Comment by TeMPOraL
21 hours ago
All models are wrong. Some are useful.
It makes sense to judge models by how useful they're in some situation, and compare them by usefulness in context[0]. It doesn't make sense to ask which is right, because they're all wrong.
Here, at least for me, but I guess(!) many other HNers, the "Askers vs. Guessers" model is very useful.
Would some RCT studies be nice? Sure. I don't expect them to prove the model to be accurate. But it doesn't have to be, that's not the point. Just pointing out that there's some variability between people along these lines is very useful.
Diverse modes loosely held, eh?
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[0] - Consider Newtonian vs. relativistic motion. The latter is more accurate and gets you better results at large scales - but in almost all circumstances in life (up to and including landing a probe on the Moon, or landing a shell in someone's back yard), the Newtonian model is much simpler and therefore much more useful.
Of course we could say that all models are "wrong" because they are simplifications of the reality. But there's wrong and wrong. We don't usually say a model like the Newtonian motion is wrong, it's not a very useful way to deal with models.
Newtonian motion has been shown to be repeatable and to accurately predict motion within limits. It has scientific backing.
The asker-guesser model isn't even shown to be a simplification of the reality. And actually, later in that High-context and low-context cultures [1] Wikipedia article:
> A 2008 meta-analysis concluded that the model was "unsubstantiated and underdeveloped".
Which is scientific speak for bullshit.
There's a world between scientifically backed "wrong" Newtonian movement and random internet forum comment backed social model found to be "unsubstantiated and underdeveloped".
The Newtonian movement is an evidence-backed simplification. The asker-guesser model is a persuasive illusion.
Are you really comparing some internet commenter with Newton and the broader scientific community?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context_c...
> The Newtonian movement is an evidence-backed simplification. The asker-guesser model is a persuasive illusion.
Both are evidence-backed simplifications. The difference is in the amount of evidence and degree of simplification. Both are better than random in their respective domain, and can be useful depending on your tolerance for errors.
Sometimes even a very broad simplification is useful. E.g. it's perfectly valid to assume that π = 3 or even π = 5 to simplify some calculations, if you don't need the value to be more accurate than "non-negative and less than 10". It'll probably cost you something somewhere (e.g. you end up ordering too much paint), but being able to do the math in your head quickly is often worth it.
I could keep inventing examples, but surely you'll be able to come up with some of your own, once you realize there's no hard divide between what's scientific and not. These are just rough categories. In reality, you have models of varying complexity, correlation with reality, and various utility. It's a continuum.
Also:
> Are you really comparing some internet commenter with Newton and the broader scientific community?
Yes. Don't be biased against Internet commenters. Papers don't write themselves ex nihilo, and are generally distillation of existing ideas, not the first place where new ideas are ever published. And scientists are Internet users too.
> Both are evidence-backed simplifications
Which evidences do we have for this asker-guesser thing? Naive intuition doesn't count. That's not how robust knowledge works. There's a freaking meta analysis finding we don't have strong enough evidence. This is pseudo science. It could be discovered later that this stuff indeed works, but we don't know yet. It's a sexy topic, the lack of any convincing publication for all this time makes this pretty unlikely.
> Yes.
Ok, I'm done here.
If you don't see how an internet comment from a random person and a proper paper written by Newton (or even by a random scientist) are fundamentally different when it comes to robustness and reliability of the described knowledge, even accounting for all the flaws scientific publishing has, I don't see how this discussion can be productive any longer. This won't lead to anything interesting.
I think I've written everything I had to write on the topic, several times. I'll leave you with your pub / armchair science. You do you.
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