Post B6JY8o8NcvPXSITyAi by icedquinn@blob.cat
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 (DIR) Post #B6JY8neFQxJ9wqNuCm by jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz
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       I get so tired of the liberal “Studies show X with 100% certainty, so we must do <policy>, and if you don’t agree, you are <genocidal, whatever>” shtick. Every time, it ignores important factors and frequently misrepresents the scope of the studies in play. I think UBI may be an example of this but I am not certain. Another common one these days is “All housing problems are solved by building more” — there is a kernel of a valid point here, and it is still a good thing to build more housing, but as a cure-all doctrine it completely ignores many important and subtle aspects of the housing market’s dynamics.A good example from the recent past is “harm reduction”, which (regardless of its merits) has been an abject failure as a policy, destroyed the social and economic fabric of multiple cities, and invigorated the techno-fascists. It did this not only by misapprehending the nature of harm to the individual subject (read some philosophy!), but also by completely negating the consideration of harm to the society as a whole. What is needed in all these cases is a bit of common sense. Studies have limited scope. They can very rarely establish as “fact” the applicability of a large scale policy intervention using experimental methods that necessarily apply to a tiny sample and therefore cannot become involved in the dynamics of the market or social system as a whole. The same kind of experiment would show that the moon does not affect the tides, because a basketball cannot exert tidal forces on a bathtub.
       
 (DIR) Post #B6JY8o8NcvPXSITyAi by icedquinn@blob.cat
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       @jonmsterling i've heard the "science says x therefore you must y" referred to as scientism and other derogatory things.i think its more than fine to inform policy on what is actually true but the deming/toyota note is you have to actually state some measurable outcome of the policy change and then check it at some later point. the deming/toyota point is a constant stresser of "given world state, what would make the factory better -> 14-30 days later -> do we believe it is currently better or do we roll it back"otherwise whats usually probably happening is sponsors cherry picking the studies that sound good while still basically just dark money arguing in self interest. surprising amount of recent actions are like that ("this would make children safe!!" [no objective criterion on how that would be the case defined])