Comment by freshhawk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by freshhawk | Hacker News Reader

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"In the absence of a quantitative engineering method with which to evaluate either approach, isn't it a purely personal and political choice?"

No.

Here's one idea: perhaps everyone's opinion is not equal on every subject. Perhaps by looking at the opinions of respected accomplished people who have garnered the respect of other respected accomplished people you can being to see who's opinion should get more weight. This is the process that came up with the very ideas of things like "engineering" and "quantitative".

I know we love the young upstarts disrupt the old way of thinking meme. That's why you framed it this in that way with the folks vs the traditionalists. You might want to remember that historically the young upstarts have been wrong 99% of the time. That's why it's news when they are right.

"One man's best practice is another man's anti-pattern"

And in the vast majority of cases, when you ask that question about a specific problem: One of those men is wrong. Even if they're both smart. But how to tell? If a huge number of other smart and experienced people have been convinced by one of them ... well I'd go with that guy. You won't be right all the time but it's the best system we've come up with so far for things that don't conform to double blind placebo controlled studies or mathematical proofs. It literally is the best way to be right most often.

>And in the vast majority of cases, when you ask that question about a specific problem: One of those men is wrong. Even if they're both smart. But how to tell? If a huge number of other smart and experienced people have been convinced by one of them ... well I'd go with that guy. You won't be right all the time but it's the best system we've come up with so far for things that don't conform to double blind placebo controlled studies or mathematical proofs. It literally is the best way to be right most often.

This reminds me a lot of abstraction in software systems. For 95% of cases, the abstractions make things quicker in the end. For those 5% of edge cases which the abstractions don't cover properly, you spend inordinate amounts of time trying to get things to fit. The bigger point here is that trying to white-wash anything with a particular methodology is both the right and wrong thing to do. It's right because most of the time it will work, it's wrong because when it doesn't work, you will have a hell of a time dealing with it.

The best system we have come up with so far is actually to take things on a case-by-case basis instead of trying to solve everything in one fell swoop. The problem is that one must be mindful as consistently as possible to achieve this. Most people are not capable of keeping that line of focus for an hour, let alone a day or their whole lives. Funnily enough, the solution to this is meditation, not a set of best practices or expert opinions.

I agree, but you're looking at this at a lower level of abstraction than I was. As you go from case to case you need some kind of methodology or general principles or best practices to guide you, you don't start from "I think therefore I am" for every problem.

"If a huge number of other smart and experienced people have been convinced by one of them ... well I'd go with that guy"

This will answer the question, "who is best at arguing their point". It does not reliably answer, "whose point is correct?"

And yet, somehow we've created science and a pretty large civilization by being able to argue points rationally and logically and not always being convinced solely by rhetoric. So my counterpoint to your "it does not reliably answer..." is the fact that we are having this argument on the fucking internet.

That's why this system relies on convincing smart, educated people and not just people in general. The need for intellectual discourse to avoid this exact problem and what that looks like is taught as part of being educated.

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