The point I was trying to make was not that good judgement under uncertainty is impossible. As you mentioned, I'm a statistician... as such, I'm 100% certain I would never say that :p

What I was trying to say was that the methods commonly used in social sciences departments, and the watered down versions used in popular social science writing (perhaps typified by OP's essay) are basically a waste of time if your goal is understanding rather than entertainment.

That's not to say I think that real world action (including ethical action) is impossible, or that it's not worth doing. That's to say I have a strong, somewhat professional, opinion on how it should be done.

I am not alone in this. There are groups of statistically minded people who are making headway avoiding the traps of "common sense". http://www.givewell.org might be a good introduction, perhaps reading about how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation allocates funding would also be helpful if you'd like details. They do around ~500 times more measurable good per dollar donated than the average charity (source: http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/ins... etc). That this level of improvement was possible is a harsh critique of the sort of watered down social sciences methods we're discussing.

> I am suggesting that asking "why" is the only way we can have independent and clear thinking.

I mean, I get that you're saying that... but oh man is a citation needed there. "What"/"How" is normally the question that leads to insight and paradigm change in my experience. I don't usually cite Kuhn, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re... might be worth a read for you.

Why almost invariably leads to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias and/or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error , both in my experience and according to the literature.

> However, if you understood the impact of ghettos, the impact of prisons (which is a form of segregation through spatial/societal exile), and the history of racial segregation through financial policies like redlining[2], you'd understand that you'd be setting a policy that was the exact same reason why these high crime areas happened in the first place. You'd be amplifying a feedback loop.

> The only way to understand is to do some research and understand what the major factors for crime are. Is it a lack of jobs? A drug-trade fueled underground economy? A lack of education? A lack of strong familial/social structures? What improvement would have the biggest impact in the area?

I'm so confused. You think the reason people have proposed stop and frisk is because they haven't considered what the major factors correlating with future crime are? (ie what makes a high risk area, how to city plan around that, etc) I would be very surprised if that were the case. If it's a stupid policy (and I'm more than willing to believe that it is) I would have thought it would be an example of shoddy social sciences thinking (ie people who shouldn't have asked "why")

How do you think government officials decide which policies to enact? They went to some of our nations best schools (yes, that's meant to be a critique of those schools). It's not like doing what social science has been doing, only harder, will somehow change the results we're seeing.

Or at least that's my best guess. As we start talking about academia being dumb I have read more :p

----

If you haven't read it "Politics is the Mind-Killer" (http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/) is short and rather amazing as well. (Not wanting to go funny headed is the main reason I've avoided reading about stop and frisk).

Just for fun here's a quiz letting you guess which interventions do the most good (as you might imagine "common sense" isn't going to be much help)
https://80000hours.org/articles/can-you-guess/