My question is, how do you know that what's left definitely isn't reasoning? — Srap Tasmaner

Let me start by just clearing up that reasoning (by which I mean a set of thinking methods that are well-known to preserve or approach more true conclusions) is not redundant as an explanation of the differences between various people's conclusions. It's a necessary but not sufficient factor in the explanation. The problem is that reasoning is either not that hard (PhD level experts should all be perfectly capable of it), or it becomes something clandestine and ephemeral - some property we can't quite explicate - which means we can't then demonstrate where is has, and has not, been used.

Consider the problem the other way around. Let's assume, as our default, that all decisions are arrived at by reason alone. We then want to explain the problem of disagreement among epistemic peers.

A couple of possibilities we'd want to reject off the bat, as they undermine the whole project, are;

a) that one peer simply 'gets it' where another doesn't - if we start explaining reasoning in terms of some occult property of some brains then we lose any warrant to claim the process gets us any closer to the truth. We need to be consciously aware of the process, so we can show where it has and has not been used.

b) that one peer is more intelligent than another (ie they're not quite peers) - accepting this leads to either the notion, again, that there's some property our measurements (PhD qualifications and the like) don't capture, so we don't want to go there. Alternatively, as @Yohan pointed out earlier, this undermines the idea of majority consensus. If it's just linearly related to intellect then the majority are almost certainly wrong, as they don't represent the cohort with most intelligence. The group that are right will will one of the minorities but we won't be able to judge which (are they the most intelligent, or the most stupid?) because we won't understand the arguments.

In order for it the play the part you want, we need the rational method of thinking (reasoning) to be a series of explicable steps working by agreed rules of inference which any suitably qualified person can 'get'.

So what's left for reasoning?

Perhaps one peer made a mistake, missed a step, or some evidence, simply by oversight. But this is either a) easily rectified by simply pointing it out (yet this has already happened in cases of disagreement among epistemic peers); or b) not so easily pointed out, a step the 'right' peer didn't even realise they'd made or that the 'wrong' peer just doesn't 'get' - in which case we're back to reasoning being some orphic process that is partly subconscious and so can't be demonstrated to have been used.

Perhaps one peer has been mistakenly allowed into the set of suitably qualified persons and so doesn't understand the reasoning give - but that means our methods of selecting the qualified set are flawed and we need to trust that method in order to render the judgements there more likely to be right.

So we don't seem to be able to explain the problem of persistent disagreement among epistemic peers by differences in reasoning without defining 'reasoning' in such a way as it loses the very properties that make it such an attractive explanation in the first place.

And however could they have known?

reasoning (by which I mean a set of thinking methods that are well-known to preserve or approach more true conclusions) is not redundant as an explanation of the differences between various people's conclusions. It's a necessary but not sufficient factor in the explanation. — Isaac

And I think we'd all agree with that under the heading of "human frailty".

I haven't read Noise yet. Have you looked at it? It seems like the natural approach to me. As I indicated in the last post, I used to spend a lot of time analyzing baseball, and there's an example from baseball that's a perfect fit here, the calls of balls and strikes by home-plate umpires. For years now, we've had data on where each pitch actually went, so you can analyze the performance of individual umpires, and of umpires as a group. You find a lot of noise and a lot of bias. (A machine would be more accurate and consistent, and there's been talk for a long time of switching to an "assisted" system somewhat like what's used in tennis.)

Here's one example I recall: umpires are, as a group, somewhat reluctant to make game-deciding strike calls. That is, when a called strike would decide the outcome of the game, then and there, umpires are slightly more likely to call a ball a pitch they would usually call a strike.

Suppose you want to explain why there is so much variation in a field that is supposed to have little variation, because it is supposed to be rule-governed; you would look for factors that would interfere with the consistent application of the rules. I could see many of the things you are wont to talk about slotting in there. It's not so far from the way Wittgenstein and Sellars talk about images and myths that philosophers rely upon without recognizing it.

But, perhaps unfairly, perhaps defensively, I always get the impression that you think there is no such process being interfered with, that all there is is my myth versus your image, that you can only reduce the influence of one myth by replacing it with another, that it's all noise and bias all the time and nothing else. Say it ain't so, Joe.

I haven't read Noise yet. Have you looked at it? — Srap Tasmaner

Briefly, I was given a copy so it's on my reading shelf. As I said before I don't entirely see eye to eye with Kahneman, but I've always liked his style. Oddly, where I've disagreed with him has been on almost exactly the point we are now discussing - the extent to which awareness of these biases is part of a real solution, or just another post hoc justificatory tool. Anyway...

Here's one example I recall: umpires are, as a group, somewhat reluctant to make game-deciding strike calls. That is, when a called strike would decide the outcome of the game, then and there, umpires are slightly more likely to call a ball a pitch they would usually call a strike. — Srap Tasmaner

Nice example.

I always get the impression that you think there is no such process being interfered with, that all there is is my myth versus your image, that you can only reduce the influence of one myth by replacing it with another, that it's all noise and bias all the time and nothing else. Say it ain't so, Joe. — Srap Tasmaner

It's an assumption about the audience, that's all. Once one has reached a reasonable level of academic skill, say PhD (or the equivalent, for those who've not had the opportunities, or took an alternative route), the variance in the application of reason is very small (there's a limited number of sanctioned 'moves' and all PhD level theorists will know all of them very well). The issue of analysing flaws in reasoning simply drops down the list in most cases.

It's a bit like analysing the moves of a chess grandmaster... if they make a suboptimal move, the first theory as to why might be that it's part of some new strategy, the second maybe tiredness or distraction, the third forgetfulness...maybe they want to lose...maybe it's game fixing...The very last possibility anyone considers is that they just didn't know about the en passant rule.

Likewise with experts in a field. If there's persistent disagreement (lasting beyond peer review error correction, or updated data), we'd be silly to jump to a failure to properly apply one of the basic rules of inference. It's far and away more likely to be one of the other factors, just like with the chess grandmaster, so that's where the interesting analysis lies.

Proper reasoning is just the qualifying round, not the playoff. Sure, we can still disqualify contenders at the first round, but almost every serious contender has cleared that stage with ease. The role in a social narrative is the playing field on which the finals take place.

It's an assumption about the audience, that's all. — Isaac

Proper reasoning is just the qualifying round, not the playoff. Sure, we can still disqualify contenders at the first round, but almost every serious contender has cleared that stage with ease. The role in a social narrative is the playing field on which the finals take place. — Isaac

This argument makes some sense, and maybe is relevant to the covid debate, though I'm thinking of the more general case.

But it seems to entirely miss the distinction between capability and performance. I used to be a tournament chess player. It is a fact that grandmasters make blunders. As you say, when a move looks wrong, maybe it's not the first explanation we reach for. (A trap? A speculative sacrifice?) But it's absolutely still on the table. Performance is inherently unpredictable, even before you consider outside factors. (I used to tell my gymnast daughters that training is about moving the range of probable performance, raising the floor and the ceiling, but that you still can't know what will happen at a meet.)

I can't find the reference but there's a great example of a grandmaster game where, through an apparently innocent transposition, white was actually hanging the exchange on move 3! But neither noticed -- they carried on with the usual shadow boxing GMs engage in for the first half dozen moves. Note that this also speaks to my point that no computer would have missed the blunder; ideology about the opening was interfering with actual analysis of the position on the board -- the narrative about what exactly they were doing. Neither player even got to the point of dismissing the possibility of blunder on reputation grounds (and there are stories of that); they just didn't see the position for what it was. Looking over the shoulders of amateurs, they would have though. (Skin in the game is a sound idea, despite Taleb's endorsement, but so is Robert Burns on lice.)

I used to be a tournament chess player. — Srap Tasmaner

I thought I recalled something along those lines...the analogy was tailored.

It is a fact that grandmasters make blunders. — Srap Tasmaner

True, but that's just my failure to produce a suitable analogy. In chess one doesn't have the benefit of peer review, or even a chat with a couple of colleagues over the canteen table at which one's embarrassingly amateur oversight can be pointed out before it progresses beyond the university walls (speaking from experience!) So whilst I agree with you about the process, I still think it's true to say that expert opinion in the public domain is largely (if not wholly) past the stage of blunders in basic reasoning.

The notion of a majority of experts being a safer bet (if what we're after is the truth), relies on the variance in opinion being caused by factors related to proximity to truth (soundness of reasoning, exhaustiveness of evidence...), and on those factors being randomly distributed, such that a distribution mean will approach it*. I'm not arguing that those factors aren't crucially important in approaching truth - they are - I'm arguing that they're not a significant cause of the variance in expert opinion and so we can't use the mean of the sample of opinions as a proxy for truth. If the variance of the sample is unrelated to it, then the mean has no more predictive power for it than the upper quartile, or the second standard deviation.

*the alternative is that it's not randomly distributed, but then there's no reason to think the mean approaches it and not, say, the upper or lower quartile (except we'd never know which).

Neither player even got to the point of dismissing the possibility of blund, sort of turns the notion on it's head does it not?er on reputation grounds (and there are stories of that); they just didn't see the position for what it was. Looking over the shoulders of amateurs, they would have though. — Srap Tasmaner

This is a really interesting example. Here the social narrative (grandmasters playing tournament chess) ruled out a storyline which might have worked better. I'm going to risk your polite wrath by suggesting that the 'fact of the matter' (whether the wrong move was a 'blunder') is itself a socially constructed post hoc story. We don't have real-time access to the actual mental activity which precipitated the decision to make the bad move, we tell ourselves a story about it after the fact. Maybe it was originally part of a genius master plan which was forgotten moments after the move was made and so never followed up on...

...but I do see what you mean.

Actually, campaigning in elections then in Germany was quite similar with other parties too. Many anticipated, few would have really known.

Do notice the violent theme of the parties campaigning:

the analogy was tailored. — Isaac

Naughty.

In chess one doesn't have the benefit of peer review, or even a chat with a couple of colleagues — Isaac

And all that's basically wrong, but I don't know that it matters.

expert opinion in the public domain is largely (if not wholly) past the stage of blunders in basic reasoning — Isaac

Probably?! But the blunder idea is not the main point anyway.

Here the social narrative (grandmasters playing tournament chess) ruled out a storyline which might have worked better. — Isaac

No, no, that's not it at all. For grandmasters (and some lesser players) the first handful of moves aren't normal moves on the board at all; it's a cryptic negotiation, like bidding in bridge, about what opening they're going to play and thus what kind of position. So they screw around a lot with the textbook move order that kids learn. I'm saying they were so caught up in this negotiation and deciding what sort of game each felt like playing under the circumstances that they essentially forgot these are also actual moves on the board.

The funny thing is that the Soviet-era term for this kind of mistake is "playing the programmed move", that is, following a script when you shouldn't have. (Funny because we program machines better than we do ourselves.)

I'm going to risk your polite wrath by suggesting that the 'fact of the matter' (whether the wrong move was a 'blunder') is itself a socially constructed post hoc story. — Isaac

GMs, some of them anyway, can be surprisingly forthcoming about their mistakes. There's not much point in trying to dissemble, since the facts are plain for everyone to see.

As another data point, David Bronstein argued for faster time controls (less time per move), decades before quick chess became common and respected, precisely on the grounds that it was a myth that slower games produced better quality chess. He would point to all the blunders in top-tier chess played at slow time controls as proof. (Mainly he wanted people to think of chess as a creative endeavor, rather than something that might conceivably be done perfectly.)

But, again, blunder is only part of the story. Narratives can help -- actually unclear, but I'm willing to let them in as "imaginative", "changing the narrative", that sort of thing -- or they can get in the way of analysis, is the rest. More or less.

((The part in the middle of your post I don't have anything to say about yet.))

In chess one doesn't have the benefit of peer review, or even a chat with a couple of colleagues — Isaac


And all that's basically wrong, but I don't know that it matters. — Srap Tasmaner

Intriguing. I meant really that when one makes a move in chess one cannot check with colleagues that it makes sense first, as one can do with an expert opinion. Is that wrong? Or am I missing the point?

expert opinion in the public domain is largely (if not wholly) past the stage of blunders in basic reasoning — Isaac


Probably?! But the blunder idea is not the main point anyway. — Srap Tasmaner

I see it as being quite essential to the idea that following the majority is a safer bet. If the variance is not caused by blunders (because we're past that) then how is cohort agreement predicting truth (fewest blunders was the original mechanism proposed)?

I'm saying they were so caught up in this negotiation and deciding what sort of game each felt like playing under the circumstances that they essentially forgot these are also actual moves on the board. — Srap Tasmaner

Ah, I see. Cool insight. Still a storyline though. 'Negotiations' vs 'rule-based game'. Two roles to play in two different storylines, am I playing the master negotiator, or the dispassionate calculator of moves...

Narratives can help...or they can get in the way of analysis — Srap Tasmaner

I don't see any evidence of analysis existing outside of a narrative, nor can I see any cognitive mechanism whereby it could be done. All conscious activity is always interpreted within a model of it's role in the wider context, it's quite fundamental to how hierarchical neural networks work. I don't think the issue is narratives getting in the way, the issue is poor choice of narrative getting in the way.

when one makes a move in chess one cannot check with colleagues that it makes sense first, as one can do with an expert opinion. Is that wrong? Or am I missing the point? — Isaac

It's a simple point really: a chess player is a cumulative person. When you play an opening, your moves have been vetted by generations before you -- and sometimes they turn out to be wrong. Top players preparing for big matches have a team that helps them come up with new ideas in the opening. Computers have changed a lot of this. (There were still adjournments when I was a young player; you and a buddy would analyze the position and then at the appointed hour, you'd play relying on that analysis. Chess has a lot of non-obvious communal elements.)

Two roles to play in two different storylines, am I playing the master negotiator, or the dispassionate calculator of moves... — Isaac

And the second isn't really optional, not even for Tal.

I don't see any evidence of analysis existing outside of a narrative — Isaac

the issue is poor choice of narrative getting in the way. — Isaac

I lean that way too, but I sometimes wish I didn't. Still I think there are clear reasons to consider some narratives as unwanted intruders. Which of these two candidates is the better engineer? Your personal race narrative can help you make a better racist decision, but not a better engineering decision.

If we're forced to say stuff is purpose-relative, that'll work, but it feels lame to say that all the time, hand-wavy pragmatism.

Alternatively, as Yohan pointed out earlier, this undermines the idea of majority consensus. If it's just linearly related to intellect then the majority are almost certainly wrong, as they don't represent the cohort with most intelligence. The group that are right will will one of the minorities but we won't be able to judge which (are they the most intelligent, or the most stupid?) because we won't understand the arguments. — Isaac

First of all, by what metric are you judging "intelligence" by? The IQ distribution? In which case, this is not the general population but a group of people who are experts in their field. To argue there's a similar distribution within this subgroup in terms of general intelligence or expertise is bizarre and unfounded.

Second, think for a second about the logical consequences of this reasoning. It would mean that the majorities are almost always wrong, since they constitute the mediocre middle 80%. The super smart top 10% will usually have it right, since they're the top 10% -- but it's just a matter of figuring out if they're actually the super smart ones or the stupid ones, the bottom 10%.

By this reasoning, we'd certainly want to bet on flat earth theorists and Creation scientists, who themselves argue along similar lines and, according to you, are correct to do so.

This is a ridiculous argument. Why you go on like this, simply to justify your own decision to bet on a minority view (in this case, I assume, issues around COVID), is beyond me. But it's truly embarrassing to read, in my view. You've now had to regress to empty verbiage and abstractions, as is the typical tactic of those who no longer have any real argument. This was one of Trump's tactics, for example, when confronted with realities.

Here's one example I recall: umpires are, as a group, somewhat reluctant to make game-deciding strike calls. That is, when a called strike would decide the outcome of the game, then and there, umpires are slightly more likely to call a ball a pitch they would usually call a strike. — Srap Tasmaner

A distribution of individual umpires. First, this group will perform better than others, as experts. So betting on them as a group instead of non-experts is the question -- and I'd argue you must go with the umpires, mistakes aside.

Second, and most importantly, think about if, instead of one umpire making a call, it were a hundred -- and 97 percent of them agreed that it was a strike and not a ball. How confident should we be that they got it right? Say we let the computer analyze it -- would the computer call it a ball or a strike?

I'd say the computer would confirm the majority opinion, more so with higher consensus.

Thus, as a non-umpire (and non-expert, or layperson), the smart bet would be on the expert consensus, not the dissent. Seems almost like a joke that this even has to be justified, but here we are.

Science and experts make mistakes, sometimes they get things wrong, sometimes the prevailing ideology changes, new theories emerge with new evidence, and on and on we go. That's a truism. The question is: what do we, as people who cannot be experts in everything, do when we want to learn something about the world? When we have to base our decision and actions on other people, who do we trust? Who do we "bet on"? That's the question.

The answer, in my view, unless there's good reason to believe otherwise (and there almost never is), one goes with the experts, and the expert consensus within the field of science or medicine.

If this rule of thumb were followed by most people today, the pandemic would be lower than the levels they were at in June (at least in the US), we wouldn't have such "division" about climate science and could actually pass some legislation to do something about it, etc. Instead, we have people listening to anti-vaxxer enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists, industry propaganda, climate deniers, astrologers, psychics, 9/11 truthers, media pundits, etc. A lot of this stems from not only ignorance (as most people are ignorant of all kinds of things), but bad instinct. The ones who have the instinct to make the correct choice don't deserve much praise, but they deserve some.

I'd say the computer would confirm the majority opinion, more so with higher consensus. — Xtrix

Then you'd be wrong. I haven't looked at Fangraphs in a while, but the "average called strike zone" tends to move around from year to year. Either umpires are trying to keep the game balanced (probably unconsciously) by adapting to trends in pitching and hitting, or they are causing those trends. I mean, obviously it's going to be both because there's feedback here. Plus the matchup (handedness of the pitcher and of the batter) makes a difference, but shouldn't.

I'd say the computer would confirm the majority opinion, more so with higher consensus.
— Xtrix

Then you'd be wrong. — Srap Tasmaner

No, because a study has never been done about this.

I haven't looked at Fangraphs in a while, but the "average called strike zone" tends to move around from year to year. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm talking about one instance being analyzed by 100 umpires. If 97 say it's a strike, I'd go with that. It would be extremely rare that they'd all be incorrect. That level of consensus is unusual in sports, I'd imagine. This is also why they do instant replay reviews and have conferences to discuss calls in various sports. Why? Because more people looking, and more data analyzed, the higher the confidence.

If it really turned out that umpires are usually wrong, then they're hardly experts in the first place. But if we consider them experts, then more eyes looking -- and a higher consensus among these eyes, leads to increased confidence.

There was a goal once scored here in a soccer game. Protest. The ball alledly went outside the field in the attack. Replay. Unclear. What to do? It took long. Was the ball completely outside the line? Nobody could see. The camera hadn't the right angle. Maybe if there was enough time this could be calculated. What to do? Goal assigned to homeplaying party.

a study has never been done about this — Xtrix

Yeah it has. I mentioned it. It's why we're talking about this.

There's a fair amount of noise in any umpire's calls, and in umpires taken as a group. A pitch over the outside corner might get called correctly half the time. Almost anything on a count of 3-0 gets called a strike no matter where it ends up. Plus, as I said, the zone moves around, mainly at the top and bottom. Many people believe that sinker ball pitchers began to dominate a few years ago because umpires started calling a lower strike zone. To fight back, a lot of hitters switched to an uppercut swing, and then we start getting more home runs. So far as we know, it has never been the case that the average called zone matches the rulebook zone.

And however could they have known? — Tzeentch

It's a long way from knowing there is Antisemitism afoot to knowing that 6,000,000 Jews will be tortured and executed.

a study has never been done about this
— Xtrix

Yeah it has. I mentioned it. It's why we're talking about this. — Srap Tasmaner

No, it hasn't.

What you mentioned is not what I was talking about. What I was talking about involved a hypothetical consensus of experts (in this case, umpires) on a particular call. Which is only to demonstrate the point I was making much earlier in this thread, and which led to the baseball example.

There's a fair amount of noise in any umpire's calls, and in umpires taken as a group. — Srap Tasmaner

They're accurate about 94% of the time, or that's the average anyway. That's not bad. I wonder how that compares to laypeople, which is the relevant point here. Would we presume they're better or worse? Would we imagine two or more umpires analyzing a particular pitch, if more agreed with each other than not, were more likely to be right -- or not? I think the answer is fairly straightforward and commonsensical. But evidently I'm wrong about that, as many seem to be struggling with it.

https://www.dailynews.com/2021/06/23/hoornstra-baseballs-best-and-worst-umpires-by-the-numbers/

I'll pose this again:

Should laypeople go with the 97% consensus on climate change? Why or why not?

In my view, the answer is obvious -- not because it happens to be supported by the overwhelming evidence, but because it's the correct move when there is not more information.

Should laypeople go with the 97% consensus on climate change? — Xtrix

They can either attack the 97% statistic, or go with the 3% :cool:

I think I understand what's happened here.

I did not bring up baseball umpires to make the point you appear to think I was making. I was not attacking the status of expert opinion within yet another field of human endeavor.

But baseball is a goldmine of data and I happened to recall an example that is very similar, I believe, to the sorts of examples discussing by Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein in Noise. That point is that humans are capable of consistent rule-based decision-making but sometimes external factors interfere and sometimes we even know a little about those factors, and that's interesting. (The classic example is judges handing down harsher sentences before lunch and lighter after.)

You seem to have read that as an attack on expertise. It was not. It was an argument for the claim that there is a rule-based process to interfere with in the first place. Same with chess: I was not arguing that grandmasters aren't actually trustworthy experts or something.

If the average is now up to 94% accuracy, swell, that's better than it used to be, and we probably have PITCHf/x to thank for that. It's fine with me if you want to add MLB umpires to your arsenal of trustworthy experts; that's an argument you're having with someone else, not me.

They can either attack the 97% statistic, or go with the 3% :cool: — Wheatley

:up:

Mostly it’s the former, because they too know very well that going against the overwhelming international consensus looks bad.

They'll never run out of gullible people...

There is a caricature of a Jew being smashed by a Nazi fist on that poster.

Who could've thought violent rhetoric would lead to actual violence?

You're both just trying to excuse naivety with deadly consequences at this point.

It's a simple point really: a chess player is a cumulative person. When you play an opening, your moves have been vetted by generations before you -- and sometimes they turn out to be wrong. Top players preparing for big matches have a team that helps them come up with new ideas in the opening. Computers have changed a lot of this. (There were still adjournments when I was a young player; you and a buddy would analyze the position and then at the appointed hour, you'd play relying on that analysis. Chess has a lot of non-obvious communal elements.) — Srap Tasmaner

Of course. How naive of me to have the impression Kasparov just rocks up to the tournament, takes a seat and then thinks "now, what's all this about?". I get the comparison now. But the 'blunders' to which you refer, are these moves which this team of prior analysts have come up with? Are you suggesting that the grandmaster comes up with a patently wrong move, discusses it with his colleagues, his analyst team, computer software, etc. all of which say it's a good move, when in fact it's a bad one (and clearly so)? That's the equivalent we're talking about here. Before an expert voices an opinion there's a small army of people they can run it past to check for obvious errors - the actual opinion they're about to voice. In chess, people might well have potential moves vetted beforehand, but the actual move they're about to make is a choice at the time made without consultation and so the chance of error is increased. That's really all I meant - the fact that grandmasters make blunders is a feature of the independent decision-making in real time, this is not s feature experts have to contend with when voicing opinions.

Two roles to play in two different storylines, am I playing the master negotiator, or the dispassionate calculator of moves... — Isaac


And the second isn't really optional, not even for Tal. — Srap Tasmaner

It is as a role. The archetype doesn't have to be achievable, that's why heroes are all greater than it's ever possible to be. It's a direction, not a destination.

Still I think there are clear reasons to consider some narratives as unwanted intruders. Which of these two candidates is the better engineer? Your personal race narrative can help you make a better racist decision, but not a better engineering decision. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, indeed, it's the reason we have stories (by which I mean actual storybook stories).

If we're forced to say stuff is purpose-relative, that'll work, but it feels lame to say that all the time, hand-wavy pragmatism. — Srap Tasmaner

OK, so what's the alternative? Given our group of experts, the variance among whom we know is caused by a wide variety of factors, reasoning error being very low on that list (if present at all). How do we then talk about that variance in a non-lame way? Should we pretend that reasoning errors are mostly to blame and discuss the differences ad infinitum in the full knowledge that we'll never resolve them because they're not reasoning-based differences in the first place? That seems like a pointless bit of self-flagellation.

This is a ridiculous argument. — Xtrix

A couple of possibilities we'd want to reject off the bat... — Isaac

If all you're going to do is skim through my posts for your little triggers then don't bother replying.

If you have a substantive counter-argument beyond simply re-asserting what you believe to be the case in opposition to any understanding of statistics of or the way expert discourse works, then I'll be glad to consider it.

You're both just trying to excuse naivety with deadly consequences at this point. — Tzeentch

No. Just to show how non-functioning the democracy of the Weimar Republic was then and how many campaigns were about smashing the rulers or the other parties. The Brownshirts weren't the only street gang around then.

Actually one only has to read "Mein Kampf" and then come to the conclusion that this person will truly go through with what he has written about the Jews and about Germany getting Lebensraum from the East. That is a far more precise warning than a election poster. Yet do notice that "Mein Kampf" wasn't a hit beforeHitler came to power. I'm not so sure how many had read it then.

And there you find the real problem: because, just as now, a lot of politicians say one thing and do another. Many aren't ideologues. They will use some rhetoric only to get into power, while not going through with their most bizarre objectives. Many people will think that there's the "campaign rhetoric" and the the "actual political decisions made" and that these can be quite different. Historical hindsight gives us the certitude of what some politician or political movement could and would do. It's a different thing when the issue hasn't happened.

So experts fall down on which theories they prefer, find more intuitively compelling, find less risky to throw their weight behind... etc. — Isaac

I remember an argument I got into with a guy on Fangraphs (a sabermetrics site): guy had a model that predicted the strikeout rate of pitchers and was highlighting pitchers he believed had been lucky so far that season (and were thus overvalued by fantasy players). I suggested that another explanation might be something that was not in his model and that was hard to measure, like sequencing or deception. His response floored me: it couldn't be that because if there were such an effect it would show up in the data. That's the wrong answer. Something is in the data; the question is whether it's stochastic and how we could know. (Hence the obsession on Fangraphs with sample size.)

I'm getting to the point. There are statistical methods you know better than I that can give you an idea how much of the variation in opinion can be explained by your social roles and stories model. I assume that value is something less than 1. My question is, how do you know that what's left definitely isn't reasoning? — Srap Tasmaner

I think the salient point is that when it comes to dealing with a pandemic, this is a complex problem, and that priorities pertaining to solving complex problems are not universal nor can they be scientifically established. Instead, those priorities need to be decided upon, and action taken from that point on. At the same time, any course of action we take will further shape the factors of the complex problem.

We all agree (except, perhaps, pharmaceutical companies) that we want the pandemic to be over.
But we disagree on how to go about it and at what cost.
It is not possible to scientifically decide what an allowable cost is. So it's up to the individual stakeholders to decide this.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that we're dealing with a contagious disease that has a high transmission rate and a relatively low death rate, and whose symptoms vary from nothing to death and everything inbetween. If covid would be more like smallpox or polio, it would be easier to handle. But as it is, there are more issues to decide about. Again, _decide_ being the salient point.


You mention the strikeout rate of pitchers -- ie. sports statistics. This is a very good example of what we're talking about: conceiving of performing a particular action in sport as a hard task or complex problem.

In baseball, batting average (BA) is determined by dividing a player's hits by his total at-bats. It is usually rounded to three decimal places and read without the decimal: A player with a batting average of .300 is "batting three-hundred".
/.../
In modern times, a season batting average of .300 or higher is considered to be excellent, and an average higher than .400 a nearly unachievable goal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batting_average_(baseball)

Meaning that if a baseball player properly hits 30% of the balls properly aimed at him, he is deemed to have an excellent result. In other words, properly hitting the ball in baseball is a hard task, a difficult task. So hard that even good hitters don't properly hit around 70% of the balls.


In the abstract, 30% compared to 100% seems dismal. But excellency is measured on the relative difficulty of the task. The more difficult the task, the lower the percentage of effectiveness that can be counted as good.

In the case of covid, this line of reasoning means that we might need to shift our view and instead of expecting vaccines to be upwards of 80% safe and effective, satisfy ourselves with a much lower percentage. Or that even a 10% death rate is still a relatively low death rate. Or that a certain economic decline is inevitable.

OK, so what's the alternative? Given our group of experts, the variance among whom we know is caused by a wide variety of factors, reasoning error being very low on that list (if present at all).

How do we then talk about that variance in a non-lame way? — Isaac

By pointing out that the problem at hand is a complex problem and that solving it requires decisions that are based on priorities (which cannot be established scientifically).
(Clearly, this is not a popular view to take.)

Some believe that it is better to sacrifice some of the economy in order to preserve lives.
Some others believe that it is better to sacrifice some lives in order to preserve the economy.
Some believe that it is better to sacrifice some civil liberties in order to preserve lives and the economy.
And so on. What these preferences have in common is that it is generally considered repugnant to voice them publicly. But if they aren't voiced, we don't understand how come experts disagree on how to solve a complex problem.

Generally, people prefer simple solutions. They also generally prefer to think that there are ideal solutions to problems, with very little or even no costs and sacrifices. And that even after crisis events, it is possible to "go back to normal".
Experts, who have a deeper insight into the complexity of the problem are less likely to think this way.

If the variance is not caused by blunders (because we're past that) then how is cohort agreement predicting truth? — Isaac

By creating said truth.

This doesn't always work -- it doesn't work with things such as tables, chairs, the universe.

But it does work, to a lesser or greater extent in socio-psychological matters or where volitional effort is needed to make something happen. "Believe it, and your belief will make it real", they say. It doesn't always happen, but it's a factor.