Even better:
> _“You can put a #number on anything if you try hard enough (number quality not guaranteed, see store for details).
Once you put a number on something, you improve your understanding and decision making (even if the number isn’t of prime quality). At the core of this belief is the idea that the world we live in is made of #math, however literally you decide to take that statement. Whenever a field of #science achieves any useful knowledge of that world, it is usually in form of precise mathematical equations or careful #statistics. Every science is an exact science, or trying to be.”_
@tripu "The particular brand of stupidity on display also points to another signal vanity of our time: the conviction that if you measure things enough, you can control them." -JH Kunstler http://bit.ly/1B1VhBx
I completely agree. Measuring isn't the same as shaping or controlling. I don't have the time to read that post, so I'm not sure what's the connection to my quote.
@tripu "The causal relationships between factors in nature are just too entangled for man to unravel through research & analysis. Perhaps science succeeds in advancing one slow step at a time...because it does so while groping in total darkness along a road without end, it is unable to know the real truth of things. This is why scientists are pleased with partial explications and see nothing wrong with pointing a finger and proclaiming this to be the cause and that the effect." -Masanobu Fukuoka
@tripu putting a number on something may actually decrease your understanding... or tether/anchor your understanding
I agree that quantifying and modelling more often _may_ lead to confidence bias, overconfidence, Dunning-Kruger, or problems of the sort, sometimes.
But that is very weak criticism of my proposal, since _every_ system or tool you use (or lack thereof) could potentially give you a false sense of confidence. Don't people with religious convictions have overconfidence? Don't people who rely mostly on tradition, social norms or intuition have biases (eg, desirability bias) and poor understanding of issues ?
The question for me (and other rationalists) is **whether people and institutions would be better off, in general, using maths more often**, in the form of stats, estimates, cost-benefit analyses, decision matrices, etc.
My impression is that the vast majority of people would benefit from putting numbers on things more often.
A meta idea to further illustrate my point:
I made a bold claim there (that people would understand things better and make better decisions using numbers more often). You seem to disagree. How could we resolve that question?
One way would be to use data and maths. For example we could design lab experiments and surveys where we try to assess whether participants understand something better, or choose better alternatives, with and without numbers. We could prime participants to rely on different systems (guts, tradition, peers, stats) and see how they perform. We could test them for the same thing in slightly different scenarios. We could look for natural experiments where certain institutions or individuals made decisions under comparable circumstances, except for the availability or absence of mathematical models or estimations. And so on. We would then collate results, control for spurious variables, average and weigh, and arrive at an (always imperfect and always temporary) conclusion, and then settle the question for the time being.
Another way to test my bold claim would be… _anything else_: personal experience, anecdotes, opinions.
If you agree with me that the first method would be more useful or reliable than the second one, you kind of agree with my initial claim already.
@tripu you're gonna attempt to replicate Nature in a "lab?" The maths tells us "coupled systems cannot be magically decoupled..."
"Scientific farming has isolated the factors responsible for yield & found ways to improve each of these. But although science can break nature down & analyze it, it cannot reassemble the parts into the same whole. What may appear to be nature reconstructed is just an imperfect imitation..." -Masanobu Fukuoka