Tentatively agree, but in this case the point was about a mostly aesthetic (though common) preference for established terminology, which has nothing to do with anything of substance.
The idea that good ontology is not about anything of substance is one with whom I have strong disagreement. I remember the time when Trump criticized the WHO’s case fatality rate numbers as wrong because they weren’t the infection fatality rate. You have a media that’s not smart enough to tell the difference and repeat sanely on it to resolve such a conflict by saying “well Trump confused CFR with IFR”. This unskilled way of dealing with ontology likely resulted in people thinking the WHO was less informed then warrented and Trump was more and as a result people died.
Getting ontology right is key to thinking as a society in a good way about this crisis. I think there are cases where introducing new concepts is fine but this isn’t one of them.
It seems like you downvoted because you think I used a serious tone when the point I wanted to make was minor. I think you made a mistake and assessed the situation wrongly.
Furthermore, Vipul is a person who has payed research assistants (or at least had in the past) and who has been through bigger internet conflicts. I think he’s a person for whom it’s justified to have higher quality standards then for a random newbie.
It seems like you downvoted because you think I used a serious tone when the point I wanted to make was minor. I think you made a mistake and assessed the situation wrongly.
Yes, this is what happened. I didn’t read closely enough and I thought what Vipul decided to call “true cases” was simply the total number of infections. But he wanted to specifically refer to only the infections that were going to become symptomatic at some point. I agree that this is making a distinction that doesn’t carve reality at its joints. On top of that the label seems to have misleading connotations (evidenced by me having misunderstood what he meant:)). I agree that this can be risky in this context especially.
I’m reversing the downvote! I don’t see though how outsiders could have immediately inferred from your comment that you object to how Vipul drew categories instead of merely his use of non-standard terminology. I think it’s innocuous to use non-standard terminology if one is not the WHO, and if the choice of terminology is intuitive and carves reality at its joints.
The idea that good ontology is not about anything of substance is one with whom I have strong disagreement. I remember the time when Trump criticized the WHO’s case fatality rate numbers as wrong because they weren’t the infection fatality rate. You have a media that’s not smart enough to tell the difference and repeat sanely on it to resolve such a conflict by saying “well Trump confused CFR with IFR”. This unskilled way of dealing with ontology likely resulted in people thinking the WHO was less informed then warrented and Trump was more and as a result people died.
Getting ontology right is key to thinking as a society in a good way about this crisis. I think there are cases where introducing new concepts is fine but this isn’t one of them.
It seems like you downvoted because you think I used a serious tone when the point I wanted to make was minor. I think you made a mistake and assessed the situation wrongly.
Furthermore, Vipul is a person who has payed research assistants (or at least had in the past) and who has been through bigger internet conflicts. I think he’s a person for whom it’s justified to have higher quality standards then for a random newbie.
Yes, this is what happened. I didn’t read closely enough and I thought what Vipul decided to call “true cases” was simply the total number of infections. But he wanted to specifically refer to only the infections that were going to become symptomatic at some point. I agree that this is making a distinction that doesn’t carve reality at its joints. On top of that the label seems to have misleading connotations (evidenced by me having misunderstood what he meant:)). I agree that this can be risky in this context especially.
I’m reversing the downvote! I don’t see though how outsiders could have immediately inferred from your comment that you object to how Vipul drew categories instead of merely his use of non-standard terminology. I think it’s innocuous to use non-standard terminology if one is not the WHO, and if the choice of terminology is intuitive and carves reality at its joints.
And about the WHO example, I totally agree. I criticized the WHO for the same reason here: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3755/what-will-be-the-ratio-of-fatalities-to-total-estimated-infections-for-covid-19-by-the-end-of-2020/#comment-23097
Thank you for the feedback (and also for discussing this at length which gave me better understanding of the nuances). I modified to a more clumsy but hopefully a more what-you-see-is-what-I-mean term: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mRkWTpH9mb8Wdpcn5/coronavirus-california-case-growth?commentId=GHSEwZwR2TSkyzpdm