by tdehnel »

oxfordmale wrote: post #38

This is not what the data shows https://www.google.com/search?q=data+driven+companies+more+p... Any good-argument-driven based argument you attempt to make is almost always based on political motivating factors, rather on what is good for the business. Intuition driven decisions work when the market is behaving normally, however, are generally too slow in a fast changing market like we have been since the start of CO…

> Any good-argument-driven based argument you attempt to make is almost always based on political motivating factors

If this is true in the case of a specific theory, then that is not a good theory.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#55

Post by tdehnel »

jasode wrote: post #16

To the author... I'd suggest a rewrite of what you're trying to communicate because your usage of "good-argument-driven" is a textbook example of Begging The Question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question For discussion's sake, let's go along with excluding data/metrics/science in pushing for arguments. In this framework, what exactly is a "good" argument based on? Gut feel? Opinion? There was a famous…

A simple answer to this is that good explanations are hard to vary.

More here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jcTsbaQ8hNc7qxwaQ/explanatio...

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#56

Post by blitzar »

Shacklz wrote: post #29

> Are you prepared to do some very very fancy statistics? I'd extend this with "... while understanding what you're doing?" I've seen it so many times already, someone does some A/B-test and then presents a very fancy looking slide-deck with all kinds of crazy-looking math. But if you start to ask questions, it's all very obvious that they didn't really understood what they were doing and that very often it doesn't r…

> Are you prepared to do some very very fancy statistics?

IF you need 'fancy' statistics then it is not going to be a good data driven argument at all.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#57

Post by ThomPete »

David Deutsch (Father of Quantum Computation and one of the most brilliant human beings alive) have a really great way of thinking these kinds of discussions.

He calls it good explanations.

A good explanation is something that is hard to vary while still solving the problem it purports to solve.

He is against most use of Bayesianism when used for predictions.

Great presentation here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVwjofV5TgU

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#58

Post by tdehnel »

quanto wrote: post #6

> A weak argument founded on poorly-interpreted data is not better than a well-reasoned argument founded on observation and theory. So a good argument is founded on...good data and good understanding of data? The article more seriously makes the mistake of begging the question: it presupposes the known classier of good and bad arguments and then goes on to say bad arguments with data is worse than good arguments. But…

Good arguments (explanations) are hard to vary.

More here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jcTsbaQ8hNc7qxwaQ/explanatio...

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#59

Post by verisimi »

viridian wrote: post #46

This entire discussion makes a good case for why the general populace would benefit from being taught the basics of philosophy. In this case the topic of value is the often fraught relationship between empiricism and rationalism , and the impacts each have on the scientific process, research, education, and how we go about understanding the world. To operate with one with a complete absence of the other is to expose…

I agree so strongly with this.

The point I would add is that hardly anyone uses the empirical process directly. It is all 'this article claims this' or 'this study says that'. It's very 'meta' with little to no personal verification or testing of the claims - ie, theories based on theories or models based on models, or maps based on maps.

Very few check the terrain itself to confirm that the map applies. We trust education, experts, peer review etc. We're drowning in models, especially as these are easily represented on computers, but have no ability to check the models against reality.

PS this disassociation from reality will not improve as we move forward technologically. No doubt, in the metaverse we will be able to create ever more elaborate models, or is it that we will be ever more disassociated from our own anecdotal experiences? (Where 'anecdotal' is something to apologise about).

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#60

Post by ThomPete »

crabmusket wrote: post #9

This reminds me a lot of the discussion of the scientific method by Karl Popper, and David Deutsch who was very influenced by Popper. "Being data-driven" sounds very empirical . Just look at the data, and see what you find in it. But you can't just let the data "speak for itself" without an explanation or a theory that interprets the data. Popper in Conjectures and Refutations : > Observation is always selective. It…

I was about to post that.

Here is a good talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVwjofV5TgU

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