Comment by vladms

Comment by vladms 3 days ago

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Quoting from the article "But here’s a question about Papua New Guinea: how many people live there? The answer should be pretty simple."

That sounds a very strange expectation. Most of my life post university I realized most of questions have complex answers, it is never as simple as you expect.

If the author would check how things biology and medicine work currently, I think he will have even more surprises than the fact that counting populations is an approximate endeavor.

evan_a_a 3 days ago

This is a literary device. The article continues to explain why this isn’t a simple problem, and it’s clear from the conclusion that the author understands the complexity.

>But it’s good to be reminded that we know a lot less about the world than we think. Much of our thinking about the world runs on a statistical edifice of extraordinary complexity, in which raw numbers—like population counts, but also many others—are only the most basic inputs. Thinking about the actual construction of these numbers is important, because it encourages us to have a healthy degree of epistemic humility about the world: we really know much less than we think.

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  • anal_reactor 3 days ago

    I guess this is why reading things other than technical documentation remains important.

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    • quietbritishjim 3 days ago

      Or it's a reason why literary devices should only be employed when they aren't distractingly wrong.

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      • tjwebbnorfolk 3 days ago

        or to not jump to conclusions from reading a single sentence of a multi page article

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      • rustystump 3 days ago

        I guess dune should be totally different given how distractingly wrong it is…

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  • PlatoIsADisease 3 days ago

    As someone who reads epistemology for fun. Its so much worse than you know.

    Everything is basically a theory only judged on predictive capabilities. Even the idea that Earth is not at the center of the solar system is a judgement call of what we define as the solar system and center.

    The math is simpler sure, but its arbitrary how we define our systems.

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    • 1718627440 2 days ago

      > Even the idea that Earth is not at the center of the solar system is a judgement call of what we define as the solar system and center.

      If you don't have a definition of the solar system, the question about its center is meaningless. If you have then you can answer it according to that definition.

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    • lotsofpulp 3 days ago

      You lost me with your example. What could the word center mean if the thing that all the other things orbit around in the solar system is not referred to as being in the center?

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      • PlatoIsADisease 3 days ago

        They orbit the earth in a different shape that is more complex than an ellipse.

        For further reading, I like Early Wittgenstein, but warning, he is a meme for a reason, you will only understand 10%...

        Imagine we have a table with black and white splotches. We could use a square fishnet with a fine enough resolution to accurately describe it. But why use a square fishnet? Why not use hexagons? They both can accurately describe it with a fine enough resolution.

        All of science is built on this first step of choosing (squares or hexagons).

        Maybe something easier than Wittgenstein, there is Waltz Theory of International Politics, specifically chapter 1. But that is more practical/applied than metaphysical. I find this a difficult topic to recommend a wikipedia article, as they are too specific to each type of knowledge and don't explain the general topic. Even the general topic gets a bit lost in the weeds. Maybe Karl Popper too.

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      • t-3 3 days ago

        Orbits are influenced by gravity and momentum and are always changing as the objects pull on each other and are pulled on. It only appears to be stable because the scale is so immense and our lives are so short in comparison.

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      • sdwr 3 days ago

        Depends on how many epicycles you add!

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    • Atlas667 3 days ago

      Just cause knowledge can be reduced to predictive capabilities and judgement calls does not mean systems are defined arbitrarily. Everything is defined as to its relative function in/to society and our material endeavors and the social forces that limit or expand on areas of these systems.

      First we have to live. That has implications; it's the base for all knowledge.

      Knowledge is developing all the time and can be uncertain, sure, but the foundations aren't arbitrary.

      You are doing an idealism.

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    • sdwr 3 days ago

      I remember a lot of pop sci being centered around "elegance", looking for simple models that are broadly predictive. Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Darwin. Feels like people are leaning the other way now, and seeing reality as messy, uncertain, and multifaceted.

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      • syphia 3 days ago

        A case study of myself as an overeager math student:

        I used to focus so much on finding "elegant" proofs of things, especially geometric proofs. I'd construct elaborate diagrams to find an intuitive explanation, sometimes disregarding gaps in logic.

        Then I gave up, and now I appreciate the brutal pragmatism of using Euler's formula for anything trigonometry-related. It's not a very elegant method, if accounting for the large quantity of rote intermediate work produced, but it's far more effective and straightforward for dealing with messy trig problems.

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  • vladms 3 days ago

    I tried to check a list of literary devices (Wikipedia) and couldn't exactly map to a specific category - would be interesting to know if there such a category.

    The problem I have with this literary device is that I think it works if most / many questions would fit it then he would go to disapprove it. Using it, for me, kind of indirectly reinforces the idea that "there are many simple answers". Which I came to loathe as it is pushed again and again due to social media. Everything is "clear", "simple", "everybody knows better", "everybody did their research".

    How did this literal device make you feel? Interested? Curious? Bored? When I read it my initial instinct was "no, it's definitely not simple, so if that's what are you going to explain me, I will not bother".

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    • ajkjk 3 days ago

      The list of literary devices on Wikipedia is a tiny subset of the list of literary devices in reality. Although in this case it is a well-documented one: it's just a rhetorical question.

      anyway it is just a writing style. if you don't like it, fine. If you can't parse it, well, now you can.

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    • dugidugout 3 days ago

      I didn't feel much at all. It's simply a rhetorical question which sets up the explicit claim being made in the title of the article. The structure is quite clear if you account for the entire text which I'm sure the author intended. Do you mean to assert that reasoning through the Socratic tradition is something to loathe and push against? In other words, you are leaning on a lot of ancillary personal concerns which I don't believe the author earned.

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jklinger410 3 days ago

> Most of my life post university I realized most of questions have complex answers, it is never as simple as you expect.

I find the complication comes from poor definitions, poor understanding of those definitions, and pedantic arguments. Less about the facts of reality being complicated and more about our ability to communicate it to each other.

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  • apercu 3 days ago

    I’ve noticed the inverse as in the more I understand something, the less “simple” it looks.

    Apparent simplicity usually comes from weak definitions and overconfident summaries, not from the underlying system being easy.

    Complexity is often there from the start, we just don’t see it yet.

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    • somenameforme 3 days ago

      There's a great analog with this in chess as well.

      ~1200 - omg chess is so amazing and hard. this is great.

      ~1500 - i'm really starting to get it! i can beat most people i know easily. i love studying this complex game!

      ~1800 - this game really isn't that hard. i can beat most people at the club without trying. really I think the only thing separating me from Kasparov is just a lot of opening prep and study

      ~2300 - omg this game is so friggin hard. 2600s are on an entirely different plane, let alone a Kasparov or a Carlsen.

      Magnus Carlsen - "Wow, I really have no understanding of chess." - Said without irony after playing some game and going over it with a computer on stream. A fairly frequent happening.

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      • ric2b 3 days ago

        Funny how the start of your scale, 1200 Elo, is essentially what I have as a goal and am not even close yet, lol.

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    • StopDisinfo910 3 days ago

      I think it's more of a curve from my point of view.

      Beginner: I know nothing and this topic seems impossible to grasp.

      Advanced beginner: I get it now. It's pretty simple.

      Intermedite: Hmm, this thing is actually very complicated.

      Expert: It's not that complicated. I can explain a simple core covering 80% of it. The other 20% is an ocean of complexity.

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    • jklinger410 3 days ago

      I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree. Simplicity comes from strong definitions, and "infinite" complexity comes from weak ones.

      If you're always chasing the next technicality then maybe you didn't really know what question you were looking to answer at the onset.

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      • pixl97 3 days ago

        >If you're always chasing the next technicality

        This sounds like someone who has never studied physics.

        "Oh wow, I figured out everything about physics... except this one little weird thing here"

        [A lifetime of chasing why that one little weird thing occurs]

        "I know nothing about physics, I am but a mote in an endless void"

        ---

        Strong or weak definitions don't save you here, what you are looking for is error bars and acceptable ranges.

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        • jklinger410 3 days ago

          Your response along with others is proving my point in an unfortunate way.

          If you think I'm saying that the world is not infinitely complex, you are missing the point.

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      • balamatom 3 days ago

        IMO both perspectives have their place. Sometimes what's missing is the information, sometimes what's lacking is the ability to communicate it and/or the willingness to understand it. So in different circumstances either viewpoint may be appropriate.

        What's missing more often than not, across fields of study as well as levels of education, is the overall commitment to conceputal integrity. From this we observe people's habitual inability or unwillingness to be definite about what their words mean - and their consequent fear of abstraction.

        If one is in the habit of using one's set of concepts in the manner of bludgeons, one will find many ways and many reasons to bludgeon another with them - such as if a person turned out to be using concepts as something more akin to clockwork.

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        • jklinger410 3 days ago

          Yes, we're in complete agreement about conceptual integrity.

          Reality is such that, without integrity, you can prove almost anything you want. As long as your bar for "prove" is at the very bottom.

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      • WJW 3 days ago

        Simple counterexample: chess. The rules are simple enough we regularly teach them to young children. There's basically no randomness involved. And yet, the rules taken together form a game complex enough that no human alive can fully comprehend their consequences.

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      • nathan_compton 3 days ago

        This is actually insightful: we usually don't know the question we are trying to answer. The idea that you can "just" find the right question is naive.

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      • breuleux 3 days ago

        > Simplicity comes from strong definitions

        Sure, you can put it this way, with the caveat that reality at large isn't strongly definable.

        You can sort of see this with good engineering: half of it is strongly defining a system simple enough to be reasoned about and built up, the other half is making damn sure that the rest of reality can't intrude, violate your assumptions and ruin it all.

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veunes 2 days ago

Not simple in the sense of easy, but simple in the sense of foundational: if a government can't even roughly say how many people it governs, everything built on top of that gets shaky

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leesec 3 days ago

"It shouldn’t be new to anyone that population data in the poor world is bad" from the same author and same article. but cherry pick away if it makes you feel intelligent.

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adamrezich 3 days ago

Most people believe that most things are knowable, and happily defer to published statistics whenever possible.

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