I bet a spreadsheet that thoroughly analyzed the profitability of going out for a run every day would also find a negative ROI.
I'm never running again!
No one cared about my spreadsheets
21–30 of 413 posts
Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets
#22> Several programmer friends advised me to learn a new programming language like Python to do everything automatically, but I’m 98% sure that would have taken even longer – and introduced numerous additional errors into the results. I did plenty of programming in my youth, and I know my limitations. I'm biased since I don't know spreadsheets at all, but I think Python code would have been far more reviewable.
I've seen plenty in both realms that were impenetrable.
Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets
#23This reminds me of people online who construct gigantic walls of bad faith argument text and insist that it's up to everyone else to "debate them" and spend hours deconstructing their argument.
Just possibly, dude, your argument isn't worth anyone else's time to debunk.
Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Counterfactuals can be calculated, but the results will depend on other counterfactuals. There's no getting away from speculating about counterfactuals. If the speculative estimates that went into Caplan's spreadsheets were essentially made up, then it's garbage in garbage out.
> If the speculative estimates that went into Caplan's spreadsheets were essentially made up When Caplan released the spreadsheet and asked people to "check his math" I am pretty sure what he was really asking was for people to test that exact conditional.
I think he actually believes the math. The person who would do it as a troll, as a reductio ad absurdum against the inputs, is me. Except I'm too lazy.
Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets
#25This reminds me of people online who construct gigantic walls of bad faith argument text and insist that it's up to everyone else to "debate them" and spend hours deconstructing their argument. Just possibly, dude, your argument isn't worth anyone else's time to debunk.
This would be contradicted by the fact that his argument makes splashy headlines and is engaged with regularly.
Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets
#26Has 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…
> 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 have education they don't use.
Half of Finnish people between 35 and 44 have a degree, whereas only 7% of people in that age range from South Africa do, so South Africa must be much better off than Finland.
Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets
#27Just my dumb opinion here, but... there's something extremely implausible on its face about the idea that a sufficiently complex spreadsheet could calculate the difference in value generated from kids going to school versus kids not going to school. If people could be convinced that this was something more than a castle in the sky, maybe it would get more attention. I imagine a bunch of academics put their fingers to…
You should listen to the EconTalk interview with Caplan about the book. He talks about the relative importance of each factor, the uncertainties, and the logic behind it all. He makes quite a compelling case.
https://www.econtalk.org/bryan-caplan-on-the-case-against-ed...
Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets
#28Has 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 and it is pretty common sense and reasonable. I recommend you to read the book too.
Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets
#29I 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.
Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets
#30Bryan's boss weighed in on this today: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/02/no... He says the education researchers who might audit this don't because Bryan is an outsider in that field.
Honestly, as a researcher in another field who on occasion gets asked to "audit" people's thoughts, it's a return on investment problem. Doing something carefully enough to actually be worthwhile is (especially for someone's wall of madness spreadsheet) many hours of work.
There's no real outcome where it's helpful for the auditor. They don't get paid. No one got tenure checking over someone's Rogue Outsider Spreadsheet.
People doing economic analysis should understand incentives.
What he has actually discovered is the same thing that makes writing quality scientific code so difficult - no one cares but you, so those unit tests your writing need to bring you some inner satisfaction.