Posted by
glen ropella on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-AP-kerfuffle-tp7583146p7583435.html
Preamble:
Politically, I've been interested in the (false?) dichotomy between
individualism and collectivism. Professionally, I'm forced to be interested in
the dichotomy between fields vs. particles, as well as processes vs. objects. I
think it's interesting to study the boundary between special cases and general
trends. Individualists tend to argue that there is no such thing as "the
average person", that every case is special. Collectivists tend to argue that
large scale patterns do exist and, if harnessed, can lead to economies of scale.
My (slightly facetious) Point:
It seems to me that with populations of _thousands_ or more for most
demographics, we're beyond individualism. We can no longer consider
individualism a pragmatic approach to any domain. Choose any demographic...
from professional gamblers to classic car enthusiasts and you get a
statistically significant population. Sure, there remain methodological
problems like sampling. But as long as the base population (6 billion?) is so
high, aren't most special cases arbitrarily approachable with general trends?
And if so, then do we still need/want things like jury trials? Who cares about
the specific details of the interactions between Zimmerman and Martin? Can't we
just say that Zimmerman is _enough_ like 80% of the upstanding citizens out
there and Martin is _enough_ like 80% of the disenfranchised teens out there to
rule without the jury?
Steve Smith wrote at 07/15/2013 10:28 AM:
> Think of every person you have known (of) who was implicated in a crime (or
> terrorist attack)... do you want to be implicated by association? OK, maybe
> you feel that any investigation into your behaviour because a fellow FRIAM
> member got implicated (doing X, Y, or Z) will be exonerated when it is
> looked into further.
>
> [...] People often speak as if the risk of a few false positives is
> acceptable.
>
> [...] Among other things, we found that we needed to include Uncertainty
> Measures (how many tools or methodologies do you know that actually
> incorporate uncertainty measures and do it well?)
--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Citizens of Sodom, I'm gonna show you the light
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