Not sure if there is a thread for this, does anyone have access to this article?
“Comparative Efficiency of Informal (Subjective, Impressionistic) and Formal (Mechanical, Algorithmic) Prediction Procedures: The Clinical Statistical Controvery”, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 2: 293—323
A good place to get started there is Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment, summarized on LW by badger
Thanks, I’ll try to find the relevant parts.
This suggests that the marginal bit of medicine—i.e. the piece that people don’t consume, but would if it were cheaper or do consume but wouldn’t if it were more expensive—doesn’t have a net impact
I didn’t want to get in too in depth into this discussion, because I don’t actually disagree with the weak conclusion that a lot of people receive too much healthcare and that completely free healthcare is probably a bad idea. But Robin Hanson doesn’t stop there, he concludes that the rest of medicine is a sham and the fact that other studies show otherwise is a scandal. As to why I don’t buy this, the RAND experiment does not show that health outcomes do not improve. It shows that certain measured metrics do not show a statistically significant improvement on the whole population. In fact in the original paper, the risk of dying was decreased for the poor high risk group but not the entire population. Which brings up a more general problem—such a study is obviously going to be underpowered for any particular clinical question, and it isn’t capable of detecting benefits that lie outside of those metrics.
Thanks for the detailed reply.
Regarding arguments that the allocation of medical resources, particularly in the U.S. are wasteful and harmful in many cases—I agree in general, though the specifics are messy, and I don’t find Robin’s posts on the matter very well argued*. I’m most interested in this bit:
This is statisticians and efficiency experts and so on trying to apply standard industrial techniques to medicine and getting pushback that looks ludicrous to me. For example, human diagnosticians perform at the level or worse than simple algorithms (I’m talking linear regressions, here, not even neural networks or decision trees or so on), and this has been known in the efficiency literature for well over fifty years
Particularly since your initial claim that had me raising eyebrows was that MetaMed failed because they have great diagnostics, but medicine doesn’t want good diagnostics.
Edit: *In the RAND post he argues that lower co-pays in a well insured population resulted in no marginal benefit of health (I’m unconvinced by this but I’d rather not go there), therefore the fact that most studies show a positive effect of medicine is a sham. I’m not sure if he thinks that statins and insulin are a scam but this is a bold and unjustified conclusion. The RAND experiment is not equipped to evaluate the overall healthcare effects of medicine, and that was not its main purpose—it was for examining healthcare utilization. The specific health effects of common interventions are known by studying them directly, and getting patients to follow the treatment protocols that get those results is, as far as I know, an unsolved problem.
I’ve seen this cynical viewpoint before. Honest question—what do you know about management consulting? What specific management consulting decisions are you basing this theory off of and how common are they? And how much of consulting consists of much more boring activities like developing new supply chains and inventory systems, rather than Machiavellian strategizing?
Compare to MetaMed, which tried to disrupt medicine by providing superior diagnostics. Medicine is not about healing!
I’d love to hear this expanded on. On the surface this comment pattern matches to the sort of low quality anti-establishment attitude that is common around here, so I’m surprised to see you write it.
Not that I know of. Probably not. Still, I wouldn’t hold someone to something they said on a blog years ago.
The sudden very positive karma is extremely suspicious.
LukeProg considers philosophy a diseased discipline
Four years ago! Probably a good idea mention that or check if he still thinks this.
I believe that Nancy is conservative enough with management that this is not a real danger.
Ask for help when you need it. If you’re struggling with a class, ask the professor or your advisor where you can find help. If you’re struggling with life, find a counsellor. If you’re struggling with a paper, find a writing tutor.
Take introductory Calculus, Chemistry and Physics in your first year*. At least at my school it was somewhat difficult to complete a science major in three years, so best to start off as though you are going to do one (unless you really don’t want to).
Find a way to contact and talk to people who are where you want to be in the future. That might mean law students, engineers, med students, people working in finance.
*Unless you are doing Engineering in which case your schedule is mostly decided for you.
Less ambitious, but music and art were required at my school. Not much, just one performance to the class and one public piece were required. I don’t know how to check if mass shooters were deprived of other forms of public expression.
No, these two though mostly the first. I highly doubt that either one would have had positive karma on LW one year ago. I’m not only suspicious because of these comments though.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/mzw/link_a_rational_response_to_the_paris_attacks_and/cx9j http://lesswrong.com/lw/mzw/link_a_rational_response_to_the_paris_attacks_and/cwuz
Edit: these had higher karma when I linked to them, for reasons that are obvious in hindsight.
The fact that two blatant ad hominem comments have positive karma is very very suspicious. How much effort would it be to figure out if there is a voting ring problem or puppet account problem?
Numeracy and consequence based thinking, sure. But as far as probability thinking goes, I quite disagree for roughly the reasons stated here*.
I tried to illustrate the following but let me try to make it more explicit. In using any sort of mathematical model there are a few steps: The first is to determine relevant parameters that you can try to assign numbers to (such as probability of events). The second is to create a model for how those parameters interact. The third is experiment with different inputs to see the different outcomes so you can optimize your model. Fourth you can make predictions with error bounds as determined by your model.
The first two steps are incredibly important, but I often see naive bayesians jumping straight to the third or even fourth step. But with complex systems subject to uncertainty and unknown factors, almost all of the work lies in the first and second steps. Getting back to one of my early comments if you construct a model in which only considers the ways in which an aggressive military intervention can increase the number of suicide bombings, then you’ll of course show that such an intervention will increase the number of suicide bombings. But this is modeling failure at the first step, by choosing only those parameters you’ve assumed your conclusion. It’s not the math that is the problem, it is lack of understanding of the phenomenon being described (and I think this is at the heart of many or even most instances of failed models).
*I know that post is long but I highly recommend reading at least section I on what probabilities are and section V on why/when you can use them.
The comments on that article don’t seem to responding to anything in the article itself. Many are just ad hominem followed by a strongly stated opinion. From what I can tell the Plain Dealer is a relatively liberal newspaper, but the comments don’t seem to reflect that.
Anyways, probabilistic thinking has become a reverse dogwhistle for me and I think part of your argument illustrates why:
For instance, consider what happens when Muslim media report an airstrike by Western forces that kills civilians. At any point, myriad Muslim youths are angry at the Western intervention into Syria. For a number of them — say, 100 — the report will be the thing that tips them over from anger to outrage, and they will decide to join ISIS.
Let’s say 5 percent get trained in ISIS camps as suicide bombers. That means five new suicide bombers per report of an airstrike killing civilians, ready to wreak havoc on the United States or other Western countries.
Why did you choose those numbers? Do you have any inside knowledge as to why people join ISIS? And why would 100 new ISIS members lead to any increase in the number of suicide bombings? I doubt that the decision of ISIS to cause a suicide bombing is constrained by the number of members, or willing members. And are you sure that the only effect that more aggressive interventions can have is to increase the number of willing suicide bombers? Even granting that aggressive measures do push people over the edge into joining ISIS, what if they also scare some people out of joining ISIS? What if they kill more ISIS members than the create?
We can make up numbers but that isn’t particularly productive, because the math isn’t the hard part—it isn’t where most of the uncertainty is.
What’s the goal? Dancing? Gymnastics? Less pain? Without a goal I know I would inevitably give up.
But to answer the question: stretch, do yoga or pilates (these are good because they create a goal, something to improve upon).
I’m not sure. Tentatively, if it is for a popular audience, then you need to do two things: -Convince them that biases or errors in thinking are a problem, possibly by providing some examples. -Convince them that trainings can result in better decision making, not just because they are backed up by experts, but because they work. Describe or give examples of how these trainings improve people’s decision making.
Upvoted for improving in response to feedback. I know it can be daunting to receive negative or even neutral feedback over something that you put time and effort into. It still feels like an underdeveloped thesis though. The main message seems to be applying behavioral science to all kinds of decision making, but that is very ambitious, and the content doesn’t quite get there.
I didn’t know that the Big Bang was compatible with an infinite universe, I learned something today.
That was a very entertaining read thanks.
It is also possible that you aren’t aware of most of what your management does. I’ll take your word for it that many of their decisions that are visible to you are poor (maybe most of their decision are, but I’m not yet convinced). As for management consulting, I suppose that is an inferential gap that is going to be hard to bridge.