It's the Economy, stupid - Languishing & Lingering after the Great Recession

I suspect that there are several salient differences between an animal learning to use its body and formal analysis of scientific data.

I'm fairly certain everyone is aware that perceptions can be prone to error. That humans aren't perfect isn't some amazing revelation. Your use of the term "cherry pick" here as synonymous with "filtering relevant information" is conflating two distinct issues. Cherry picking refers to choosing information because it supports ideas regardless of whether the data actually supports those ideas. Filtering relevant information is what a person is doing when that person is making sense of noisy information. These are fundamentally different things. People cherry pick data when the data don't support their ideas. People filter relevant information whenever they analyze data.

There's no point in questioning and challenging your beliefs if you never actually change your mind. Data is not noise, unless you're using reductive definitions of "data" and "noise". By this definition, everything is noise. Sandwiches are noise. Animals are noise. Everything is noise and now the word noise has no meaning at all.

 

Tim Pennings did a study titled "Do dogs know calculus". I was very intrigued by his study. Basically he found that when retrieving a ball traversing both land and water dogs seem to intuitively know the most efficient route within a margin of error. A mathematician knowing all the variables could calculate the "perfect" route but I suspect the time it would take the mathematician to do the calculations the dog will have run the course, retrieved the ball and returned. So, to me the notion of searching for "perfection" in many cases is inefficient relative to an acceptable margin of error. The focus in practical application should be on useful data applied in the most efficient manner. I believe scientist like Edison had this point of view and he in a prolific manner made the world a better place while others who may have been smarter were a bit less prolific. The AC v. DC controversy with Tesla comes to mind.

If true my understanding of how the term is used has been incorrect and I believe others use the term to inappropriately describe data used to support an idea. My preference would be for people to respond directly to the data and its relationship to the idea. Often the concept is being used in a derogatory manner with no explanation given. For example if I highlight a reasonable data point that refutes global climate change due to human activity without discussion it can not be said the selection of that data point is "cherry picking" any more or less than any other data point being highlighted because the science is not settled. However, the tendency is that any data points presented to dispute global climate change due to human activity is met in a derogatory manner by those who hold that view.

If I plan to go outside and I check weather sources to see if it is going to rain and 9 of those sources (credible) point to rain, I look out the window and decide not to prepare for rain, the sun is out at that moment, but it does in fact rain later. Did I "cherry pick"? Or, did I simply make a decision after an evaluation of the data?



There's no point in questioning and challenging your beliefs if you never actually change your mind. Data is not noise, unless you're using reductive definitions of "data" and "noise". By this definition, everything is noise. Sandwiches are noise. Animals are noise. Everything is noise and now the word noise has no meaning at all.[/quote]

Data becomes useful based on the analysis or interpretation of the data, all data is noise. Data is meaningless and useless until a form of processing takes place. Sandwiches are not noise to those who make and consume sandwiches - because the creation of a sandwich goes through a process to those who have an understanding of sandwiches otherwise a sandwich is noise. For example the color blue is noise to those who can not perceive the color blue, the information can not be processed, the information can not be analyzed, it can not be interpreted. However the color is on the spectrum and does exist.
--- merged: May 2, 2013 at 12:49 PM ---

How do you reduce an experts knowledge to first a two hour presentation to a primary user?
Then to a 10 minute presentation to important decision makers?
Then a 45 minute presentation to executives responsible for implementation resources?
Then to trainers, who then will train others?
Then to all the others?

You seem to suggest that everyone will get the same message. You seem to find it odd that there is a need to tailor a presentation to the audience. If you have professional training enlighten me. My training and my experience seems to be at odds with yours. Give me a scenario you are familiar with, tell me what you would do, ask me what I would do?

If you folks don't want my participation, just say so. If my posts bother you and others in this community that is o.k. It is bullshit for you to spend time responding to something you think of off-topic and then say to me to stay on topic. And if you can not see how core concepts relate to the broader topic, that is your problem not mine. A topic on the economy without a discussion of data is not possible.

 

There are no dog physicists and Edison took a lot of credit that didn't belong to him.

My experience chatting with you leads me to assume that your data point is rejected because it didn't actually mean what you thought it meant.

You cherry picked. There's a difference between cherry picking and making a decision after an evaluation of the data.

Sandwiches are noise to everyone who isn't hungry. I have asserted it so it must be so. This rationale is as valid as your rationale for why data is noise.

 

this board has become so leftwing that any post disagreeing is now trolling. it has become too cumbersome for me to even reply to posts because the whole forum is against anything right of center. i can't believe ace is still playing the game with no backup. i've been here for a decade i think, but there is no debate remaining, you win.

 

It's also hard to effectively defend bad ideas too. So there's that.

 

Dont you think some of the responsibility for debate requires contributing more than failed Fox News talking points or debunked InfoWars conspiracy theories?

As to the last decade, is it a coincidence that the right has become more extreme and less tolerant of their policies and positions being questioned at the same time?

 

I am going to stop and not try to assume what your meaning is. If there are more data points than can be reasonably communicated to an audience and an individual selects or highlights data points he/she thinks are most important what are your thoughts on that individual's behavior? How do your thoughts differ from mine?

The above paragraph is a discussion on the discussion. If I respond you say it is me causing the problem. I use examples and analogies, it is my style, often you focus on trivial points in the analogy rather than a focus on the point. For example sales presentations is not the issue in my illustration, the issue is tailoring a presentation and selectively using data points to target an audiences needs. i think this is productive, you inferred it is dishonest others have said it is "cherry picking" - I need clarification. At best what I have is that there is a definition of "cherry picking" that differs from mine. If true I have learned something and it is clear that I do not "cherry pick" and no one can point to an example where I have done that.
--- merged: May 3, 2013 3:27 PM ---

I think the study I referenced is saying that dog can be more efficient at solving complicated calculations than trained mathematicians. There is evidence that geese have intuitively solved physics problem more efficiently physicists, this is consistent throughout nature. My point is that the use and interpretation of data does not require formal training, even complex questions can be solved by the simple minded.

My point with Edison, not a formally educated man like many others of his day, his focus was on practical applications of data. Often smarter people analyses and interpreted data, made discoveries (finding the importance of data) and either did nothing with it or saw the discovery as "noise" and moved on.


I really don't know where you are going with your posts or what I should take away from them.

Can you give an example?

Not to the guy who sells sandwiches - even if he is not hungry.
--- merged: May 3, 2013 3:35 PM ---

Is it my intent to anger? If I defend supply side economics and certain people get angry but I refuse to stop defending supply side economics knowing they will get angry - that is trolling? I would suggest those who get angry, get thicker skin and get over it! Is it trolling when I point out absurdities knowing that if I point out the absurdity the other person will get angry? So, I should let absurdities slide so as not to make sensitive people angry? Is this response making you angry? Why? How do I have the power to make people angry? You could not make me angry no matter how hard you tried. If a person does not like my posts or my style, and I have asked this many times, why even read what I post? I don't get it.

 

With the jobs number today, we're at 3+ years of steady, albeit slow, private sector job growth and GDP growth. Economists across the spectrum attribute it in part to the stimulus and current economic policies. Yet there are many who want to abandon those current policies and impose an austerity program in the name of debt reduction, in its place.

I would suggest that the lack of confidence among consumers, business owners, investors may be attributed in part to the real perception that Congress and Obama are unwilling or unable to put aside their ideological differences and work together.

 

Is the above statement trolling? I am assuming this is a little jab at me. Is the above "cherry picking", I rarely watch Fox News and can not recall citing anything from Fox News - has anyone cited Fox News recently? Is Fox News really that different from CNN, ABC, CBS? Can DC support his claim? Will he support his claim? I betting the answer is - No.

 

I dont get angry. I havent seen anyone get angry.

Perhaps frustrated because you are frequently asked to provide data that supports your position and you dont. You dismiss out of hand any data that challenges your position by making up imaginary companies, going off on unrelated tangents, and playing the victim...and still never support your baseline position with facts.

Where is the data that supply side will create jobs or grow the economy when, for the most part, it hasnt in the past (as acknowledged by the Reagan supply side team). Where is the data the Republican proposed austerity program will benefit the econcomy?
--- merged: May 3, 2013 at 11:56 AM ---

Feel free to replace Fox News with "generic conservative talking points" that are consistently offered w/o any supporting data.

 

the problem here is pretty simple, as i see it.

there's no baseline agreement between ace and seemingly anyone else about what constitutes either relevant information about the world, how to organize/present that information and how to interpret it. because this agreement doesn't exist, there's no hope of productive discussion. this because when one points to certain phenomena in the actually existing world, one can't assume that anything like a conversation will follow from it. instead there's various constructed clouds of "issues" behind which ace, in particular, advances eccentric-to-arbitrary questions which are, typically, followed by rounds of mutual incomprehension that vary only in their length.

for example, ace prefers to operate through anecdotes.
given my background, i see them as arbitrary.
he prefers to think they're allegorical.
these anecdotes are almost inevitably circular in conceptual terms. their point is not to illuminate anything---they're point is to defend the framework that ace brings to bear in almost every discussion involving economic matters.
so every conversation, if you want to call them that, presents others with the choice: either engage in this frame-substitution game that ace plays in order to protect assumptions that simply won't hold up in any other context...or one can not engage it.
given the limited demographic that plays here, this amounts to a destructive pattern---were there more players swimming about in the game, there'd be more options.
but the number is limited.

so it seems to me that this creates problems that are almost independent of the various demonstrations of intellectual rigidity (another way of phrasing the above).

personally, i almost never get to any view i might hold on economic questions because there's this thick fog of ace's private language to move through, which is...again...only significant because we are a small community.
at one point i found it frustrating.
now i don't really care.
but it bugs me when i think about it that things have reached such a pass.

be as conservative as you want---but if that conservatism requires that you construe the world in a wholly eccentric manner, you might wonder if there's a problem. by eccentric in this case, i mean basically refusing to even interact with any data that groups the social world...following that path means that, in the end, there's nothing to say about the social world. because it gets dissolved.

 

I have already acknowledge that if my interpretation of the concept is incorrect there would be an explanation for my confusion. However, I have been accused of "cherry picking" on many occasions when it does not fit the definition given. So, if someone even from this thread has an example of when they think I have "cherry picked" data, let me know.

A person used the term, I asked for clarification. This is not outside of the norm for a discussion. This could have been resolved very easily.

Then I gave an example of a sales presentation required for different audiences and you seem to suggest being selective highlighting what is most important is dishonest. You further said it may illustrate that I am the type of person who only wants to hear what may support my preconceived notions. I needed you to clarify that point, because it is not true.

When I ask for clarification why assume the worst?

When you say "fail" wouldn't you need to know what the intent is first? Your perspective on issues differ from my perspective. You assume your perspective is the correct one, I don't assume mine is the correct one - I just think they are different. When I use examples and analogies the intent is to clearly illustrate my perspective. Given, your perspectives I can easily see how you fail to see issues from my perspectives. Even on this issue of "failure", I am thinking you don't see the point I am making.

 

It is fed by a disdain for the government manifested to the extreme by the Tea Party and its members unwillingness to compromise....a major contributor to the gridlock and uncertainty that feeds the lack of confidence.