Comments on: The Fallacy of Examples, and the problems of extrapolating from media http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/03/the-fallacy-of-examples-and-the-problems-of-extrapolating-from-media/ EthanZ's musings on Africa, media and international development Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:45:31 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Akma » Summer Stromateis http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/03/the-fallacy-of-examples-and-the-problems-of-extrapolating-from-media/comment-page-1/#comment-1099406 Akma » Summer Stromateis Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:06:06 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=2110#comment-1099406 [...] I know! I had wanted to comment on David Weinberger’s and Ethan Zuckerman’s observations about the Kristof “Donate a Goat” article. David calls it the Fallacy of [...] [...] I know! I had wanted to comment on David Weinberger’s and Ethan Zuckerman’s observations about the Kristof “Donate a Goat” article. David calls it the Fallacy of [...]

]]> By: Charles Edward http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/03/the-fallacy-of-examples-and-the-problems-of-extrapolating-from-media/comment-page-1/#comment-1080235 Charles Edward Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:27:16 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=2110#comment-1080235 David--thanks for the recommendation-- I will be happy to try Ferguson aurally (I confess to having had some trouble reading him, in that I kept trying to remember the difference between counter-factual history and fiction--like reading Harry Turtledove). I don't think I was talking about prediction though so much as fretting about causality -- wondering whether that which we think is causal is in fact simply sequential. But I guess that is the same point as yours, no? David–thanks for the recommendation– I will be happy to try Ferguson aurally (I confess to having had some trouble reading him, in that I kept trying to remember the difference between counter-factual history and fiction–like reading Harry Turtledove). I don’t think I was talking about prediction though so much as fretting about causality — wondering whether that which we think is causal is in fact simply sequential. But I guess that is the same point as yours, no?

]]> By: David Sasaki http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/03/the-fallacy-of-examples-and-the-problems-of-extrapolating-from-media/comment-page-1/#comment-1079005 David Sasaki Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:35:42 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=2110#comment-1079005 Interesting how the comment thread evolved/transformed into a discussion about prediction-making. Charles Edward, I would recommend giving a <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/salt-recordings/salt-020080428-furguson-schwartz/salt-020080428-furguson-schwartz.mp3" rel="nofollow">listen (MP3)</a> to the always-eloquent Niall Ferguson on the <a href="http://blog.longnow.org/2008/04/30/niall-ferguson-peter-schwartz-historian-vs-futurist-on-human-progress/" rel="nofollow">importance of coming up with alternative pasts as a way to temper our enthusiasm for making predictions about the future</a>. Interesting how the comment thread evolved/transformed into a discussion about prediction-making. Charles Edward, I would recommend giving a listen (MP3) to the always-eloquent Niall Ferguson on the importance of coming up with alternative pasts as a way to temper our enthusiasm for making predictions about the future.

]]> By: FreieNetze.de » Links für den 7.07.2007 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/03/the-fallacy-of-examples-and-the-problems-of-extrapolating-from-media/comment-page-1/#comment-1077163 FreieNetze.de » Links für den 7.07.2007 Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:17:17 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=2110#comment-1077163 [...] Ethan Zuckerman - The Fallacy of Examples, and the problems of extrapolating from media [...] [...] Ethan Zuckerman – The Fallacy of Examples, and the problems of extrapolating from media [...]

]]> By: Ethan http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/03/the-fallacy-of-examples-and-the-problems-of-extrapolating-from-media/comment-page-1/#comment-1071271 Ethan Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:22:14 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=2110#comment-1071271 Charles, that's a really helpful and provocative comment. I wonder whether this impulse to narrate and explain, but not to predict, is a journalistic one. It seems to be that many of the people writing in this space are journalists, of one flavor or another. (I'd include Clay in that space, over his protests, and point out that at the end of his book, he refuses to predict whether social media will empower anti-social forces more than benign ones, preferring to focus on reporting what's actually happening.) Chris's piece - which you can find here with some supporting essays: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/anderson08/anderson08_index.html - argues that in the Petabyte age, it no longer makes sense to offer a predictive model then test it to see whether or not it's correct - instead, you just need to find ways to look at massive quantities of data, figure out what's true, then explain it after the fact. That last step is a critical one, I think. Without a model for how a complex system - Google search advertising, genetics or particle physics - works, it's very hard to make decisions. We may make discoveries by analysing huge sets of data, but we understand those discoveries by telling stories, making models, narrating what occurs. And yes, the narratives we choose are critical, because none of them are perfect. (Working on another post right now on this, which may take a while to post, as it's forcing me to go back and read guys like Baudrillard on simulations...) Charles, that’s a really helpful and provocative comment. I wonder whether this impulse to narrate and explain, but not to predict, is a journalistic one. It seems to be that many of the people writing in this space are journalists, of one flavor or another. (I’d include Clay in that space, over his protests, and point out that at the end of his book, he refuses to predict whether social media will empower anti-social forces more than benign ones, preferring to focus on reporting what’s actually happening.)

Chris’s piece – which you can find here with some supporting essays: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/anderson08/anderson08_index.html – argues that in the Petabyte age, it no longer makes sense to offer a predictive model then test it to see whether or not it’s correct – instead, you just need to find ways to look at massive quantities of data, figure out what’s true, then explain it after the fact.

That last step is a critical one, I think. Without a model for how a complex system – Google search advertising, genetics or particle physics – works, it’s very hard to make decisions. We may make discoveries by analysing huge sets of data, but we understand those discoveries by telling stories, making models, narrating what occurs. And yes, the narratives we choose are critical, because none of them are perfect. (Working on another post right now on this, which may take a while to post, as it’s forcing me to go back and read guys like Baudrillard on simulations…)

]]> By: Charles Edward http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/03/the-fallacy-of-examples-and-the-problems-of-extrapolating-from-media/comment-page-1/#comment-1071189 Charles Edward Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:22:49 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=2110#comment-1071189 Ethan, this touches on something that has been bothering me lately, articulated both by Chris Anderson's "End of Theory" article (sorry--don't know how to hyperlink in your comment field) and by the "Is the Tipping Point Toast?" controversy between Duncan Watts and Malcolm Gladwell (and, now that I think about it, Paul Ormerod's "Why Most Things Fail"). Basically the implication of all three is that things just happen and humans invent stories to explain them, in the belief that we can somehow control or at least predict the next events that happen. Events are distributed kurtotically, with most being high frequency, low impact, but some few being very low frequency but really high impact -- in fact, graphed, the events vs frequency curve is another Pareto (seems like everything is, nowadays). So that means that most of the time we are right, or near enough (sort of in the same way that I can usually make the horoscope for the day more or less "fit" my life)-- but every now and again we are wrong, and sometimes spectacularly so. I find this line of thought intriguing, but also unsettling, in a vertiginous way, because it seems to suggest that all actions are probably of equal validity, and everything is contingent -- buy a goat, don't buy a goat (or any other action). Things will happen later, and we can always link backward to whichever of the actions we took, to decide that A "caused" B (or failure to do A resulted in B rather than the preferable C). However, if Anderson/Watts/Ormerod are right, those apparently causal links are nothing more than sequences, and the universe is totally random, a bazillion steel pachinko balls bouncing down an endless board of jutting pins. I'd be grateful to anyone who can help me out on that one (for the record, both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky took really good swings at this problem, and neither cracked it, even to his own satisfaction, so I am not at all confident I would get anywhere with it). What this DOES point out, however, is how very powerful the narrative into which we embed things becomes -- and certainly one thing that we now have (vs say 200 years ago, or even 20 years ago) is lots more narratives, and thus lots more choices. In fact, that is the message I took away from Shirky's book (which I agree is a must-buy, must-read), that our aility to share and create narratives is now exponentially greater than it was even a decade ago -- which enables a "battle of the narratives" that is impossible to win (since MY story isn't YOUR story, and so on). Sorry--this is too long, but I really liked your posting here. Ethan, this touches on something that has been bothering me lately, articulated both by Chris Anderson’s “End of Theory” article (sorry–don’t know how to hyperlink in your comment field) and by the “Is the Tipping Point Toast?” controversy between Duncan Watts and Malcolm Gladwell (and, now that I think about it, Paul Ormerod’s “Why Most Things Fail”). Basically the implication of all three is that things just happen and humans invent stories to explain them, in the belief that we can somehow control or at least predict the next events that happen. Events are distributed kurtotically, with most being high frequency, low impact, but some few being very low frequency but really high impact — in fact, graphed, the events vs frequency curve is another Pareto (seems like everything is, nowadays). So that means that most of the time we are right, or near enough (sort of in the same way that I can usually make the horoscope for the day more or less “fit” my life)– but every now and again we are wrong, and sometimes spectacularly so.

I find this line of thought intriguing, but also unsettling, in a vertiginous way, because it seems to suggest that all actions are probably of equal validity, and everything is contingent — buy a goat, don’t buy a goat (or any other action). Things will happen later, and we can always link backward to whichever of the actions we took, to decide that A “caused” B (or failure to do A resulted in B rather than the preferable C). However, if Anderson/Watts/Ormerod are right, those apparently causal links are nothing more than sequences, and the universe is totally random, a bazillion steel pachinko balls bouncing down an endless board of jutting pins.

I’d be grateful to anyone who can help me out on that one (for the record, both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky took really good swings at this problem, and neither cracked it, even to his own satisfaction, so I am not at all confident I would get anywhere with it). What this DOES point out, however, is how very powerful the narrative into which we embed things becomes — and certainly one thing that we now have (vs say 200 years ago, or even 20 years ago) is lots more narratives, and thus lots more choices.

In fact, that is the message I took away from Shirky’s book (which I agree is a must-buy, must-read), that our aility to share and create narratives is now exponentially greater than it was even a decade ago — which enables a “battle of the narratives” that is impossible to win (since MY story isn’t YOUR story, and so on).

Sorry–this is too long, but I really liked your posting here.

]]> By: Seth Finkelstein http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/03/the-fallacy-of-examples-and-the-problems-of-extrapolating-from-media/comment-page-1/#comment-1070308 Seth Finkelstein Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:40:48 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=2110#comment-1070308 Note that what you discuss here underlies much of my critique of blog-evangelism - that many of the people involved build businesses on the marketing technique of presenting extreme successes in a way that will be implicitly read as if they were typical, but the words stating that explicitly are not there. So the targets fall prey to the implication, while the hypester blog-evangelist maintains what qualifies as plausible deniability since there was no explicit statement (and often then usually personally attacks the target). I get flak for saying it's an extremely cruel and exploitative business, as that analysis is not popular with high attention bloggers. Note that what you discuss here underlies much of my critique of blog-evangelism – that many of the people involved build businesses on the marketing technique of presenting extreme successes in a way that will be implicitly read as if they were typical, but the words stating that explicitly are not there. So the targets fall prey to the implication, while the hypester blog-evangelist maintains what qualifies as plausible deniability since there was no explicit statement (and often then usually personally attacks the target). I get flak for saying it’s an extremely cruel and exploitative business, as that analysis is not popular with high attention bloggers.

]]> By: Cos http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/03/the-fallacy-of-examples-and-the-problems-of-extrapolating-from-media/comment-page-1/#comment-1070046 Cos Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:58:19 +0000 http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=2110#comment-1070046 The purpose of a story is not to represent but to illustrate. You can use stories not just get people to care about a thing that may or may not be common, but to illustrate that something *can* be, or even to illustrate a worry you have about something that *might* be - without any claim that such a thing has ever happened in reality, or perhaps something that has happened in the past with no claim that it will happen in the future. It's hard for me to think of storytelling as "fair" in this way, because anecdotes are not data. Fairness is not so much in the choice of stories to show a medium, as it is in placing the stories you do tell in the right context. BTW, one of the biggest "fallacy of examples" problems in current American culture, I think, is the story of a "ticking time-bomb" and "terrorist who knows how to stop it and will tell you only if you torture him/her", to justify torture. This is a story of a thing that, AFAIK, has never happened, and is not likely to ever happen. The purpose of a story is not to represent but to illustrate. You can use stories not just get people to care about a thing that may or may not be common, but to illustrate that something *can* be, or even to illustrate a worry you have about something that *might* be – without any claim that such a thing has ever happened in reality, or perhaps something that has happened in the past with no claim that it will happen in the future. It’s hard for me to think of storytelling as “fair” in this way, because anecdotes are not data. Fairness is not so much in the choice of stories to show a medium, as it is in placing the stories you do tell in the right context.

BTW, one of the biggest “fallacy of examples” problems in current American culture, I think, is the story of a “ticking time-bomb” and “terrorist who knows how to stop it and will tell you only if you torture him/her”, to justify torture. This is a story of a thing that, AFAIK, has never happened, and is not likely to ever happen.

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