

Generalizing from one example - jibiki
http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/

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JacobAldridge
I actually think this is one danger of the internet and increasingly
specialised communication channels - individuals are never exposed to contrary
opinions, and either gradually grow to believe that their opinions are the
only valid ones or fail to see legitimate threats to their world view.

The best example I know is politics - so many partisan sites exist that
individuals who are firmly within one camp can get all of their news through
their preferred filter - unlike MSM which at least pretends to be objective
and achieves somewhat middle ground.

For HN, I think it's fair to say there are some characteristics we have in
common which are not common in the wider community (say, respect for
rationality and intelligence). I hope we're not too insular to only find news
and conversation here; if we're are insular, we may wake up one day to
discover our values have been even more marginalised in the wider community
and we didn't even see it coming.

~~~
cduan
For those interested, this is basically the theory of law professor Cass
Sunstein in his book Republic.com. He calls this problem the "daily me," the
idea being that content can become too personalized to one's views, resulting
in irrationally extreme perspectives on those views and their correctness.

I would recommend the book, and also the numerous criticisms of his theory
(that prompted him to partially retract his argument in the second edition),
easily found online.

A book? Yes, a book! Go out and stare at a fixed-content display for a while.

------
aristus
Absolutely. I generalized from one datum once, and hoooo boy. I'll never do
that again.

I'm being funny, but with a purpose: if acting on one datum was always
fallacious, you'd think it would be bred out of us by now. Sometimes you have
to act on what you know, and different ages favor different personality types.

For instance, I believe that strong visual people have an advantage in our
times. I suspect it's because visual people are able to explore (by quite
literally visualizing) much larger solution spaces in shorter periods of time.
Like the author I am skeptical of Galton's claim that people who cannot
visualize are over-represented in math and science.

~~~
jibiki
> if acting on one datum was always fallacious, you'd think it would be bred
> out of us by now.

True enough, but you have to look at the context.

LW is sort of obsessed with Aumann's agreement theorem at the moment, which is
why it frequently has long back-and-forth threads that don't go anywhere. This
post can be seen as a reminder that sometimes you genuinely cannot convince
someone of something, because it's all in your head.

> I am skeptical of Galton's claim that people who cannot visualize are over-
> represented in math and science.

I was about to say that it's impossible to do (algebraic) topology without
visualizing... but then I'd be generalizing from one data point.

