The SSC post that motivated finally finishing this up was Book Review: The Secret Of Our Success, which discusses the game-theoretic validity of randomization in competitive endeavors (like hunters vs. prey, or generals vs. generals). It seemed important to also bring up the other sorts of validity, of randomness as debiasing or de-confounding (like why randomized controlled trials are good) or randomness as mechanism to make salient pre-existing principles. I’m reminded of some online advice-purveyor who would often get emails from people asking if their generic advice applied to their specific situation; almost always, the answer was ‘yes,’ and there was something about the personal attention that was relevant; having it be the case that this particular bit of advice was selected for the situation you’re in makes it feel worth considering in a way that “yeah, I guess I could throw this whole book of advice at my problem” doesn’t.
The SSC post that motivated finally finishing this up was Book Review: The Secret Of Our Success, which discusses the game-theoretic validity of randomization in competitive endeavors (like hunters vs. prey, or generals vs. generals). It seemed important to also bring up the other sorts of validity, of randomness as debiasing or de-confounding (like why randomized controlled trials are good) or randomness as mechanism to make salient pre-existing principles. I’m reminded of some online advice-purveyor who would often get emails from people asking if their generic advice applied to their specific situation; almost always, the answer was ‘yes,’ and there was something about the personal attention that was relevant; having it be the case that this particular bit of advice was selected for the situation you’re in makes it feel worth considering in a way that “yeah, I guess I could throw this whole book of advice at my problem” doesn’t.