The point Sapientia is making (and I agree with his view) is that jobs that involve saving lives, or enhancing minds (teachers, for instance) are worth more than making money, and that those worthwhile jobs should be paid more. — Bitter Crank
See? Bitter Crank gets it. Agustino, Thorongil, and Michael need to up their game. — Sapientia
Yeah I want to flip the tables, since there is free will when it comes to human behaviour, hence why there is moral agency and responsibility for one's actions.
Yep, like gas molecules so what? In the case of gas, we're interested in what happens to the gas as a whole, not what happens to an individual molecule. That's why we use statistics. If we were interested in what happens to a molecule individually, then we would use F = ma combined with elastic collisions, conservation of kinetic energy and momentum, etc. And we can actually predict this, deterministically, using computer simulations. We could also - given enough computing power - derive the same collective properties of gases out of the individual behaviour of each gas molecule, but why waste so many resources, when we have a shortcut?Physical models are fit to data which are generated deterministically. — fdrake
Yah, but you keep talking as if you were in the stone ages of business when you put the whip on workers and forced them to work while starving in your factory... Today it's not the same, at least not in the West. That may happen though, unfortunately, in places like China. Business has evolved and changed.Haven't you noticed the boilerplate Marxism I've been peddling? — Bitter Crank
I gave you exactly the same example. The movement of gas molecules is deterministic. But yet we use statistics to assess certain gas properties - why? Because we're interested in the behaviour of the gas as a whole - WHICH CAN BE MODELLED AS RANDOM, although quite evidently it is not random in reality, but merely approximates what we would identify as random behaviour.You're saying that statistics only works when the thing it's applied to is random. I gave you a counter-example. Parameter estimation is used to assess the accordance of theoretical prediction of deterministic systems with their experimental behaviour. You're just wrong on this one I'm afraid. — fdrake
"Estimation theory is a branch of statistics that deals with estimating the values of parameters based on measured empirical data that has a random component"Parameter estimation is used to assess the accordance of theoretical prediction of deterministic systems with their experimental behaviour. — fdrake
I gave you exactly the same example. The movement of gas molecules is deterministic. But yet we use statistics to assess certain gas properties - why? Because we're interested in the behaviour of the society as a whole - WHICH CAN BE MODELLED AS RANDOM, although quite evidently it is not random in reality, but merely approximates what we would identify as random behaviour.
"Estimation theory is a branch of statistics that deals with estimating the values of parameters based on measured empirical data that has a random component"
Well, multiple things. Firstly and most importantly, society is made of individuals. Individuals aren't like gas molecules - they have free will. That doesn't mean their behaviour may not be predictable, but it is still marked by the presence of free will and hence moral responsibility.What's wrong with doing this Aug — fdrake
I didn't skim anything, it's the first phrase. And I do understand how statistics are used.You literally just skim read the wikipedia article to find the first thing you could say to me that looked like a counterpoint. — fdrake
Well, multiple things. Firstly and most importantly, society is made of individuals. Individuals aren't like gas molecules - they have free will. That doesn't mean their behaviour may not be predictable, but it is still marked by the presence of free will and hence moral responsibility.
Second of all, when we're interested in what's possible for an individual, just like when we're interested in what an individual gas molecule does - we don't use a statistical analysis. We only use a statistical analysis when we're interested in the behaviour of all individuals taken together.
No, since they have free will. You cannot extend your analogy from purely determinisic - actually not even that, but rather fatalistic - molecules to people.Individuals are far more complicated than gas molecules therefore we can't treat them as random and use their aggregate properties to study their properties as a whole? — fdrake
I don't see it working that way. I will totally ignore that 90% of business start ups fail, and simply ask myself what makes a business successful, if it's the right time for their particular business, if I can do something to make them successful apart from capital and what's the upside vs the downside.If you're savvy you'll know that 90% of business start ups fail. Then you'll see what their business model is, see what their ingoings and outgoings are, evaluated how likely the business is to expand - see what evidence there is that the start up is doing the things that make a business successful, and how long that is likely to continue. If the latter process appears to outweigh the initial high failure rate, if they impress you and provide good evidence that they're a good investment - you'll give them the money. This is placing a bet on what you believe to be good odds: a conditional probability. — fdrake
I don't see it working that way. I will totally ignore that 90% of business start ups fail, and simply ask myself what makes a business successful, if it's the right time for their particular business, if I can do something to make them successful apart from capital and what's the upside vs the downside.
Regarding the last point, clearly, even if something has a 90% chance of success but the potential upside in case of success is 10% return, and if it fails, then -100% return, it would be stupid to invest cause negative expected value.
Then as I said before, you should speak to the paramedic's employer. Me and my brownie business have nothing to do with how much he gets paid. — Michael
And I might not actually have a high salary. I just own 50% of a business that owns a number of assets and makes enough of a profit that some investor has valued it at £2,000,000 and chosen to buy the other half of the company with that in mind. — Michael
I think it's ridiculous to then decide that because saving lives is more importing than making brownies that ownership of my company should be forcibly redistributed. — Michael
I don't think that's how it works. Rather we realised that what we're interested in isn't the motion of any one particular gas particle, but rather what the gas as a whole - all the particles - can do. So we didn't bother with all the extensive calculations, and found a simple way to approximate it. It goes back to the question of what are you interested in. That determines the tools and approach you'll take when solving the problem.One of the reasons statistical approaches to gas behaviour works was because it took something incredibly complicated with loads of variables - the individual trajectories of gas molecules; made a few simplifying assumptions like no particle interaction, then derived statistical properties based on the simplification. — fdrake
That is certainly true if you conceive of individuals in a fatalistic manner, and ignore the role free will plays. I may be born in a ghetto and still refuse to resort to stealing due to my moral values even if 99% of others in the ghetto steal. So the stats don't determine or influence what I choose to do, my moral character, as it is shaped by my free choices, determines that.I don't think it's particularly contentious to say that people and the systems they create through their interaction are far more complex than any gas. This is then an excellent motivation for using statistical summaries to get information about individuals in societies - what promotes and constrains their behaviour. — fdrake
It's because entrepreneurs work themselves in the business, so they know that they can do what it takes to make it successful. An investor doesn't work directly in the business, though they may provide advice, so they don't know whether the founder will actually do what it takes or knows what he has to do, or understands his industry well enough. So they need to factor their lack of knowledge in, that's why they resort to using stats. The entrepreneur doesn't have a lack of knowledge - he generally knows, quite well.Ignoring base rates about their own business or businesses they like is probably one of the distinguishing features of entrepreneurs and investors. — fdrake
That's an essential feature of successful entrepreneurs.They condition on their own exceptionalness and believe it with great vigour. — fdrake
No, of course, I'm going to bet on him coming from the place with high crime rate and high population vs the low crime rate and low population one. But that's because I don't have knowledge - it's my own ignorance of what is actually the case that forces me to resort to using statistics. If I actually knew what was the case, I wouldn't bother with stats. But I need to take a decision in the absence of knowledge - so then I'm concerned with stats and forms of hedging my risks.So you're quite happy to average over a poorly estimated distribution of an individual's success to calculate an expected return, but as far as betting on whether someone who just committed a crime is a member of a place with high crime rate and a high population or low crime rate with a low population... That's a no go. Riiiiiiight. — fdrake
The issue here seems to just be the unequal distribution of wealth. There's nothing in principle wrong with it. — Michael
Given that in Sapientia's hypothetical scenario the government has the power and willingness to forcibly redistribute wealth, we're clearly not dealing with a plutocratic dystopia. — Michael
You still have to say how it does that, apart from saying it's unbalanced without explaining why imbalance is bad. You also have to define what a proportionate or fair distribution is in the first place. Or do we just have to go with Sappy's gut feeling? >:)And there is something in principle wrong with that. It violates a most ethical principle of fairness. — Sapientia
No, of course, I'm going to bet on him coming from the place with high crime rate and high population vs the low crime rate and low population one. But that's because I don't have knowledge - it's my own ignorance of what is actually the case that forces me to resort to using statistics. If I actually knew what was the case, I wouldn't bother with stats. But I need to take a decision in the absence of knowledge - so then I'm concerned with stats and forms of hedging my risks.
No, because I don't have enough time, and good enough results can be achieved by other means. But understanding what those means are involves understanding the root of the problem. In this case, the root is moral - so the moral aspect has to be addressed first.And do you propose to interview every member of a society in order to analyse its aggregate properties? — fdrake
Sorry, but I honestly do fail to see your reasons. To me it seems like a dogma.If you don't stop this nonsense, I'm just going to ignore it. I'm growing tired of repeating variations of the same point that you just don't seem to be getting. I have explained it. I have given you examples to work with. Please apply some common sense. I don't need to set out a stringent and fully formulated system for you to get yourself clued up about what I'm talking about.
And for the umpteenth time, if you don't recognise it as unfair, then there's only so much that I can do. Stop looking outside of yourself for the answer. Gut feeling, conscience... call it what you will: it comes into play of necessity. — Sapientia
No, because I don't have enough time, and good enough results can be achieved by other means. But understanding what those means are involves understanding the root of the problem. In this case, the root is moral - so the moral aspect has to be addressed first.
Hmmm let me rephrase. I do see a role for statistics in illustrating what situations may act as temptations for immoral behaviour, however not contributing to that immorality.Do you see a role for statistics in finding problem areas in the organisation of a society that contribute to people making immoral decisions? — fdrake
Sorry, but I honestly do fail to see your reasons. To me it seems like a dogma. — Agustino
Yes, obviously poverty and inequality can be temptations for immoral behaviour. That's what statistics show. But that kind of inequality has nothing to do with 1% owning 99% and the others owning just 1%. It has to do with whether the 99% have their basic needs met.However you're still going to be hostile to the ideas that inequality and poverty contribute to these temptations and their relationship can be understood statistically, I bet. — fdrake
Yes, obviously.Some kind of moral education initiative, would you say the success of the initiative could be measured by how the crime rate per capita behaves over the next few years? — fdrake
More or less, however, you have to be careful as people always have free will, so it's impossible to get everyone to be moral.Also whether and how many of those people who were instructed in the initiative committed crimes? — fdrake
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