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The Feedback Fallacy

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Re: The Feedback Fallacy

#51

Post by _y5hn »

whatshisface wrote: post #13
borramakot wrote: post #9

> Adding up all the inaccurate redness ratings—“gray,” “pretty gray,” “whitish gray,” “muddy brown,” and so on—and averaging them leads us further away both from learning anything reliable about the individuals’ personal experiences of the rose and from the actual truth of how red our rose really is. I don't understand this comment. How does averaging noisy signal, even systematically noisy signal, result in somethin…

The author is arguing that the real signal is zero and the systematic error is large, so you will always end up converging on a repeatable but useless value. Technically, taking only one sample could have gotten you closer because there is a 50% chance that the random error would have gone in the opposite direction to the systemic error, although the author is wrong to phrase that like it's some kind of advantage, be…

If methodology is unsound, there can be negative value and outcomes. Ie. active trading is a consistent loser for most people. Methodology can lead people astray.

Re: The Feedback Fallacy

#52

Post by andrewflnr »

bena wrote: post #31
0xBABAD00C wrote: post #30

> The only realm in which humans are an unimpeachable source of truth is that of their own feelings and experiences Side note, but this strikes me as extremely wrong, based on 35 years of living among humans. Humans have unsurpassed abilities of self-deception, cognitive dissonance tolerance, and building monumental mental models to hide the truth about themselves from themselves. As one economist put it, your 'self'…

I think the error is including experiences. I am the sole source for what I'm feeling. Whether I admit that or not is another story, but if I think I feel sad, then I feel sad. Now, whether that emotion is justified is another story and whether the related experience should induce sadness can be up for debate and if I'm interpreting the situation correctly and all of that. But we can't argue that I'm not feeling sad.…

Sole source, yes, but that doesn't mean you're reliable. For anything more complicated than "sad", and maybe even for that, self-deception and lack of self-knowledge can be issues. For example, have you correctly identified exactly what it is you're sad about? I know I've caught myself believing dumb things about my feelings.

Re: The Feedback Fallacy

#53

Post by nitwit005 »

bena wrote: post #31
0xBABAD00C wrote: post #30

> The only realm in which humans are an unimpeachable source of truth is that of their own feelings and experiences Side note, but this strikes me as extremely wrong, based on 35 years of living among humans. Humans have unsurpassed abilities of self-deception, cognitive dissonance tolerance, and building monumental mental models to hide the truth about themselves from themselves. As one economist put it, your 'self'…

I think the error is including experiences. I am the sole source for what I'm feeling. Whether I admit that or not is another story, but if I think I feel sad, then I feel sad. Now, whether that emotion is justified is another story and whether the related experience should induce sadness can be up for debate and if I'm interpreting the situation correctly and all of that. But we can't argue that I'm not feeling sad.…

> but if I think I feel sad, then I feel sad.

Our sensitivity to our own emotions doesn't seem to be that great. People talk about happiness sneaking up on you, or having a realization that they're unhappy in a relationship. Presumably the feelings were there, but they weren't conscious of it.

I suspect if I did have dials in my head that displayed the level of each emotion, I'd go insane trying to move the needles. There may be some logic to the arrangement.

Re: The Feedback Fallacy

#54

Post by noneeeed »

on_and_off wrote: post #42
smacktoward wrote: post #7

When I hear people talking up their policy of > “encouraging harsh feedback” and subjecting workers to “intense and awkward” real-time 360s ... I can't help but think how much a review there sounds like a capitalist version of a Maoist "struggle session" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session ). The point of a struggle session wasn't to build people up; it was to tear them down. A culture where the way y…

So far, all of the people I know that have been boasting about their "I gave brutally honest feedback" only mean "I will tear you down at every opportunity". It is always "brutaly honest when it comes to put people down, but weirdly enough, these same person never have positive feedback to give. Even if it was the case, it would not be worth it. Even as a foreigner weirded out by the "everything is awesome" way of sp…

"People who are brutally honest generally enjoy the brutality more than the honesty." - Richard Needham

Re: The Feedback Fallacy

#55

Post by username90 »

bena wrote: post #31
0xBABAD00C wrote: post #30

> The only realm in which humans are an unimpeachable source of truth is that of their own feelings and experiences Side note, but this strikes me as extremely wrong, based on 35 years of living among humans. Humans have unsurpassed abilities of self-deception, cognitive dissonance tolerance, and building monumental mental models to hide the truth about themselves from themselves. As one economist put it, your 'self'…

I think the error is including experiences. I am the sole source for what I'm feeling. Whether I admit that or not is another story, but if I think I feel sad, then I feel sad. Now, whether that emotion is justified is another story and whether the related experience should induce sadness can be up for debate and if I'm interpreting the situation correctly and all of that. But we can't argue that I'm not feeling sad.…

You know that you are sad, but you generally don't know why so you guess. And your own guess about the source of your feelings usually isn't any better than what other people would have guessed about you.

Re: The Feedback Fallacy

#56

Post by rgoulter »

smacktoward wrote: post #7

When I hear people talking up their policy of > “encouraging harsh feedback” and subjecting workers to “intense and awkward” real-time 360s ... I can't help but think how much a review there sounds like a capitalist version of a Maoist "struggle session" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session ). The point of a struggle session wasn't to build people up; it was to tear them down. A culture where the way y…

I've heard this kindof system of feedback is brutal, and is certainly not for everyone.

I think the point is to aim for apolitical and tactless information transfer. The only chance it'd have of working is if there's a shared understanding that correcting mistakes is more valuable than political standing; and this applies to everyone, especially the bosses.

The saner way to try and get these benefits is to foster psychological safety.

Re: The Feedback Fallacy

#57

Post by scarejunba »

Maybe this is some problem on a large institution level. For me, every time something I'd done was not correct or I'd failed, it felt very valuable to me that someone noticed and told me and how they wanted it to be. It reinforced in my mind what was good and that what I thought was not was, in fact, not. I always felt way better coming out of an interaction like that.

The worst feeling is when I feel something is going poorly and no one will tell me they think that about my thing.

Re: The Feedback Fallacy

#58

Post by Cougher »

on_and_off wrote: post #42
smacktoward wrote: post #7

When I hear people talking up their policy of > “encouraging harsh feedback” and subjecting workers to “intense and awkward” real-time 360s ... I can't help but think how much a review there sounds like a capitalist version of a Maoist "struggle session" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session ). The point of a struggle session wasn't to build people up; it was to tear them down. A culture where the way y…

So far, all of the people I know that have been boasting about their "I gave brutally honest feedback" only mean "I will tear you down at every opportunity". It is always "brutaly honest when it comes to put people down, but weirdly enough, these same person never have positive feedback to give. Even if it was the case, it would not be worth it. Even as a foreigner weirded out by the "everything is awesome" way of sp…

When I did online dating, I had a few red flags that I used to exit out of a profile. One of them was boasting about being "brutally honest", "honest to a fault", and/or "I tell it like it is."

Re: The Feedback Fallacy

#59

Post by Cougher »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #43

managers spend way too much time on trying to get inside their employees head and fiddle around imho, they really don't have the skills or training. if they spent this time on actually helping do the work in terms of what's needed and wanted so everyone could just go home then the world would be a much better place.

Yes. They'd hire someone like Wayne Dyer to develop treatment plans at a psychiatric hospital. My favorite personal example was when my employer hired a management engineering consultant company to help people who spent their time in meetings to trim fat, i.e., fire people who did the work. One of the ways that was used to help us dumb people understand what a quality product is was to ask us which restuarant has a higher quality product: a gourmet steakhouse or McDonald's. The answer? It was supposed to be a 'gotcha' of course. People inevitably answered the "gourmet steakhouse", but our brilliant teacher laid down some truth that day: McDonald's is of equally high quality because they do very well at providing a consistent product throughout all of their franchises. I told her that there's a difference between consistency and quality. A consistently low quality product is still a low quality product. Management just didn't get it. This was at a time in the early 90s when my employers touted themselves as being a "World Class Hospital". What kind of claim is that when American hospitals were world beaters?

Re: The Feedback Fallacy

#60

Post by bena »

username90 wrote: post #55
bena wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the error is including experiences. I am the sole source for what I'm feeling. Whether I admit that or not is another story, but if I think I feel sad, then I feel sad. Now, whether that emotion is justified is another story and whether the related experience should induce sadness can be up for debate and if I'm interpreting the situation correctly and all of that. But we can't argue that I'm not feeling sad.…

You know that you are sad, but you generally don't know why so you guess. And your own guess about the source of your feelings usually isn't any better than what other people would have guessed about you.

Which is why I said the feeling may not be justified. But my feelings are what they are. Not being able to explain why I'm feeling them does not invalidate the fact that I do feel them.

You cannot tell me what I'm feeling.

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