DON”T DUMB IT DOWN – IT MAKES US DUMBER
FROM TALEB: (We are getting dumber?)
“The error almost always linked to Kahneman’s attribute substitution: always reduce the problem to something easier to communicate, at the expense of transforming the meaning, Procrustean Bed style. “We underestimate randomness” turns into “It’s all random”.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-14 14:29:00 UTC
ON REFERENCING DATA
You know, I love empirical data. Really good data is pretty specific. You can know what went into it. And if you collect lots of BITS of really good data, then you can learn a lot from it.
But most government data about an economy is incredibly loaded. I’m pretty good at getting through it (although, not like, my hero Karl Smith who is on the other side of the political fence.) That data has been manipulated, contrived, and god knows what else. As an index it’s relatively valuable in pointing out general directions. But unless you know a lot about the individuals that constitute the source of that data, It’s pretty hard to say that data has much meaning.
And they can’t really show you that underlying data, or collect it, because doing so would justify and be used by different groups for mutual criticism.
That might be true.
But at least it would be honest.
THe thing is, that if you’re trying to solve political conflict by creating growth then obfuscation is pretty useful.
But if you’re trying to solve for a solution to political conflict when growth isn’t available to you, or when political and moral conflict provides greater incentive than economic growth, you NEED those underlying numbers, because they tell you want you might be able to DO now that growth is not available to lubricate the friction between groups with disharmonious interests.
It matters that the postwar era is over. We no longer can think we’re special. We’re not. We were special only because the rest of the world had either committed economic suicide or adopted communism and was in the process of committing economic suicide.
WIthout that temporary advantage we can’t create the same growth in the bottom of the population that masked their competing interests.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-09 05:00:00 UTC
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.com/2013/10/comparing-mental-age-ratio-with.htmlTHE NEAR IMPOSSIBILITY OF MEASURING HIGH ADULT IQ
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-06 10:49:00 UTC
METHODOLOGICAL PERSONALITIES: STES (Statistics) not STEM (Mathematics)
(Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics vs Statistics)
Programmers, engineers, physicists, statisticians, economists. We specialize in instrumentation. ‘That which we cannot sense’. And I think for that reason we tend to apply constant discount to sense, perception and intuition. Our work corresponds to, and depends upon, and is tested by, reality.
Teachers, Professors, Mathematicians, Philosophers, Political Scientists, Sociologists, Psychologists, Biologists, physicians, and most scientists. Seem to incorporate idealism, utopianism, and a lot of other cognitive biases into their works.
We ‘practitioners’ are paid for our commercial applications, and must warrant, with our careers, our outputs.
While most others, are insulated from their errors and unaccountable for their statements, decisions and actions.
What I don’t understand is that physicists are in our camp, and doctors in the other camp. And therefore there is something to be learned from that observation.
I suspect that physics is the most advanced discipline, and its better at curing cognitive biases than any other discipline. In fact, we could argue that’s the purpose of physics.
Anyway. That we are, even very bright people, trapped in our methodological biases is endlessly fascinating.
I tend to like the ‘engineer’ spectrum. But we are constantly persecuted by the ‘talker’ community that is unaccountable for it’s actions and whose outputs are untestable.
A fact which I find an endlessly humorous attempt to maintain status in the face of overwhelming evidence that we’re actually leading intellectual progress. Not them.
Humans are fascinating creatures.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-06 06:08:00 UTC
http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.com/2013/10/loci-number-and-group-difference.htmlDAMNED STATISTICS: SORRY BUT THE MYTH OF GENETIC DISTANCE IS FALSE.
Probably too technical for the FB audience but here is a paper on, and discussion about, how the ‘lie’ that two people within a group are more diverse than people across groups is an intentional deception.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-05 10:27:00 UTC
THE CALCULUS OF MAN
“Our Signals are to Status,
as Property is to Cooperation,
as Sets are to Language,
as Money is to Exchange,
as Measurement is to Science.”
Closer. I don’t know how to get the fact that our emotions are reflections in our perception of changes in our inventory of property. If I get that in there, I can get the common law in there.
ITS ALL ABOUT CALCULATION.
Mises and Weber ALMOST had it. Hayek missed it. It’s what he missed.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-04 07:08:00 UTC
THE CALCULUS OF MAN
“Property is to Morality
as Signals are to Status,
as Money is to Exchange
as Measurement is to Science.”
As far as I can tell. That’s the net of it. Just took us 2,500 years to get it all figured out. 🙂
(Yes, you can quote me. It’s OK. lol)
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-03 15:36:00 UTC
How many axis can these disciplines be ordered by?
Mathematics
Computer Science
Physics
Engineering
Economics
THOUGHTS
Causal Density
Susceptibility to mathematical representation
Testability
Computabiity
Platonic vs Real
???
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-14 15:53:00 UTC
IF IT’S THAT INEFFECTIVE, THEN WHY DO WE BET THE ECONOMY, AND OUR CIVILIZATION ON IT?
(I’m not anti-math. I’m anti platonism. Which includes representing what corresponds to reality by necessity with that which correlates with reality. In particular the relationship between our economic data and the monopoly of the west on technology, while discovering a new continent.)
“Abbott explains that effective mathematics provides compact, idealized representations of the inherently noisy physical world.”
“Analytical mathematical expressions are a way making compact descriptions of our observations,” he told Phys.org. “As humans, we search for this ‘compression’ that math gives us because we have limited brain power. Maths is effective when it delivers simple, compact expressions that we can apply with regularity to many situations. It is ineffective when it fails to deliver that elegant compactness. It is that compactness that makes it useful/practical … if we can get that compression without sacrificing too much precision.
“I argue that there are many more cases where math is ineffective (non-compact) than when it is effective (compact). Math only has the illusion of being effective when we focus on the successful examples. But our successful examples perhaps only apply to a tiny portion of all the possible questions we could ask about the universe.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-mathematics-effective-world.html#jCp
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-05 16:43:00 UTC
Troy Camplin
Is there a reference that you can point me to that has say a mathematical proof on one end of a triangle, and a poem on another and a romance novel on the third?
Someone must have done thus back when thesauruses and the permutations of narrative types were being worked out.
How does experiential and factual communication map to all the forms we use to communicate?
Sort of a Nolan chart for written communication. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-03 08:23:00 UTC