> I'm familiar with Givewell. As a non-profit, Givewell does good work, but they perform a form of meta analysis of other non-profits, and do not do direct work. As a result, Givewell isn't a good example of "real world action",

While I do agree that decisions under time pressure take on a different character than more deliberative decisions, I disagree with the implication that they are somehow fundamentally different than performing day-to-day construction coordination tasks. The complexity level that the givewell guys grapple with when formulating their models is very high (ie finding a simple model that's not missing the point is a lot harder than using such a model after the fact).

> What's more important is a holistic (or cybernetics[1]) way to understand a series of entangled questions - why people use space, how they interact with a building, how a structure is constructed, what technologies are used, construction time and cost, risk, relationship to building codes, building inspectors et cetera.

(Other than the non building specific parts) these are exactly the kinds of questions givewell grapples with -- time and cost, risk: shifting disease patterns, unstable governments in the third world, estimated future efficacy, capital saturation, etc.

> Or take it this way. Logic-based thinking works in a highly controlled environment, where the logical axioms are pure and easy. Heuristic-based action works in a highly complex environment, where there are no axioms, rules are always bent, and things are always interconnected in highly unpredictable ways.

Right, statistics (well, probability theory) is an extension of logic to the sorts of highly complex environments you're describing.

>So to me, a form of thought that thinks asking "why" is "insanity or cult formation" is very well-meaning but ill-informed in terms of much forms of action. It works on the screen, but it doesn't work when it interfaces with complexity.

Perhaps you were meaning something different than I was with regard to why questions? I was referring to what OP does in her essay, and what you evoked when you asked for with "> women not wanting to buy those pants. And why do you think that is?"

Ie a non-tested (and often non-testable <- a much worse sin) speculation not backed by evidence with the feeling of truth. A pet theory in an area I know relatively little about for the purpose of seeming smart or interesting in conversation. A unnecessary heuristic to cloud my future self's vision. An unwarranted and unnecessary generalization about a group of people. A new religion to join.

To speculate accurately about the reason for one person's actions may sometimes be possible. I'll say again that I don't believe this can be done with any accuracy in the area of societal level women's fashion choices. There are simply too many women, buying pants for too many reasons. We can make aggregate predictions about that group much like an actuary would price a life insurance contract, but that deals with the what of a situation, not the why. You can even correctly infer the structure of the what (ie "cigarette smokers should be charged more for life insurance"), however you must be very careful when doing this, as this is extremely difficult to do without experimentation.

> So to clarify, your argument is that spending time on 'why' is "at best wasteful", and thus "what"/"how" is better?

> I think we agree here, but I'd say that it seems like you're in disagreement with your previous answer.

Well good! Glad to meet a sane person such as yourself. I have not read SSR myself (it's social science nonsense / overgeneralization in my opinion), but I'm glad to hear that my mentioning it seems to have been helpful. I've gotten the cliffs notes by spending time on the internet.

I think the root of our disagreement was I thought my replies where being taken in the context of the article (ie "I think pockets are political because history"), whereas I think perhaps you've merely been responding to my replies (which I wouldn't blame you for -- it's an awful article). If you could be more specific with a question re: consistency I'd be happy if I discovered something I've missed, and perhaps you'd be happy to discover something you'd missed.

> You assume a neat synchronous relationship between knowledge and policies, so lack of knowledge is the reason why good policies are not being enacted, and thus if bad policies are being enacted, then the current forms of knowledge practice (what you call "social science") are inadequate.

I did no such thing. My model is that (1) misguided speculation by social scientists leads to (2) good sounding by ultimately wrong intervention ideas that are (3) turned into a religious doctrine by way of party politics and then (4) implemented to the great suffering of all who are governed by them. My belief is that this is the default for most new social policies. The data on unintended problems caused by policy decisions seems to back this model up.

In my previous reply you are referencing above, I was evoking this in the hopes of getting you to stop spending your time doing (1), on the grounds that it doesn't seem to help anyone and at worst hurts them. Being less ambitious in areas of great epistemological risk has a better base rate than the current methods. Perhaps I was reading too much into your comments though. I do know that OP was doing roughly #3 above.

> Take climate change, for example. Every sane scientist in the field agrees that climate change is a real thing. Yet there are not enough policies actively addressing the issue.

Yeah, I have no opinion on climate policy other than an inclination toward the status quo. Forecasting societal economic effects is very hard, smart people like Thiel have taken the con side, and environmental regulation looks like it's a death sentence for lots of people in the third world (though economic hardship. I point this out because a decision that involves killing actual living humans to save hypothetical future humans should require more evidence). AGI timelines also seem important here, as it's likely to either fix our climate issue or kill us all before the climate becomes a problem. (Note I do think the science is largely accurate, it's policy questions I'm referring to here).

>Politics is endlessly fascinating to me; if you want a merger between politics-thinking and statistics or modeling, The Parable of the Polygons (http://ncase.me/polygons/) (which is a model of the Schelling Segregation Model) is an interesting project.

I usually strongly dislike Vi's work, but my love of Schelling was enough to get me over the hump -- fun :)

I don't think the Mind-Killer interpretation is incompatible with "endlessly fascinating". The tribal influence on thought is too light to be felt until it's too heavy to be broken.

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PS. Do you happen to be in the market for a good book club, and live near SF?