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Judge (Tech) Advice By Results
First, take a step back and imagine trying to come up with good advice in an area where results are easy to measure, like weight loss. (For the sake of argument, assume the advice recipients are genuinely medically obese people who can benefit from safe weight loss, not anorexics.) Suppose you were trying to measure the effects of two pieces of weight-loss advice, say, Program 1 and Program 2. You would think the most straightforward way to measure the effectiveness of the programs would be to divide a group of 100 volunteers randomly into two groups of 50, then have Group 1 follow Program 1, and have Group 2 follow Program 2 (with some type of monitoring for compliance). At the end of some time period, you simply measure which group has lost more weight (up to some healthy maximum threshold), and the program they were following, is the better program. What could be simpler than that? Isn't that the best, most obvious way to compare the two programs?
Actually no. I would say that's a terrible way to measure the two programs' effectiveness, under almost any reasonable set of assumptions about how the programs will be applied in the real world.
First of all, it's trivially easy to devise a program that would score really well under this system -- exercise for an hour and a half total every day, while eating nothing but fruits and vegetables and lean meats (or whatever would be considered a "perfect" diet by people who follow fanatically healthy eating habits -- I have no idea, because I don't). On the other hand, this by itself is not a valid reason to reject this measurement, because just because it's easy to score well under a particular measurement system, doesn't mean the measurement is not valid.
The real problem with this metric is that it has no bearing on what good it would do to give this advice to people in the real world, because in the case of the work-out-and-eat-kale gospel, most people are not going to follow it. So consider an alternative metric: Take 100 volunteers, divide them randomly into two groups, tell Group 1 about Program 1, and tell Group 2 about Program 2. That's it -- but you have no power to force them to actually follow the advice. All you know is that they were all drawn from a pool of volunteers who were sincerely interested in losing weight, but if you make the advice too complicated, they'll tune out, or if you make the advice too hard to follow, they'll lose motivation. And then at the end of some time period, you check in and see which group has lost more weight. You could call this "whole-audience based results" (I promise I'm not trying to coin a neologism, but let's call it WABR), because you're looking at the results achieved by everyone who heard the advice, not just the people who were deemed to have "followed" the advice correctly. (The previously rejected metric, looking only at the results of people who are judged to have followed the advice correctly, could be called Compliance-Based Results or CBR).
Consider that if a fitness fanatic gives weight-loss advice to one particular person, who either doesn't follow it perfectly or quits after a short period, the advice-giver can always claim that the advice was great, the recipient just didn't "do it right". But if you're giving your advice to 50 people in Group 1, and someone else is giving different advice to 50 people in Group 2, the samples are large enough that the proportion of unmotivated people is going to be about the same in each group -- so if Group 2 loses more weight, you probably can't use the excuse that you got stuck with all the unmotivated losers in Group 1. The advice that Group 2 must have worked better because it struck some sort of balance between effectiveness and ease of compliance.
Under this metric, it's not as easy to come up with a "program" that would score well. Simply telling people "Just eat less and exercise more," for example, would obviously score terribly under this metric, since (1) "less" and "more" are not defined precisely and (2) most people in the target audience have heard this advice before anyway. You would have to think carefully about what kinds of cooking and diet advice are easy to follow and fairly enjoyable, or what kind of exercise advice would fit into the average person's lifestyle. If someone objects that "No one piece of advice works for everyone" -- fair enough, so you could even design a program that segments your target audience: "If you have lots of time on your hands but not a lot of money for things like fresh produce, do A, B and C. Otherwise, if you have a very busy schedule but you can afford to buy whatever you want, do X, Y, and Z." You could nonetheless combine all that "if-then-else" advice into a single program and call it Program 1 -- as long as the metric for the success of Program 1 is to give it to 50 volunteers who are interested in losing weight, and track how much weight they actually use, without getting into arguments about whether they "really followed" the program or not.
If Michelle Obama made me her anti-obesity czar, that's more or less what I would do:
- Recruit a large number of test volunteers who are interested in losing weight.
- Recruit some (much smaller) number of doctors, nutritionists, and general fitness blowhards who are interested in giving people advice about losing weight.
- Each advice-giver is allowed to submit a set of instructions on how to lose weight.
- The volunteer pool is randomly divided into groups, and each group is assigned one of the submitted methods (probably after a panel of doctors pre-screened the methods for medical safety; otherwise, the winning method would probably end up being something involving heroin). That method is distributed to everyone in the volunteer group, but nobody will monitor them for compliance.
- Check back in with each volunteer pool at the end of some time period. Whichever volunteer group has lost the most weight, the person who submitted the advice that was given to that group, gets a million dollars, and the glory that is rained down upon them as their winning advice is promoted all the world.
No, really, seriously. If you want to reduce obesity rates in the country, shouldn't the ideal solution be something WABR-based, very close to this? It does no good to come up with a piece of advice that works well under CBR -- where you can force people to follow the program (or exclude them from the results if they don't) -- because that doesn't predict how the advice will work when distributed to the population at large, where of course you can't force people to follow the program. On the other hand, if the advice works reasonably well for a group of volunteers whose compliance is entirely up to them, then that should be a better predictor of how well it would work on a larger audience.
(Of course, someone might object that the true metric of healthy weight-loss advice is not how much weight you've lost after several months, but whether you've made a permanent lifestyle change that keeps it off even several years later. In that case you would just make that the new prize-winning criterion -- which group has lost and kept the most weight off three years down the road -- but still sticking to the WABR principle.)
Another advantage of WABR is that it avoids squabbling over whether a person "really" followed the advice, if they failed to achieve the desired result. If an advice-giver tells you to "eat less and exercise more", and you eat a little less and exercise a little more but fail to achieve any noticeable changes, it's highly unlikely that the advice-giver is going to concede their advice didn't work, even if you did follow it literally. On the other hand, no matter how much less you eat or how much more you exercise, if it doesn't work, the advice-giver can always say that you didn't reduce your calories or exercise enough -- which makes the advice unfalsifiable, because there's no circumstance under which the advice-giver would have to admit they were wrong. This also applies to advice that's extremely difficult to follow, such as "Eliminate all sugar from your diet" -- if the advice fails, it would be easy for the advice-giver to find ways that the advice recipient deviated from the program (if they ate fruits -- which most doctors recommend doing -- does fructose count?). WABR means that you don't have to adjudicate who actually followed the advice, because the results are collected from everyone who heard the advice.
Now, back to tech. I've deliberately avoided dwelling on technical examples, because after reading through the weight loss example, you can probably generalize this pretty easily. If Bob tells you to keep your new laptop virus-free by ditching Windows and all of your programs and switching to Linux, and Alice tells you to keep your new laptop virus-free by installing a free anti-virus program, then in a WABR test, I'll bet Alice's group would be left with fewer virus infections at the end of the year than Bob's group, for the simple reason that most people can't or won't follow Bob's advice. I'd even concede that the small number of people who do switch to Linux might have fewer viruses to deal with, but I'd say it's irrelevant. By any reasonable definition, Alice's advice is more helpful, or, simply put, better.
When I wrote "4 Tips For Your New Laptop" for Slashdot last Christmas, I think I was subconsciously using WABR as a metric for how well the advice would work for people. Because if you sincerely want the advice to be helpful (and I did), shouldn't the definition of success be the average benefit across all the people who read or attempt to follow the advice? Rather than a piece of advice that has a 100% success rate among readers who can follow it, but only 5% of them can?
One user posted this comment in response to the article:
First, syncing to cloud is not backup. Second, being at the mercy of a provider doesn't strike me as a good idea in long-term.
Better invest in a NAS. A 2-bay Synology would suffice. 2 4TB drives in Mirrored Raid work great. WD has the "red" line of drives specifically made and tested for NAS storage. They are not as fast but run cool, silent, no vibrations.
Most NAS units run on linux so you can easily add syncing, versioning, "personal cloud", maybe use to play movies on smart TVs via DLNA and so on.
Finally, from time to time do proper backups. For home use, proper backup means burning data on DVD/BD - on 2 separate discs.
OK. Let's suppose every word in that comment is correct. Now suppose we gave 50 people the advice from my original article, and 50 other people the advice I just quoted, but we have no power to actually force either group to follow the advice in either case. Which group do you think would have fewer computer catastrophes over the course of the year? (Yes, of course a lot of people would drop out of following the quoted advice because they didn't know what the guy was talking about, but imagine a version that had each sentence fleshed out in more detail explaining the acronyms and describing what the hardware costs. I still think my simpler advice would win.) I don't mean to pick on that guy in particular. Most computing advice out there would not score very well under WABR.
Similarly, when I wrote about how to make your first trip to Burning Man easier, it was partly in response to all the veterans who had given me CBR-based advice, like, "Build a hexayurt to sleep in." Of course, if you look only at a sample of people who actually did build a hexayurt at Burning Man, most of them probably had a great experience there. But if your advice is to tell people to build a hexayurt, only a small proportion of them will try it (and if they try and fail, you can claim that they didn't actually "follow your advice"!). The advice I wrote was to buy a tent and stake it down, because I think that if you tell 50 people to do that, and tell another group of 50 people to build a hexayurt, the people that you tell to buy a tent are on average more likely to have a good experience. (Although it wouldn't be a huge difference, because most people that you tell to build a hexayurt, will eventually figure out that you were fucking with them and will buy a tent anyway.)
Of course, as I said in a previous article about the sorry state of cooking instructions on the Internet (scroll down to the part about jalapeno poppers), the real reason most directions on the Internet suck, is because they were written to grab search engine traffic. That just requires some keywords to appear in the title of the page and in multiple spots in the body content, and has nothing to do with whether the directions work. So nothing I say is going to change the minds of people who are farming "how-to" content for some extra clicks.
I'm more concerned about people who are supposedly trying to be helpful, but revert to advice that sounds as if it would do well under CBR but badly under WABR. Consider -- if your goal in giving the advice is, very generally, to bring the greatest benefit to the average person hearing it, then WABR should be your metric for success, shouldn't it? Obviously I'm not suggesting that it's usually practical to test one piece of advice against another by recruiting 100 volunteers, dividing them into two groups of 50, etc. I'm saying that in cases where it's instinctively very likely that one piece of advice would do much better under WABR than another, then that's the advice you should give to people -- a fact that is lost on the leet hax0rs who think they're being useful by saying things like "Dump Windows and install Linux."
And it's not merely that advice which scores poorly under WABR is unhelpful. WABR is the measurement by which a person's advice is helpful to other people, so if a person is giving advice that they can't possibly sincerely believe would score well by that metric, it comes across as caring more about something other than being helpful. Perhaps the advice-giver wants to sound smart, or simply wants to avoid the possibility of having to admit they were wrong (if you make your advice hard to follow, that reduces the chance of somebody actually climbing that mountain and then pointing out to you if your suggestion didn't work). So it's not just that the advice-giver is being unhelpful, it's that they're being a dick.
For a long time, I would hear pieces of tech advice that I knew would probably give a good result if I followed them to the letter (i.e. would do well under CBR), but something would nag at me, not only making me think that I probably would not end up with a good result, but making me resent the advice-giver for some reason that I couldn't precisely define. Now, I think, I've precisely defined it: I should have told them, "If you gave this advice to 50 people, and some other comparable advice to another similar group of 50 people, and if we measured the results by looking at everybody in each group without getting into arguments over whether they 'properly followed' the advice or not, you must be aware that the advice you just gave me would score worse than any number of alternatives that you could have supplied with just a little more effort." Unfortunately that's not very compact.
So, if someone asks you for general technical guidance, I submit you will be doing them a favor if you keep WABR in mind. I would also advocate for it as a way to settle disputes over which of two pieces of third-party advice is actually "better".
According to my own rule, though, I'm not sure how many people reading this will actually keep this approach in mind next time they're giving technical advice. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine an alternative exhortation that would achieve a better result.
Too long, didn't read.
No sig today...
don't go tecky on someone who's doesn't understand what the word computer means. Ask them some basic questions on their knowledge on the subject and go from there. Adapt to their knowledge and understanding. If they learn slow, you need to teach them slow. If they learn like sponges...teach them fast and strong.
How quickly it gets to the point.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Someone will ask a question. This will illicit:
10 responses from people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about
3 responses from people trying to sell some solution that probably won't even work
5 joke responses
8 responses along the lines of "You're stupid to be asking this question."
1 response that actually answers the question and provides useful information--this response is buried somewhere under all the responses above.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
If I wanted to read the article, I wouldn't have come to Slashdot.
I must admit, I couldn't make it through the whole thing. I made it about halfway before I started falling asleep, but, I got passed the part that I'm commenting on. TFS goes on about whether people were motivated, or whether they implemented it correctly, etc, etc. and COMPLETELY misses the fact that everyone's chemistry is diverse and will respond differently. That is something that is never accounted for and before you solve that, none of the other stuff he talks about even matters.
Why does this simplistic buffoon keeping writing this drivel, and why on earth can't we have a filter for it. This cringe-worthy nonsense belongs on an inaccessible geocities site.
Dude you lost me after the 992nd word....
I second this motion. If you can't even get that right, why should I bother to read yet another 700 paragraphs about your personal obsession with Burning Man?
Captcha: manure
You are not going to change human nature, most of us are lazy and will choose convenience over effectiveness. Also, you have a limited number of hours in a day, and only so many years to live. Simple changes, that do not inconvenience too much, and do not take too much time out of your schedule are much more likely to be effective, than more profound but nominally more effective changes.
breeded?
You could do a lot worse than just listening to whatever Bonehead Huffaton says, and doing the opposite.
Bennett Haselton is a Burning Man shill.
And he needs to learn to open a WordPress account.
Does advice that crosses the TLDR threshold score well with CBR but poorly with WABR? From TFA, [brackets added]:
> (if you make your advice hard to follow [read], that reduces the chance of somebody actually climbing that mountain [reading it]
>and then pointing out to you if your suggestion didn't work). So it's not just that the advice-giver is being unhelpful, it's that they're being a dick.
what is the TLDR threshold anyway? I'd love to see a quantification of the amount of information that can fit inside it
who's moderating the meta-moderators?
1: Don't ramble so much that your audience stops caring about your recommended solution before you get to it.
2: Trim out all of the extraneous parts.
3: Give appropriate responses for your audience, their motivations and capabilities.
and maybe:
4: Use lists instead of long paragraphs so maybe we can identify which parts are important.
(yes, #1 is likely just a specialization of #2 ... but did you see that horrible post?)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Advice is much easier to give than to follow.
What happened to the one question per post rule? That should apply to the OP too.
... the metric by which ...(I)... usually judge tech advice"
I am only going to answer one of the questions. "
I judge tech advice (and most advice) by asking if the person giving the advice has done it before. If I am trying to set up a webserver, I will take the advice of someone who sets them up for a living over someone who has just read the manual. There is little substitute for practical hands-on experience.
That goes for a lot of other things in life too, skydiving, race car driving, investing, dating, scuba diving. fire walking.
;-)
Give actual advice that mitigates the most serious threats with the least posssible effort, in order to seek the widest possible compliance. Giving "effective but not practical" advice is unlikely to be helpful.
The real answer is that the person giving advice needs to be experienced both with tech and with customer interaction. Advice like "install Chrome, because it keeps your plugins up to date and mitigates the most serious flaws with no user interaction" is helpful. "Abandon windows for linux" is not helpful, nor is it helpful to think that you can give sufficient advice to make the asker an expert in technology.
In the example given, the proper answer of "what to do with new laptop" would have been:
1) Get Crashplan. It has sane defaults, and a cheap "backup to cloud" that requires no configuration and has encryption built in. Its literally set-it-and-forget-it.
2) Get Avast AV. Its free, and has been well regarded for many years.
3) Use Google docs, or Sky Drive. Pick one, and stick with it. It is recommended to pick one "ecosystem" in the cloud, and stick with it. If you go Google, you probably want an android as well. If you go Sky Drive, you probably want WinPhone. If you want iDevices, just get a Mac because iTunes sucks on windows and you dont want "worlds colliding" (Seinfield had it right!).
4) Use Chrome. It still has the best auto-update scheme out there and is still regarded as one of the most secure browsers; using it generally removes the biggest malware vectors (out of date java / flash / adobe). If you truly care about privacy concerns, they can be addressed in the settings menu: Google it.
Pretty simple stuff, avoids common pitfalls of being a relentless fanboy, and addresses the most pressing concerns users will face.
"WABR" and "CBR" are different metrics and they can support to reason about different questions. While CBR allows you to compare two applied advises by their effectiveness, the WABR metrics answers to ability of people to apply one of the two advises. For example, the given Linux vs. Windows+virus scanner comparison, has two different solutions. As it is easier to apply the virus scanner advice, more people will be able to apply it. So if your goal is to reduce virus infections in general, it might be the solution which provides better results in shorter time. However, the other solution has the higher potential to get rid of problem after all. The second solution is more radical, but in the end (when implemented) the result is better.
In an engineering context you would go for the better implementation advice even if it is more expensive (more learning time, more money etc.) to switch technology. This is especially true in risky environments. However, for average people this might not be the selected route. In the end they use the easier path and end up with more complex solutions, which do not fully achieve what they need, but they are even more unwilling to change because it was so complicated to get there. So if you want to do them a favor, give them the more complicated advice and support them to get there.
BTW: The example with "eat less, exercise more" is flawed, as to be measurable to must specify limits. It is like suggesting to use more virus checkers or update more often. Furthermore, eating and living habits are hard to change as you have to change behavioral patterns. In such cases small steps, reflecting behavior patterns and avoiding situations which cause those pattern to be triggered is more helpful. In technology it is merely to help them to be brave to do the transition to a new system. They do not really have to learn new behavior.
...between "easy" and "good".
On the other hand, it's hard to imagine an alternative exhortation that would achieve a better result.
Translation: Because I can't think of a better way, I must be right?!
I actually read the whole thing because I'm killing time waiting for something. I think the conclusion is mistaken, though it does have a kernel of a good idea in it. Taken strictly, his sugggestion is dangerous.
It may be that more people will follow the advice of "wear your seatbelt while you text and drive" than "don't text and drive" . Still, the former is bad advice.
Both measures are actually important - what gets the best results (best practice) AND what's most likely to be followed. In the example of avoiding viruses, it would be false to teach that running Avast is the best security from viruses. Running FreeBSD is several orders of magnitude more secure from viruses. The best advice, therefore, acknowledges that fact:
For security-sensitive systems, consider a secure OS such as FreeBSD or Linux. (The national security agency uses Linux for their top-secret systems). If you decide security isn't important enough to leave Windows, then AT LEAST run up-to-date antivirus. For Windows users, we recommend the following anti-virus.
That, I think, is the best advice. In security, I regularly encounter people who have been confused, been taught the "at a minimum, do this" in a way that lead them to believe that minimum is the best that can be done.
To address the weight loss analogy, the best advice would consider both, as follows:
Try to exercise 1-10 hours per week. A morning jog EVERY morning is great. At minimum, park in the back of the parking lot at work and walk two minutes to the door.
Since when has Slashdot of all places become accepting of general mediocrity over personal excellence?
" Perhaps the advice-giver wants to sound smart, or simply wants to avoid the possiblity of having to admit they were wrong (if you make your advice hard to follow, that reduces the chance of somebody actually climbing that mountain and then pointing out to you if your suggestion didn't work). So it's not just that the advice-giver is being unhelpful, it's that they're being a dick."
Well, I'm glad the author cares about the overall performance of his advice across 'everyone'. Personally, when receiving advice, I prefer searching out and researching all reasonable options and choosing the best one for me rather than taking generic advice applicable to a wide range of people. And when I give advice I try to do it in such a way that leaves the advice-taker able to evaluate the options and take the best option for them, rather than giving them advice that may help "anyone" a little bit but won't help them in particular a whole lot. If the advice-seeker doesn't have the interest to look at the options and make a choice that's their problem.
ha, ha, breeded...ha, haha, ha, breeded...
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Some people don't like to be responsible for giving advice that is inadequate, even if it could arguably give better results under WABR.
Personally, I try to give both kinds of advice. Here's how to really do it correctly, and here's what you can do that's easier.
The thing is, if you never tell people the "right way to do it" (even if it's hard), then they're not likely to do it that way even if they have the desire and ability.
I say this as someone who did pick up Linux largely because I read on the Internet that it was a better way to do things. (And back at that point in my life, I had hundreds of hours available to spend picking up the required knowledge.)
And then there are some things that are a matter of principal. For example, I will never tell you that it's OK to use mysql_real_escape_string in your PHP code, even if I think you're more likely to follow that advice than the "real" advice, which is use parameterized queries. Sometimes you need to send a message that lesser standards are just not acceptable.
Economists and doctors have been using the WABR concept for many years now. They call it judging results by "intention to treat". So if 100 people are offered a training program or medicine, and only 90 complete the course of "treatment", the base for the percentage successes is 100, not 90. This is a pretty important idea when judging any experimental treatment on humans who can decline after enrolling. It wasn't so much a problem when the treatment was fertilizer on a field.
It's absolutely identical to the Gathering of the Juggalos, but hugely more pretentious.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
It reminds me of the "coffee is for closers" scene in Glengary, Glen Ross.
There you have Alec Baldwin, yelling and insulting salesmen, telling them they are crap and they should only get paid for results. That companies hire people to do things, not to 'try' and fail, and they should get no 'good' leads' and no coffee because they are incompetent closers.
The problem is he himself is NOT doing a job. Alec Baldwin - despite his claim to be rich and successful - may or may not be telling the truth, but his obnoxious, insulting manner is designed to drive a point home to the movie viewers, NOT to actually do the job he was supposed to be doing - getting the salesmen to be better at their job.
Because both salesmen and motivational speakers (Alec's current job) 'catch more flies with honey'. Being nice AFFECTS how well you sell, and how well you motivate.
The media is the message, and his media sucked.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
In recent years at least, this is precisely the method they have used to develop CPR training for the general public. Even if a more complicated routine would result in a better chance of survival in any given case, they have to make the rules simple enough that people can remember and apply them years later and under stress. This increases the statistical survival rate overall, which is exactly the point.
But agree with everyone else, you could have explained this to a mildly intelligent person in about 1/4 of the words.
Prime example is 'be yourself'. Most people who are still dating don't know who they are. Saying be yourself is not in any way helpful. The proper way to word that bit of advice is do not try to be something you are not. The advice is at hear the same, but the second way is fundamentally better advice because it is far more likely to be understood and used.
Another example from the dating world is "Be confident". That is about the worst possible advice possible, because 1) confidence, like height, weight, your bank account, etc. is something not under your direct, immediate control. You can't decided to be confident anymore than you can decide to be tall, thin, or wealthy. Yes, with years of hard work, you can become those things (tall requires HGH injections before your bones close - but it still takes years of work). and also 2) Most women are incredibly bad at detecting confidence, often mistaking disinterest, a slight alcohol buzz, practiced smoothness, ignorance or mere blind chance for confidence. Here, the proper advice is not to 'be confident', but instead practice with girls you don't want to date before you ask the girl you want to date out. That method helps a lot with the behaviors that women mistake for a lack of confidence.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
To provide a better answer also requires you to know more information about the one who is asking. For instance the ideal answer to "What's the best way to backup my computer?" would be a lot different for grandma than Bill Gates, tech nerd, etc.
First off, kudos for sharing your codification of a useful and rational approach to evaluating advice, which I think is extensible to plenty of other things (don't buy your parents an extremely complicated DVR, don't buy your kid a Standard Transmission if you're not planning on teaching them how to use it, you probably don't need another infomercial kitchen appliance, etc.). But you missed a very important part of giving advice: don't treat your audience poorly! For example, claiming that your version of good advice is "by definition" the better advice, or that those giving other advice are being both unhelpful and dicks. Clearly, the difference between your idea put forth here and what you're railing against, is the difference between "best effect on average for a random sample" and "best possible effect for an individual," which does not invalidate the "best possible effect" being the best advice, because - and this is the key that other commentators have hit upon already - your advice must be judged based on who it's being given to! In general, a /. audience will be more likely to take more complicated yet ultimately more effective tech advice than the general population, for example.
So I put forth that your entry here needs a simple revision as follows; WABR should use a sufficiently-large sample size of people _similar to the one(s) being given the advice_, and when performing mental WABR estimations, remember that you may potentially need some explicit weighting based on how important SOME positive effect for many is, compared to how important THE LARGEST positive effect for a few is. The computer antivirus example is a good one where cutting back on most viruses for most people is probably more important than avoiding almost all the viruses for a few people, while in a real-world virus advice comparison between (A) Avoid crowds and sick people when you can, OK?, or (B) Go get vaccinated for stuff, dummy!, the less-likely-to-be-followed advice may still be the best to give, due to herd immunity effects.
Then there are some lesser considerations of encouraging both WABR and CBR advice-sharing, things like 1) being given both a piece of difficult advice and a piece of easier advice, makes the easier advice more likely to be followed because it seems much more achievable than when presented on its own (thus increasing the value of the typical WABR advice by acknowledging CBR advice), 2) the fact that giving CBR advice will be a positive effect for some people whether or not they're already following WABR advice because they will see its value immediately, 3) CBR advice gives people room to grow if they later decide that WABR advicewas not enough.
Which makes me wonder if we're discussing strategy for the wrong person here... maybe it's the advice _seeker_ who needs a new strategy: to ask advice of many people until they have a sufficiently-diverse set of options and frequency distributions for those options, before following any advice.
because bennett has found a way to game the submission stage where articles enter.
it's shit.
it's like original content for slashdot. it's shit, barely on topic and offers really nothing new.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Who the fuck is Bennett Haselton and why should a give a single shit about what he says?
-Styopa
This principle is already understood in the medical clinical trials community. Your WABR neologicism is their "intent to treat" criterion. The name is a bit mysterious but the idea is if you intend to treat them (that is, if they are assigned to the treatment group), then they count as treated regardless of how well they comply with the treatment regimen. Exactly what you are saying.
Bennett seems to be (yet) another Jon Katz...
So I totally agree with OP's point about WABR, but I think applying it to the national obesity problem is missing the point. Sure, if you tested a bunch of pieces of advice according to the methodology advocated, you'd find some advice would be better than other. There's a problem in that the obese volunteers who took part as subjects would be a biased sample of the needing-to-lose-weight population, because they would (presumably) be people who had some interest in losing weight. So the results you got in the experiment wouldn't be the same as, and would probably over-estimate the effect. But the BIG problem is that the methodology begs the question: is giving people advice--even the best possible advice--on how to lose weight an effective way to get people to lose weight? Almost certainly not. People's individual behaviour, to they extent they can modify it, is at best a minor cause of the obesity epidemic. The big problems are structural: the way agriculture is subsidized, the built form of our settlements, the education system, the entertainment-advertising complex, etc. The best advice does nothing to address these myriad, complex, deep-rooted causes.
I think a lot of this comes down to looking at the engineering aspects of tech advice:
* Is it effective? Will it solve the problem at hand? Does it meet the unstated requirements, which usually include e.g. the continued functioning of my laptop for the tasks which I already use it for?
* Is it economical? Will the cost in money and time be appropriate?
* Is it reliable? Is the advisee likely to be able to perform the installation correctly? Does it require ongoing action on the part of the user? If so, is it a reactive action (e.g. response to nagging), or are they required to take the initiative? How tolerant is it of occasional or frequent missed actions?
If I sold you a car that required flipping a switch under the dash every time you started the car in order for the brakes to work, I'd be a homicidal idiot. If it requires you to flip a switch near your fingers for the wipers to work when you need them, it's a normal car. Under the CBR definition both are reasonable designs; under WABR only the second one is.
We don't attribute moral values to the ability or inability of machines to do something reliably, so why is the inability of people to do certain tasks reliably "laziness", rather than a design parameter?
I'd phrase it like this:
On the whole however I think the idea is spot on. Could do with some <h1> and <h2> lines to help the TL;DR crowd.
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
Halfway through the dieting example it became clear that the author is completely unaware of multiple regression techniques, instrumental variables, or bayesian analysis, let alone experiment design. One would expect at least a cursory literature search (or even google) before writing so much about what is effectively a solved problem. He probably invents his own sort methodologies, revolutionizes page ranking algorithms, and rolls his own cryptographic hashes too.
Anybody who has tried to put a bog-standard user on Free Software Only laptops (Yeelong or X60 exclusively) with only Free Software and no proprietary.... knows that the user runs screaming back to the motherly proprietary vendors with reinforced assurance that the FSF are nuts. And we all lose.
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
Wow, that's incredibly mean.
To Jon Katz.
n/t
You've come up with a system of deciding what is "good" advices based on whether people actually follow it rather than whether or not following it is actually "effective." Using your own diet / exercise example, when someone asks for diet and exercise advice, why not tell them to drink a lot of coffee and enjoy the occasional cigarette? The appetite suppressing qualities might actually get the job done for the vast majority of people who aren't actually willing to change their diet and exercise habits. I think you've missed the point of advice.
If someone asks "how can I stay in shape?" the problem with any advice is not the adviser, it's the question. "How / Can I lose 50 lbs in 3 months?" is a very different question from "how can I maintain a healthy body-weight given that I only have a few spare hours a week and don't like the gym." Similarly, "how can I have a secure computer" is not a very useful technical question. "What operating system should I use for my web-server, given the availability of technical talent?" is a good one. So is "how can I make it easier for my mom to avoid viruses without confusing or frustrating her?"
If your goal is to improve the quality of advice you are receiving, especially in technical circles, you'll have a much better time of it by improving the questions you ask with specific details than in trying to convince people to tell you to do what you are already going to do anyway. Especially since the latter usually indicates that your real purpose is to find yet another way to blame other people for the problems you've created for yourself.
"What advice would you give someone who just bought a new laptop? What would you tell someone about how to secure their webserver against attacks? For that matter, how would you tell someone to prepare for their first year at Burning Man?
Lotion. Lots of it.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
can we please stop posting this asshole's diarrhea?
Bennett; take beta with you.
Economists and doctors have been using the WABR concept for many years now. They call it judging results by "intention to treat". So if 100 people are offered a training program or medicine, and only 90 complete the course of "treatment", the base for the percentage successes is 100, not 90. This is a pretty important idea when judging any experimental treatment on humans who can decline after enrolling. It wasn't so much a problem when the treatment was fertilizer on a field.
Thank you. I was going to post this. His entire premise about the results being skewed by people dropping out of a study is incorrect. If the one program of bland diet and strenuous exercise worked well, but 90% of the participants dropped out because they hated it then that program's standard ITT stats would reflect this (and it would be scored lower than a more moderate program that had fewer dropouts).
It was at this point I stopped reading the submitter's premise. This counts as irony, right? Giving advice about how to give advice, but the metaadvice is so poorly constructed that it's ineffective...
Writing is terrible as others have mentioned..... I won't rehash, but how could you get anyone to agree when they can't maintain interest.
Also, the premise is poor - at least how I understood it - "Advice is only good if it is followed" ?? People don't do simple things, so the problem is not the advice, it is the inherent laziness or not caring of most people.
Using your example - advice to quit smoking is not good as people still smoke. Sorry, the advice is still valid, but for some reason people feel that it doesn't apply to them. Tech is only different because advice can be simple or overly complex. The overly complex may be valid in some cases - but because people don't do it, doesn't make it bad advice.
You're just a mean, spiteful, jealous person, through and through.
You must be a blast during meetings. I bet people fall over themselves to avoid even talking to you. That's not called "being right," it's called "being a bitch." I apologize for that, but congratulations: you've earned it. Been doing the online thing way longer than you have, and that's the first time I've ever stooped to that level. Or, if we're being honest, to *your* level.
You're not merely content to be mean-spirited, though -- you have to be *better*. I'm hopeful you really are female; makes it statistically less likely your psychopathic behavior will turn to violence.
I've never actually seen him say something worthwhile, and often what he says is painfully stupid. I don't know what the gimmick is, but it's been sort of a long-running sore point for ages. He's the one thing Slashdot has that's more annoying than the obvious insertions from the DICE people.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
That's true, you did point out you can put two pieces of advice together, as we did in the "if security is a high priority" scenario.
I guess I'm taking it a little further. WABR, measuring _effectiveness_, is certainly a valid and important way of measuring how "good" a suggestion is. I'm thinking also that correctness, accuracy, is also an important measure of goodness, separate from it's part in effectiveness.
Some correct, accurate advice could be nearly impossible to follow, so it might have no effect on WABR or even a negative effect.
However, especially in the realm of technology, what's almost impossible today may simple to do next week.
Similarly, what's very difficult in the given scenario maybe easy to do in a similar scenario. Therefore giving someone an accurate mental picture has goodness that's not measured with WABR.
In the weight-loss scenario, a diet book written in 1983* wouldn't mention the dangers of sacharrin if they were following WABR. However, in 1985, Nutrasweet showed up. The "ineffective" advice to limit one's consumption of sacharrin would suddenly become effective two years _after_ it was given.
* I don't know what year Nutrasweet hit the mass market, but you get the point.
The headline was confusing enough that after
"What advice would you give someone who just bought a new..."
I was expecting 'judge'.
Are you guys changing the name to Bennett Haselton's blog of Ignorance? It seems you've already changed the content you post to at least one Haselton post a week, and he's a fucking moron.
Since I've already asked how much it costs to get regular front page posting like he does, let me try this a different way:
Who do I have to blow to get such front page posts all the time?
Or are you guys letting him post this crap to the front page because he lets you blow him?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Another thing that came my mind when reading that the people who are most motivated are the ones who most need to hear the truth. Optimizing for the majority, who is unmotivated, i optimizing for those who are lowest priority.
An example that came to mind is alcoholism, hardcore, chronic alcoholism. There is a process by which a hopeless alcoholic can recover, but it's extremely hard. 95% of people who are "interested in cutting down on their drinking" won't do it. The other 5% have had their lives so utterly destroyed by alcoholism that they'll do ANYTHING to stop.
Those few who are at the end of their rope, who have been hospitalized repeatedly, probably thrown in jail a couple of times, their families have been torn apart, these are a small majority - if the study is small, these people are not even statistically significant. They are also the people whose very lives depend on hearing the unvarnished truth - if they don't take some very difficult advice to heart, the disease will kill them. We should tell these people the truth - the fact that the message will be lost on moderate drinkers doesn't matter.
How do you get this shit to the front page Bennet? Serious question: I have a bunch of articles about where bears shit and how wet water is that I want to share with the /. audience.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
I don't maintain mine because I admit that I'm incapable. I follow the maintenance schedule from the manufacture that also ensures my warranty remains valid. "Hire an MTA/MCSA/MCSE to maintain your Windows PC or we'll..." would hurt sales... and here we are.
Rule #1:
Careful who you take advice from! The buddy who plays video games and pirates movies isn't approaching an MCSE anymore than my neighbor who changes his own oil is a certified auto mechanic.
WABR appropriate responses?
Former(?) MCSE response: Buy a Chromebook and use Google Drive for backups or hire a pro for regular PC maintenance. If you're mildly confident, buy a Mac. Don't touch Linux
Auto mechanic response: Buy a bicycle or bring your car in for regular maintenance. If you're mildly confident, buy a scooter (not trying to offend Macs here, I assume if you NEED Windows it's because of work related software not available on Mac.) Don't buy an 18-wheeler (Big Rigs are awesome but more skill is needed to operate them).
"If Michelle Obama made me her anti-obesity czar..." - If I responded with "Give me my insulin shot and GTFO", what then?
The reality is, many people want instant results not a "how-to". Many view "updates" as a nuisance that often break things. Verbose AV confuses and scares users. Many have auto-starting crapware running yet MS still buries msconfig and allows the behavior. Windows is too much for most users and MS has done too little to address the basic issues.
Full discloser: I NEED Windows but I haven't connected an Admin account to the internet in more than a decade.
I've read a few of your posts so far. Something that comes across to me is that you seem to be building all your ideas from scratch. I'm not going to tell you that there's no point in doing that, but when you come to basically the same conclusion as the rest of the world came to decades ago, that's a sign that you're not insane, not a sign that you have some revolutionary idea. Everyone goes through stages where they think that the entire world is controlled by people who don't know what they're doing; but by the time they reach your age they're supposed to realise that the reason they're running the world is because they understand it better than you.
If I'm an average person who wants to look better in a bathing suit, I have vastly different diet and exercise requirements that if I were an Olympic athlete. Just as there are separate forums available to "normal" people and those wishing to win Olympic gold, so are there separate forums for the people who want to read the news and check facebook, and the people who want to build their own supercomputer cluster. This is a technical forum, any advice here is given with the assumption that the person asking already has a good chunk of knowledge about how to use computers. It should be implicit that anyone coming to a forum like this is already aware of virus scanner and popup blockers. People come here for the next level.
As to your stab at the "Let's Move" campaign. I hadn't really paid much attention to it up to this point, but there are 5 points, including eating fruit instead of sugary snacks and drinking water instead of sodas, which reduce calorific intake significantly. Also, you can burn off an average PB&J in about 30 minutes of playing, like a kid does most days at recess.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Zzzzzz..... *urp* *wake up*
Is the article over yet?
Wake me up when bozo boy learns to follow his own advice and be concise.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
When asked for advice, I usually start with a "best practices" answer, and then follow up with "but if that's too much, at least do ..." Basically, the best answer, followed by the answer that's most likely to be followed if they decide the best answer is too difficult/time-consuming/more effort than it's worth/whatever.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Since when has Slashdot of all places become accepting of general mediocrity over personal excellence?
I didn't read it as intended for Slashdot users giving advice to other Slashdot users, who are on the whole more likely to comply. I read it as intended for Slashdot users giving advice to the general public.
Okay, snarky joke aside, did you read far enough to get the heroin reference?
My general comment on Haselton's essay is a thumbs up.
Example: http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/04/05/036255/its-time-to-bring-pseudoscience-into-the-science-classroom
This I think is an example of high failure rates. A large portion of the US believes in things that aren't 'scientific,' in spite of all sorts of quackbusters and skeptics and Penn and Teller's Bullshit tv show. Not mention that ex-magician The Amazing Randall. They may have a message, but it ain't getting across.
Here is another one I used to be guilty of. I used to be an audiophile, and by that I merely mean that some equipment will sound better than other equipment. Okay, some equipment is crap. (The "used to be" part: at 62 my ears and my passion for music ain't what they used to be). As many audiophiles will attest, over time friends, family, and mere acquaintances will ask for audiophile advice. Oh, us audiophiles looove to give advice. My score of how many people followed my advice: one NAD receiver, zero for dozens and dozens of other recommendations. The basic reason for people not following my advice, is that most people are only willing to spend about $200 total for a music system. In my naivity, I tried hard and may have started with a $179 Paradigm Atom speaker...
Now I ask: do you enjoy what you have? If the answer is yes, then I recommend: buy more music. Or, what do you think you would enjoy? (I do draw the line at Bose).
End of rant.
Oh, for those complaining about my disrespect for the Amazing Randi. I'm only referring to The Amazing Randall, The Amazing Tony Randall, also a former magician. He fathered two children when he was around 80. Amazing!
However, I think it deals with a problem more common than "bad advice."
"Poorly formed questions".
Even highly skilled, technical people have a problem with this within the realm of technology. The concept of "rubber ducking" is often useful to help engineers and developers re-state their question to themselves in a critical way. IRC help channels and StackExchange often make an effort to help people "ask better questions".
I think even questions as simple as "How do I lose weight" need to be re-asked. Even grossly obese people generally know they need to eat fewer calories and increase the rate they burn them. The reason they haven't already done this is more the heart of the question; the compulsive reliance on food as an emotional crutch, the outside perspective on the "uncounted" calories they're consuming, et cetera.
Surprisingly, I think tech people would understand this better than average. I learned very quickly in IT support that there are two very basic questions you ask to overcome user's frustration and ignorance:
1.) What did you expect it to do?
2.) What did it do that you didn't expect?
wtf
...try a 4 year degree in education. As a second-year teacher with just BS Ed. (no Masters work yet) this exact problem (optimizing presented information so it is useful and effective to the majority of your audience) is a daily struggle. I like where this is going, but to anyone who thinks this is long, teachers learn this in college and then spend their careers perfecting the methodology - at least those that don't get burned out along the way...
Oh, and he's only dealing with people who WANT the information. Imagine the same scenario but 30/50 want to be anywhere else but hearing the presented information...
I'm always for trying new drug combinations. Where do I get them?
It is not always necessary for an article to be well written for it to have a good idea at its core. As a technical writer and former network manager, who spent over a decade on Usenet giving and reading advice, and has also studied education - I know that the success rate of any advice is very audience dependent. If your audience is going to be regular people, then you have to give advice that regular people can or will follow. If your audience is tech people, then you can be more technical. Duh. Sometimes the best advice about giving advice about technical things is to offer two versions. One for regular people and another for technical people. Subtly let the regular people know when they can stop reading. Try not to be too insulting.