That's a great point. I suspect though, the critique applies to decision making by consensus more broadly.
Decisions made by consensus are not necessarily the optimal strategy (as defined by efficacy to achieve targets). This method simply reflects that.
However, the benefit of this method is that all participants are forced to be more rigorous about why they hold certain beliefs, and then making an attempt to aggregate those preferences to drive an outcome.
I attended a talk about this recently, and I honestly think it's a revolutionary / game changing way to do contact tracing.
TLDR is to understand the spread of COVID-19 around you (through second-order network connections and beyond). This makes it much more similar to a weather forecast (e.g. the virus is approaching your vicinity through people in your network). This makes it a much more effective way to systematically identify, isolate, and contain further spread.
The idea is so simple and effective, I can't believe this isn't front and center over the news as a way to effectively contain the spread of COVID (beyond the existing measures of wearing masks, social distancing, etc).
This post was inspired by a question Richard Hamming asks in "You and your research" (paraphrasing): "What are the most important problems in your field?". When I thought hard about this question, I realized that I didn’t have a satisfying answer. This post is an ongoing attempt to remedy this.
Since solving these challenges is a collective pursuit, I’d appreciate suggestions on content to add, general feedback, and comments! :)
Short post on using computational graphs to derive update rules for backpropagation, illustrated using a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU). Questions, feedback, corrections? Do reach out! :)
There's many tools I've picked up over the years (sometimes on as needed basis, sometimes just for fun). The latter has been way more rewarding though in retrospect :)
Instead of enumerating all of them, I think this course page does a great job of collating them by topic: https://missing.csail.mit.edu/
I resonate with the feeling of joy of having translated thoughts into a concrete result :)
More often though I find all sorts of loopholes and alternative ways I could've done the same thing. Perhaps, it's because we're viewing an older thought process, and have sufficiently dissociated ourselves with it, so we're able to neutrally critique it.
It's designed to be a foundation course for subsequent social science classes, but I personally found the exposure to models from different fields of study to be quite insightful.
Model Thinking is the best Coursera course that I've taken. The lessons have practically applied to many areas of my personal and professional life in a way that far exceeded my expectations.
Scott is one of the best teachers on the topic, and makes complex models simple and intuitive to understand.
It is a long course, but well worth it. Cannot recommend it enough.
Came here to say the same.
Especially now that the world is struggling with SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, understanding these different models helps a lot!
Last but not least, Scott E. Page is a great educator. Glad to hear there is a book from him now -- his papers were a good read as well during/after the course.
Agreed. I took Model Thinking years back, and it's probably the course that I most enjoyed (as in: just for it's own sake). I had no idea there was now also a book.
“Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.”
Other influential books: 1984, The Fountainhead, and Siddhartha
I finally got around to reading it about a year ago and the line that hooked me was right in the beginning. "We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on 'good' rather than 'time' and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes."
Decisions made by consensus are not necessarily the optimal strategy (as defined by efficacy to achieve targets). This method simply reflects that.
However, the benefit of this method is that all participants are forced to be more rigorous about why they hold certain beliefs, and then making an attempt to aggregate those preferences to drive an outcome.