Biased Measurement, Suicide and Weighted Averages
When I'm involved in a conflict between people, or just a discussion with a overly passionate person, I quickly start checking the quality of their claims; first I begin to evaluate the measures they are using. Most uncomfortable moments in life are directly attributed to inappropriate quantification of things. A teaser to illustrate an image in your mind of what I mean is, “you're a dirty whore!” or even “you're a stupid good for nothing and will never amount to anything!” When I hear claims, especially inflammatory, I think first about the definitions to see if they are accurate; whore – a person who exchanges acts simulating procreation in exchange for remuneration of some sort. I ponder, can we establish the criteria, and if not it discredits the person uttering the offending words. Generally when the inaccuracy of a claim's shown, it diffuses its potential to do damage and prevents escalation of tension. I would also wonder how they define “dirty” and would ask for clarification. It could mean soiled with the earth, soiled by garbage, or human sweat; perhaps they mean dirty relative to a set of specific moral values. These are measurable, and can be tested for accuracy, and objectively refuted when appropriate to defuse a difficult situation.
When we are initially learning about measurement, we count, we shade number lines, or color an area. We find out about nuances like Ordinal, Cardinal, Existential, Nominal. We think they’re only good for statistical use or study of natural science. They are in fact part of our every day life, but they become innate and are taken for granted. If average people were to think about them deeply or at least accepted them as valuable tools which can be used to defuse tense situations by verifying truth and rejecting false claims, then maybe they would be used more often, and fewer hardships would exist in the world.
So accurate and unbiased measurement is a very important part of all things in life. A main reason why good measure is important is we tend to act based on an accepted measurement. If “you are a dirty whore” turned out to be true, then eviction may be the resulting action, but what if it was a biased claim based on false evidence and bad measurement techniques? The eviction would still take place. Only when it is shown to be untrue that the “defendant” would remain a member of the residence. One of the best parts of the American existence is that we strive to never convict the innocent. People that get into rash situations are often not evaluating their assumptions to see if they're unbiased measurements.
Though it seems that testing of statements (antecedents) only applies to conflict between entities, it also applies to inner conflicts for individuals. Through the course of my life have been close to some deeply troubled people and was with them when they went from a suicidal state, to rational and hopeful state of mind. The last four people I talked out of suicide were stuck in a heavily biased, dark view of all things. They had made a sufficient number of determinations about their life and the lives of many other people around them that they became hopelessly stuck. Invariably the determinations were wrong and were based on a collection of biases that all needed to be questioned, but to the person in distress all the determinations were inarguably true.
“Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.” –Aaron Levenstein
In these situations a person finds themselves correct about a great many of their determinations, and any argument you make with them about their position is likely to be subjective enough to not change their mind, but take a moment to think about the quote above. They are statistically taking a position that says, all life is intolerably bad and will never get any better. Based on what they are looking at it appears to be true, but they are only looking at the suggestive part that the bikini is revealing, not the vital part that it is covering up. You have to take them on a guided tour of their own mind and show them that the many other memories refuting their evidence for suicide. Present evidence from your own life that refutes their case; foster an “I can do it so you can do it” spirit. Test their ability to measure things as bad or good; they may have a black or white scale where truly there are only shades of gray, and they are likely screening out other points of view that would discredit their claims. Also, people often think they can predict the future really well, but when you ask them what their historic accuracy record is, or at least what their current predictions of the future are, they can easily be shown as a very biased and hopelessly inaccurate estimator of the future. If you can clearly show that they are not able to determine future events, you can get them to leave the proverbial ledge and go with you to get ice-cream or something pleasant while you begin to sort out the rest of their troubles.
A final note to make here is that many people don't possess good skills for decisions under risk, that or they have some emotional bias on a specific class of decisions that prevent the rational thinking.
“The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense
reduced to calculus.” –Laplace, Théorie analytique des probabilités, 1820
All decisions under risk boil down to a up-side of a choice, and a likelihood of the upside, and a downside with it's own likelihood of happening. When a ordinary person makes a decision they innately calculate this to find an optimal payoff as Laplace indicates above; they do not even have to be good at arithmetic to do this, it's just part of being a mammal. Things can go wrong in the mind though, and people tend to forget parts of the model; most typically the forget the likelihood part. A gambler type ignores probability and sees only the upside. A pessimist type ignores the probabilities and sees only the downside. They make irrational decisions because of not fully weighing the decision. The pessimist may have gotten that way from a some bad experiences with slander, a tragic loss of a relative in a motor vehicle accident, or even a horror story so vivid and frightening that they cannot be rational about their decisions. Let's look at friendships and the pessimist, and you can interpolate things for the gambler, and other daily life decisions.
A pessimist sees risk from friendships as well as the gains, but is focusing on the risks. They know of the devious nature of some people who will take private conversations and turn them into a popularity commodity to trade at the hairdressers shop. This is certainly a possibility when taking on the risky decision of making friends with new people. The up side of a friendship is they will listen to you (and if they are a good enough friend), notify you immediately when you are about to do something you will regret later. The likelihood of the gossip slipping into a trusted friend circle is small, and the likelihood of the true friend is great, but the pessimist is too focused on the potential damage from gossip to think rationally. Their long term friends go through life changes and move away or have less time, and our pessimist does not replace them with new friends due to their improperly weighted risk of harm. It doesn't take long before they are alone in the darkness of their own mind. What they needed in their thinking was a good academic dose of weighted averages. The massive gain from friendships, times the probability of good people summed with the potential negative from gossips times the small probability of them equals the expected payoff (weighted average) of the friendship decision under risk. If that is any positive number they should forge ahead at making friends. Even if some bad friends did filter through, it's possible to fix the damage they did.
When we are initially learning about measurement, we count, we shade number lines, or color an area. We find out about nuances like Ordinal, Cardinal, Existential, Nominal. We think they’re only good for statistical use or study of natural science. They are in fact part of our every day life, but they become innate and are taken for granted. If average people were to think about them deeply or at least accepted them as valuable tools which can be used to defuse tense situations by verifying truth and rejecting false claims, then maybe they would be used more often, and fewer hardships would exist in the world.
So accurate and unbiased measurement is a very important part of all things in life. A main reason why good measure is important is we tend to act based on an accepted measurement. If “you are a dirty whore” turned out to be true, then eviction may be the resulting action, but what if it was a biased claim based on false evidence and bad measurement techniques? The eviction would still take place. Only when it is shown to be untrue that the “defendant” would remain a member of the residence. One of the best parts of the American existence is that we strive to never convict the innocent. People that get into rash situations are often not evaluating their assumptions to see if they're unbiased measurements.
Though it seems that testing of statements (antecedents) only applies to conflict between entities, it also applies to inner conflicts for individuals. Through the course of my life have been close to some deeply troubled people and was with them when they went from a suicidal state, to rational and hopeful state of mind. The last four people I talked out of suicide were stuck in a heavily biased, dark view of all things. They had made a sufficient number of determinations about their life and the lives of many other people around them that they became hopelessly stuck. Invariably the determinations were wrong and were based on a collection of biases that all needed to be questioned, but to the person in distress all the determinations were inarguably true.
“Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.” –Aaron Levenstein
In these situations a person finds themselves correct about a great many of their determinations, and any argument you make with them about their position is likely to be subjective enough to not change their mind, but take a moment to think about the quote above. They are statistically taking a position that says, all life is intolerably bad and will never get any better. Based on what they are looking at it appears to be true, but they are only looking at the suggestive part that the bikini is revealing, not the vital part that it is covering up. You have to take them on a guided tour of their own mind and show them that the many other memories refuting their evidence for suicide. Present evidence from your own life that refutes their case; foster an “I can do it so you can do it” spirit. Test their ability to measure things as bad or good; they may have a black or white scale where truly there are only shades of gray, and they are likely screening out other points of view that would discredit their claims. Also, people often think they can predict the future really well, but when you ask them what their historic accuracy record is, or at least what their current predictions of the future are, they can easily be shown as a very biased and hopelessly inaccurate estimator of the future. If you can clearly show that they are not able to determine future events, you can get them to leave the proverbial ledge and go with you to get ice-cream or something pleasant while you begin to sort out the rest of their troubles.
A final note to make here is that many people don't possess good skills for decisions under risk, that or they have some emotional bias on a specific class of decisions that prevent the rational thinking.
“The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense
reduced to calculus.” –Laplace, Théorie analytique des probabilités, 1820
All decisions under risk boil down to a up-side of a choice, and a likelihood of the upside, and a downside with it's own likelihood of happening. When a ordinary person makes a decision they innately calculate this to find an optimal payoff as Laplace indicates above; they do not even have to be good at arithmetic to do this, it's just part of being a mammal. Things can go wrong in the mind though, and people tend to forget parts of the model; most typically the forget the likelihood part. A gambler type ignores probability and sees only the upside. A pessimist type ignores the probabilities and sees only the downside. They make irrational decisions because of not fully weighing the decision. The pessimist may have gotten that way from a some bad experiences with slander, a tragic loss of a relative in a motor vehicle accident, or even a horror story so vivid and frightening that they cannot be rational about their decisions. Let's look at friendships and the pessimist, and you can interpolate things for the gambler, and other daily life decisions.
A pessimist sees risk from friendships as well as the gains, but is focusing on the risks. They know of the devious nature of some people who will take private conversations and turn them into a popularity commodity to trade at the hairdressers shop. This is certainly a possibility when taking on the risky decision of making friends with new people. The up side of a friendship is they will listen to you (and if they are a good enough friend), notify you immediately when you are about to do something you will regret later. The likelihood of the gossip slipping into a trusted friend circle is small, and the likelihood of the true friend is great, but the pessimist is too focused on the potential damage from gossip to think rationally. Their long term friends go through life changes and move away or have less time, and our pessimist does not replace them with new friends due to their improperly weighted risk of harm. It doesn't take long before they are alone in the darkness of their own mind. What they needed in their thinking was a good academic dose of weighted averages. The massive gain from friendships, times the probability of good people summed with the potential negative from gossips times the small probability of them equals the expected payoff (weighted average) of the friendship decision under risk. If that is any positive number they should forge ahead at making friends. Even if some bad friends did filter through, it's possible to fix the damage they did.
