In praise of epistemic irresponsibility: How lazy and ignorant can you be?

1. In praise of epistemic irresponsibility:
How lazy and ignorant can you be?
Boris Yakubchik
@Forbes
June 5th, 2018

2. Epistemology ~ theory of knowledge
Experimental philosophy ~ philosophy + empirical inquiry

3. We need:
● reliable methods
● accessible to regular people
for making conclusions
Traditional epistemology sucks

4. What we need:
Reliably good results
Traditional virtue in epistemology:
Hard work

5. Experts can really suck
Wide range of domains:
● College admissions
● Parole officers
● Hiring decisions (unstructured interviews)
● Medical professionals
● etc
Linear Models rule

6. Experts can really suck Linear Models rule
Why?
pourquoi?
No feedback loops

7. Linear model ~
weight x variable + weight x variable + … + weight x variable = value
0.4 x 0.5 + -0.6 x 0.7 + … + 0.1 x 1.3 = 0.8
Variables
Outcomes
Good statistics Linear model

8. Time to get lazy
Himouto! Umaru-chan

9. How lazy can we get?
● Bootstrap your model
○ A linear model off just one expert
● Random linear model
○ Random weights but non-random sign (+/-)
● Ignore most variables
○ Simply add a few normalized scores
Experts hate him!
Pay attention for one weird trick:

10. Simple strategy for better results:
1. Estimate / make prediction
2. Consider the opposite / assume you are wrong
3. Make second estimate / prediction
4. Average the two

11. Don’t think about probabilities, think about frequencies
1. Patient thinks she has a rare disease (1 in 1000)
2. Test is 99% accurate (1% chance it is wrong each administration)
3. Test is positive
4. What is the probability the patient has disease?
hint: only 18% of Harvard Medical School faculty & staff got an equivalent problem right
hint: average diagnosis was 28 times too high

12. Solution:
99%
correct
1%
incorrect
999 people
disease free
1 person
has disease
99
people
999
people
99
99 + 999
9%=