Terence Tao: "It can become more rational to think and act more boldly"

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/113479000564381543

by bertman • 2 years ago

109 62 2 years ago

mont_tag• 2 years ago

Python code to match the article:

    from statistics import NormalDist

    def var(nd):
        'Value at risk'
        return nd.stdev - nd.mean

    safe = NormalDist(5, 3)
    bold = NormalDist(9, 10)
    shock = NormalDist(-5, 10)

    print('Safe: %s\tBold: %s\tBaseline' % (var(safe), var(bold)))
    print('Safe: %s\tBold: %s\tConstant shock' % (var(safe - 5), var(bold - 5)))
    print('Safe: %s\tBold: %s\tUncorrelated shock' % (var(safe + shock), var(bold + shock)))
    print('Safe: %s\tBold: %s\tCorrelated shock' % (var(safe * 2), var(bold *2)))

biomcgary• 2 years ago

Am I correct to assume people are upvoting this as a possible explanation for the outcome of the US Presidential election?

I.e., if people think that they are in economic doldrums or decline, taking a risk seems better than the status quo?

Voting out the incumbent party seems popular during economic downturns (real or perceived) unless the party clearly inherited the economic crisis AND seems to be addressing the problem energetically (e.g., post-1929 FDR).

hyperpape• 2 years ago

I immediately jumped to a commentary on the impacts of AI, but really it's probably a bit of a Rohrschach test.

brailsafe2• 2 years ago

I had a similar thought recently as someone not in the U.S and who doesn't care that much. If hypothetically prompted, there's a way in which I could say "Well it was more sensible to vote for Trump". If no other context was asked for, I'd probably be thought of as a Trump person, but if it was, I'd explain that I can see why a lot of people preferred him or didn't prefer the other, therefore for them it's sensible, and democracy worked as intended.

immibis2• 2 years ago

It's incredible how, unlike the first Trump presidency, nobody is trying to convince anyone that a Trump presidency will be bad. It's as if all relevant information has already been shared and there is no point in repeating it. Instead they just shift all their money to the stock market and Tesla, and/or leave the state or country.

immibis2• 2 years ago

I don't think this is sufficient to make a Trump vote logical - if you've paid any attention at all to how the Republicans and Democrats operate, the expectation value of a Republican presidency is much lower than a Democrat one, for most people, under any reasonable utility function.

It really is as simple: if you feel bad, vote for the other guy. (Which is also how [REDACTED BY MODERATOR] got elected)

KerrAvon• 2 years ago

Right wing media has been making people feel bad for 25 years straight now. They radicalized an entire generation and made them fear brown people and Democrats. Despite the fact none of it's reality-based. It's not working out too great for the country!

Elon Musk continuously and publicly falling for the dumbest shit imaginable really should be the final nail in the coffin of his reputation.

lapcat17• 2 years ago

I don't think a rational calculus can be applied to voting in a US Presidential election, because it's irrational to expect that your vote could change the outcome of the election. That's never happened, not even in Florida in 2000. You have a better chance of winning the lottery, as evidenced by the fact that people do win the lottery. Voting tends to be more of a symbolic or "ethical" act than an rational act, though one vote has occasionally made a difference in much smaller, local races.

Frankly, voting "strategically" in a US Presidential election makes about as much sense as choosing lottery numbers strategically.

Rhetorical question: if the voters are rational, then how do we always end up with liars, crooks, and incompetents, a choice between the lesser of evils? When was the last time a President, or a Presidential candidate, has been among the best of us? No, elections are exercises in mass irrationality, glorified beauty pageants.

tzs3• 2 years ago

Choosing lottery numbers strategically does make sense, because your expected value depends on both whether or not your number wins and on how many other people picked the same number.

A lot of people pick dates, or numbers that have won recently, or that form geometric patterns on the ticket, or that form interesting sequences, and so on.

Nothing you can do (assuming no bias in how the winning numbers are generated) will affect the chances your ticket wins, but by picking randomly from the set of possible tickets that doesn't include those commonly picked sets of numbers you can decrease the expected number of people you'll have to share the jackpot with.

AnimalMuppet• 2 years ago

I don't think that Obama was a liar, crook, incompetent, or evil. So I think you're a bit over-pessimistic.

The last couple cycles have pretty well fit your opinion, though. I'll give you that.

defrost4• 2 years ago

Rhetorical question: ...

I've not seen any evidence that US voters in the US electoral system have much say in the choices they are given on the ballot.

My major criticism of the US electoral system, as an outsider, isn't of the candidates on ballots but rather the system that has devolved into non representative party politics where very small groups have an outsized weighting on the choices put forward and the system that works against alternative proportional choices.

SideQuark• 2 years ago

I don't think a rational calculus can be applied to voting in a US Presidential election, because it's irrational to expect that your vote could change the outcome of the election.

It’s irrational to think this single reason is the only “rational calculus” that can be applied to one’s voting reasoning. It ignores around a century of game theory results, a huge body of work on voting strategies including a Nobel Prize, and more mathematics and “ rational calculus” applied than one could likely learn over an entire career.

I find it completely irrational to make such an assertion, especially without putting any effort into learning at least some work on the topic.

RRWagner• 2 years ago

Jimmy Carter

creer• 2 years ago

one vote has occasionally made a difference in much smaller, local races.

The good news with this kind of thinking is that it gives more weight to the people who do vote.

Where you are right is that in the US two-party system, both sides seem to feel free to push their luck to whichever degree they feel will give them a 50% chance of winning by a 1% margin. Or something. As long as the two parties are okay with (roughly) winning the presidency 50% of the time, THEN yes the voters' influence is negated. Party A might have had a strong lead, but feels free to take this as an indication that they can push harder in "their" direction bringing the odds back to 50/50. In this case, "your" vote has been purposefully reduced back to randomness. And yet even in this case, not voting simply gives more weight to the other side. One doesn't prevent the other.

popalchemist2• 2 years ago

Logical fallacy here. Every vote matters, as they are made in a blind prisoner's dilemma kind of context. We can have assumptions/expectations about the likely outcomes, some of which would statistically make individual votes "insignificant," but those assumptions may or may not be true (see: this year, duh); therefore every vote is made on the tacit recognition that it MAY matter. And this tacit recognition contributes to the behavior of the masses. It is a category error to think that only some of the votes matter, due to the quantities being what they are on one side or the other.

darepublic2• 2 years ago

Yes and the incumbent strategy on this for round was largely to say "This is fine" with a notable lack of enthusiasm

anonymouskimmer3• 2 years ago

That was the news release strategy, the actual behind the scenes strategies were a bit more enthusiastic based on what I've been reading on Substack.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-14-2024

gmays• 2 years ago

"In times of great uncertainty, the relative value of "playing it safe" is reduced, since - for better or for worse - no option can now reduce risk to truly safe levels. And so, paradoxically, in times of risk and uncertainty, it can actually become more rational to think and act more boldly - or more precisely, to bring one's personal risk tolerance to match the amount of external risk present in the system."

RA_Fisher• 2 years ago

Well obviously Terence isn’t an economist. People don’t minimize risk, we maximize utility.

tacitusarc3• 2 years ago

I think this is a highly inaccurate model, and not useful. By adding risk and reward to determine outcome value, Tao is claiming that outcome value is increased by riskiness. Similarly, high risk situations with low rewards have relatively no downsides (assuming there are no external shocks).

This is nonsensical.

When people talk about high risk situations, they tend to conflate two things: the magnitude of potential downsides and the likelihood of success. To make his model meaningful, Tao would need to incorporate that from the start.

I strongly recommend Fooled By Randomness as primer for thinking about this.

There exists some (often non-Gaussian) curve for describing risk vs reward. I don’t know how you simplify that… Maybe take for number, one for the average negative value outcome and one for the average positive value outcome, and their associated probabilities. And then just add those together? I’m not sure.

sandspar• 2 years ago

You think you can dismiss Terence Tao offhand because you read a pop psychology book?

tacitusarc3• 2 years ago

I do not know who he is beyond this Mastodon post, and I do not believe I can “dismiss” him as a person. But I can recognize the relative usefulness (or lack thereof) of the idea on its merits. Being able to do so, with humility, is an important life skill.

alimw2• 2 years ago

By adding risk and reward to determine outcome value, Tao is claiming that outcome value is increased by riskiness.

Tao talks about minimising "value at risk" which he defines as risk MINUS reward. If you prefer to switch signs and talk about maximising "outcome value" then that would be reward MINUS risk.

tacitusarc3• 2 years ago

“For instance, a "safe" action might have a reward of 5 and a risk of 3, which I would represent as 5±3 in this model, the return would typically range anywhere from 2 to 8 units of net benefit.”

He is literally adding risk and reward to determine the upper net benefit bound.

darepublic2• 2 years ago

I am constrained in my decision making by my subconscious. I have often in life made poor decisions out of strange compulsions driven by mood. Mathematical skills be damned

Terence Tao: "It can become more rational to think and act more boldly"

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