I like this sequence and am aware it is not finished yet. Here’s my I am understanding so far. After reading the sequence, I think I can predict your response to the first 5 conundrums, so my previous confusion there (why cluster rather than factor) seems resolved. But I think I still disagree with the later examples that I was confused with before reading your sequence. One example of conundrums where I think I get what your reply would be:
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“Why isn’t factor analysis considered the main research tool?”
Factor analysis doesn’t capture the main bottlenecks (people being depressed for different reasons, people are successful for different reasons etc.)
For others, I don’t see how they connect well. My replies would be:
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“What is gifted child syndrome/twice-exceptionals?”
I don’t know why you focus on this one? My impression why there’s a focus on this group is because helping them might be worth the investment? Or because the people writing and consuming that theorizing tend to be higher iq. Also, maybe “that phenomenon where desirable trait X and Y tend to be anticorrelated, because the others tend to not want to hang out with you as much, or you don’t want to hang out with them” (writing and math being anticorrelated in the average US college)? I don’t see the relation in the log-normals, other that maybe in your thinking you might want to single out that group, because it might have bottlenecks that are different?
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“Why would progressivism have paradoxical effects on diversity?”
I am confused? I can see you making the argument that the diversity angle might sometimes be the correct one if it is the bottleneck for a person (black person being arrested for doing drugs in the US? While less of a bottleneck for a lot of other minorities?)
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“What’s wrong with symptom treatment?”
Do you think people’s intuition here is correctly adjusting for something like the epsilon fallacy? Or to quickly jumping to simplistic conclusions like in this college cost post you link (in a different context), where someone might (in my view accidentally) see the increasing number of small courses as a cause rather than a symptom?
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“What value does qualitative research provide?”
I am reminded of
and
I feel like so far this sequence has mostly told me what tools not to use and, in practice, I cannot think of a case where reading this sequence has helped pick a better tool, but I was already pretty fond of log normals.
In that case also consider installing PowerToys and pressing Alt+Space to open applications or files (to avoid unhelpful internet searches etc.).