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My sister studied statistics. Somebody told her his story about having had an accident in a mercedes and how he came out of it unscratched. From now on he would only buy mercedes cars. First question of my sister: how many accidents did you have in a BMW?

Like people's anecdotal perception of recent weather (extremely small sample size, for one) gives them intuition to extrapolate large scale climate trends.

"We never had storms like this 5 years ago, or when I was a kid. Things are getting really bad"

It's not today's weather that gives them that, it's the lifetime of weather experience. If you're talking to someone at least 40 years old then it meets the 3 conditions.

Your parent comment is talking about people who feel an inuition about climate trends. Climate trends happen over long time periods. That violates the immiediate feedback condition.

They remember a bad winter or big storm that hit the town where they grew up. That's not in any way relevant to global climate.

> If you're talking to someone at least 40 years old then it meets the 3 conditions.

If they were like 20,000 years old, they might have some wisdom after going through natural ice ages and other cyclical patterns that take more than several lifetimes to go through. 40 years? When talking about a planet billions of years old with long hot/cold stretches lasting thousands of years each? Polar shifts? I'd wager they don't have enough data gathered during their insignificant blip of a lifetime to make speculative global warming claims.

"The weather is different now than it was 30 years ago" is definitely something that can be judged with some level of confidence by a 40 year old, despite their possible cognitive biases that could confound this judgment. Saying "they can't tell how the weather is changing on a 20,000 year timescale" isn't relevant to that claim.

Sure, but weather isn't climate and fluctuations over a 30 year period of the weather aren't indicative of the trends in climate.

How many times has someone sold their company? Probably not more than a handful. Even people who have n>0 are quite rare. So what does this say about how highly you should weight this person's experience?

All your data points don’t have to come from one person. If the same advice is being repeated by multiple people who have sold a business (e.g. find product market fit), then it becomes valid.

Reading to your kids is good for them

Isn’t there actual science backing this claim up? Regardless, there’s a population of anecdotal evidence.

The other takeaway is that you don't have nearly as much evidence as you think. I mean who wouldn't think that kids who learn to speak early have high GPAs?

I’m surprised that was your reaction. Mine was confusion because it seemed blatantly obvious that such a small signal was nowhere near enough information to make an accurate prediction.

Reading to ones kids certainly correlates with good outcomes for kids but as far as I'm aware it isn't causal. The problem is that as soon as a piece of parenting advice becomes known all conscientious parents will start doing is disproportionately more and it will suddenly become correlated with good outcomes whether it was before or not. I believe that in this specific case, though, most of the correlation is through the nature rather than the nurture pathway.

But obviously reading together is a good in and of itself, regardless of its effects on life outcomes.

"Without patents nobody would bother to invest in inventions" - at least, not as much

Even for that evidence would seem to be required. Patents should indeed act as an incentive to invest in an invention. But how many potential investments in inventions are dissuaded by the countervailing thought that someone must already have a patent on it? ... by the thought that getting a patent is too complicated? ... or too expensive? ... or that the invention is likely to lead to patent litigation?

Off topic but how much does a quant trader like u earn?

"How should I coach the team for the big final?"

why is the "big final" any different from any other game?

because any other game is more frequent than the big final.

Because it is the last game. In any other game you need to pace your players to ensure that they are rested enough by the next game to play well, but in this game you can throw that all away as they will be rested. In the final minutes having a player do something that will break their leg might win and there is no downside to future games (there are of course ethical concerns).

just give everyone amphetamines, problem solved

(there are of course ethical concerns)

Reading to your kids in not good for them? Can you please elaborate?

The point of the comment you’re responding to is that we don’t have very much evidence even for things that make intuitive sense to us.

Parent is not saying reading to your kids isn’t good, he’s listing things that many people find intuitive even though they might only have a few (if any) data points on which to base their conclusion.

the "reading to your kids is good" statement is problematic because what is "good"? Basically, if reading to your kids isn't harming them, and they enjoy it, it's "good". Perhaps people are assuming that by "good" they mean, your kid will have superior intelligence or emotional development or something, but that's a lot more specific than "good". By challenging the phrase, "reading to your kids is good" so vaguely, the only alternative would be that reading to your kids is bad. And I think that particular statement is one that hits the "intuitive" spot a lot more broadly. I'm going to guess if I googled "reading to your kids is harmful" I'm going to not find much. (googles) yup, all the hits are about research finding positive benefits of reading to kids.

Your question and tone is falling into exactly the trap that OP is talking about. The point is not that these specific ideas are _wrong_, the point is that it's a lot more complicated than whether some specific thing is "right" or "wrong." Your intuition will generally make you feel good if you just let it completely dominate your belief system with the "easy" answer, like "of course reading to your kids is good for them." It's hard to challenge your intuition, but it's necessary to base it on real data/evidence if you want to develop your intuition to a point where it actually has utility in evaluating _new_ scenarios based on past experience.

This is why I respect psychologists who test ideas most people consider common sense, even if the results confirm the common sense.

It's like RSVPing to your sister's wedding: it seems obvious, but making it official helps the rest of the planning.