but when I asked for metrics to evaluate a presidency, few people actually provided any—most started debating the validity of metrics
This is actually the correct response.
It’s trivially easy to generate tons of metrics—hundreds of them. What’s difficult is choosing the right ones. And which ones are the right ones? That depends. That depends on what do you want.
Without specifying what is it that you want to measure, the talk about metrics is premature. “Success” is not a specification.
And this is what I mean when I say rationalists often seem to be missing the point. Fair enough if you want to say “here is the right way to think about it… and here are the metrics this method produces, I think”.
But if all I get is “hmmm it might be like this or it might be like that—here are some potential flaws in our logic” and no metrics are given… that doesn’t do any good.
But if all I get is “hmmm it might be like this or it might be like that—here are some potential flaws in our logic” and no metrics are given… that doesn’t do any good.
Imaging going to a Trump forum and asking them for advice on how to get Trump impeached. Then the answer: “Trump shouldn’t be impeached.” Did they give you the answer that you were looking for? No, they didn’t.
The disagree on principles. Here there’s also disagreement on principles.
Let’s say you went to the homeopath. Afterwards you got cured. You go to a friend and ask him for metrics of the treatment you received.
You suggest possible things to measure:
Improvement in my well-being.
Less sick days.
Whether the homeopath felt warm and emphatic.
The cost of the treatment.
But you have a problem. Measuring sick days and cost is easy but you really want help with proper metrics for well-being and the homeopath being warm and emphatic.
That’s roughly the quality of your original post and you don’t want to hear that n=1 evidence is not enough to do a good judgment.
But you can read, right? Because I wrote “I’d like to ask for suggestions on proxies for evaluating [...]”. I didn’t say “I want suggestions on how to go about deciding the suitability of a metric”.
It’s easy to generate tons of metrics, what’s hard is generating a relatively small list that does the job. If you are too lazy to contribute to the discussion, fine. But contributing just pedantic remarks is a waste of everyone’s time.
The job was, evaluate a presidency. What metrics would you, as an intelligent person, use to evaluate a presidency. How much simpler can I make it? I didn’t ask you to read my mind or anything like that.
What metrics would you, as an intelligent person, use to evaluate a presidency.
My metrics are likely to be quite different from yours since I expect to have axes of evaluation which do no match yours.
A good starting point is recalling that POTUS is not a king and his power is quite constrained. For example, he doesn’t get to control the budget. Judging a POTUS on, say, unemployment, is silly because he just doesn’t have levers to move it. In a similar way, attributing shifts in culture wars to POTUS isn’t all that wise either.
My metrics are likely to be quite different from yours
And that’s fine! If everyone here gave me a list of 5-10 metrics instead of pedantic responses, I’d be able to choose a few I like, and boom, problem solved.
For the love of… problem solved = the problem I asked for people to help me solve. I.e. finding metrics. If you don’t want to help, fine. But as I said, being inane in attempt to appear smart is just stupid, counterproductive and frankly annoying.
Look, someone asks for your help with something. There are two legitimate responses: a) you actually help them achieve their goal or b) you say, “sorry, not my problem”. Your response is to be pedantic about the question itself. What good does that do?
This is actually the correct response.
It’s trivially easy to generate tons of metrics—hundreds of them. What’s difficult is choosing the right ones. And which ones are the right ones? That depends. That depends on what do you want.
Without specifying what is it that you want to measure, the talk about metrics is premature. “Success” is not a specification.
And this is what I mean when I say rationalists often seem to be missing the point. Fair enough if you want to say “here is the right way to think about it… and here are the metrics this method produces, I think”.
But if all I get is “hmmm it might be like this or it might be like that—here are some potential flaws in our logic” and no metrics are given… that doesn’t do any good.
Imaging going to a Trump forum and asking them for advice on how to get Trump impeached. Then the answer: “Trump shouldn’t be impeached.” Did they give you the answer that you were looking for? No, they didn’t.
The disagree on principles. Here there’s also disagreement on principles.
Let’s say you went to the homeopath. Afterwards you got cured. You go to a friend and ask him for metrics of the treatment you received. You suggest possible things to measure:
Improvement in my well-being.
Less sick days.
Whether the homeopath felt warm and emphatic.
The cost of the treatment.
But you have a problem. Measuring sick days and cost is easy but you really want help with proper metrics for well-being and the homeopath being warm and emphatic.
That’s roughly the quality of your original post and you don’t want to hear that n=1 evidence is not enough to do a good judgment.
Unfortunately, I cannot read minds.
I said that it depends on what do you want and I actually do not know what do you want.
But you can read, right? Because I wrote “I’d like to ask for suggestions on proxies for evaluating [...]”. I didn’t say “I want suggestions on how to go about deciding the suitability of a metric”.
I guess I can read, kinda-sorta. How about you? I answered:
and y’know, I’m a bit lazy to type it all up...
It’s easy to generate tons of metrics, what’s hard is generating a relatively small list that does the job. If you are too lazy to contribute to the discussion, fine. But contributing just pedantic remarks is a waste of everyone’s time.
And since, as I’ve pointed out, you failed to specify the job, the task changes from hard to impossible.
But I don’t know if it was a waste of everyone’s time. Your responses were… illuminating.
The job was, evaluate a presidency. What metrics would you, as an intelligent person, use to evaluate a presidency. How much simpler can I make it? I didn’t ask you to read my mind or anything like that.
My metrics are likely to be quite different from yours since I expect to have axes of evaluation which do no match yours.
A good starting point is recalling that POTUS is not a king and his power is quite constrained. For example, he doesn’t get to control the budget. Judging a POTUS on, say, unemployment, is silly because he just doesn’t have levers to move it. In a similar way, attributing shifts in culture wars to POTUS isn’t all that wise either.
And that’s fine! If everyone here gave me a list of 5-10 metrics instead of pedantic responses, I’d be able to choose a few I like, and boom, problem solved.
A problem? Which problem? I don’t have a problem.
Are you, by any chance, upset that people didn’t hop to solving your problem?
For the love of… problem solved = the problem I asked for people to help me solve. I.e. finding metrics. If you don’t want to help, fine. But as I said, being inane in attempt to appear smart is just stupid, counterproductive and frankly annoying.
Look, someone asks for your help with something. There are two legitimate responses: a) you actually help them achieve their goal or b) you say, “sorry, not my problem”. Your response is to be pedantic about the question itself. What good does that do?
Nope. There are more, e.g.
(c) You misunderstand your problem, it’s actually this
(d) Your problem is not solvable because of that
(e) Solving this problem will not help you (achieve a more terminal goal)
(f) the problem was not correctly conveyed, leading to someone trying to solve the one you conveyed not the one you wanted them to solve.
(g) get out of the car