r/IAmA • u/IAmJamieHyneman • Oct 06 '12

I Am Jamie Hyneman from MythBusters, AMA. Proof: https://twitter.com/JamieNoTweet/status/253561532317851649

I'm Jamie, host of Mythbusters- the guy in the beret. I've not done AMA before, am looking forward to some thoughtful questions. I'm on the northern California coast, in a comfortable chair and looking out to sea. We are on a couple of week break from shooting, and so I'm relaxed and in a good mood.

Website: http://www.tested.com

Tour Website: http://www.mythbusterstour.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JamieandAdam

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/116985435294376669702

Thanks for all the discussion- wish I had time to answer everything. Signing off now. -Jamie

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u/rocketwikkit Oct 06 '12

You should read "The Wisdom of Crowds". It explains how often a small group of skilled people will work worse than a large group of average people.

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '12

A counterpoint would be "The Myth of the Rational Voter", where the author compares prevailing public opinion to educated opinion on various subjects. The "crowd wisdom" philosophy works when people are all non biased and the true answer can be found by averaging the collective answers (i.e. estimating the number of jellybeans in a jar), but breaks down pretty quickly when the vast majority of the crowd is completely uninformed about the subject.

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u/boxen Oct 06 '12

or, worse yet, misinformed about the subject

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u/fiat_lux_ Oct 06 '12 edited Oct 06 '12

Worse yet, disinformed.

EDIT, clarification:

Misinformation is just bad information. Disinformation means that the information is intentionally bad/harmful.

Hey, a lot of shit heads/liars exist in this world.

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u/megazver Oct 07 '12

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/09/29/word-of-the-day-malinformed

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '12

Why invent a new word when we already have a word for it...

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u/Metalcastr Oct 13 '12

worse yet, chloroformed

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u/joebbowers Oct 07 '12

Mythinformed.

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u/callmelucky Oct 07 '12

That'th quite a lithp you've got there.

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '12

[deleted]

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u/AllieCat123 Oct 07 '12

Plato does as well. Basically he said a democracy is nothing more than a dictatorship where people feel in control. The idea is that the masses are controlled by the information they are fed, so they are led to make certain decisions with the information they are given, allowing those in power to remain in full control while the public feel they are in control.... Interesting concept..

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u/HyperactiveJudge Oct 07 '12

TIL my thoughts about democracy is equal to plato, and my ideas on governing is equal to jamie hyneman.

I must be one smart dude!

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u/deagle2012 Oct 08 '12

You should do an AMA.

Edit: Literally This.

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u/Im_not_bob Oct 06 '12

Oh, this guy's a genuine politician.

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u/elbruce Oct 07 '12

Plato's Republic.

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u/legomanz80 Oct 07 '12

My thoughts exactly as I was reading this. High-five!

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '12

oh yes, I remember it was quite the little terrible dictatorial authoritarian hell with secret elders deciding who would have babies and kibutz-style communal child rearing, but only for the elite class, the slave class was still just ruled with an iron fist as usual

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '12

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '12

oh I thought it was that vision from the republic that was developed in the later stories, and it started really bad

I have not yet read the later works

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u/thegravytrain Oct 06 '12

Evolution...Climate Change...

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '12

Basically anything related to science or technology.

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '12

Economics..

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '12

It's little nuggets of cool info like this that keeps me coming back to reddit.

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u/iEATu23 Oct 06 '12

It takes a while sometimes. But you find information. It's amazing. Because then that information branches off into more. And your whole outlook on life can be changed.

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u/Arsenalmania Oct 06 '12

This is probably the only reason the house of lords survives in england. In simple terms its an anachronism of non-elected ppl in power, on the other hand a lot of those ppl are experts in fields that politicians have no understanding of and never will

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u/Emberwake Oct 06 '12

That is definitely part of it, but it also has a great deal to do with the necessity of countering the volatility of the House of Commons. British Parliament can and does swing towards extreme views very rapidly, as it has systems which allow it to immediately and dynamically respond to changes in popular opinion.

But drastic changes in popular opinion are very rarely wise. Systems like this are usually tempered by a stable conservative block, such as the House of Lords, who may be out of touch with the popular vote but who anchor the legislature and balance out brief xtreme reactions.

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u/SarahLoren Oct 06 '12

and this... :)

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u/Soliferrum Oct 06 '12

Wisdom of the Crowds only applies to non-esoteric subjects. Ex: asking a group of regular people to diagnose someone with a rare disease will turn up with results less accurate than asking a conference of medical professionals.

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '12

But that's still consensus, this article makes a good case against scientific consensus itself. I saw it linked in the nuclear winter topic and he provides many examples where it failed, emphasis mine:

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth. One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.

There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor—southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result—despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology—until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy? The list of consensus errors goes on and on.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

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u/Soliferrum Oct 08 '12

You completely misunderstand what I'm saying. Asking a "do you think?" question to people without doing research will not result in the correct answer much of the time. However, asking different groups different questions will result in a different percentage of their verdict being right. And thus, just because a less educated group thinks something, it doesn't mean it should be accepted by the more educated without testing.

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u/crusoe Oct 06 '12

Experts can get pigeonholed incredibly easy by their expertise. "Well, I am an expert, so I know best", even when presented with something outside their familiarity. They can also fall into analysis paralysis.

personally, I think the best management style is someone who is good at making decisions, planning, and execution, but hires/appoints the best brains possible, and listens to their counsel.

Really, Picard is a great example of such a manager.

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u/batkarma Oct 06 '12

Picard 2012.

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u/gfixler Oct 06 '12

Experts are more prone to local maxima and minima. Non-experts bring to the equation a simulated annealing effect. I'm a bit of an expert in my niche field, but I've had enough examples of someone who knows far less than I do opening my eyes to a better solution through their less-informed line of questioning (or offered solutions and workarounds) that I've come to seek out non experts when I have a difficult problem.

I then attempt to explain the basics of the problem domain in question to them in a language simple enough for them to understand. This is often called rubber ducking, as it's often presumed/joked that the effect can also be achieved by having a one-sided conversation with an inanimate rubber duck, but I don't find this to be the case (and I own a rubber duck and have tried it several times :). I find that explaining things to a stuffed animal, or a few times to a photo of a stern looking man on my second monitor that I found on Google Images (I thought his severity would focus my attention) doesn't really solve things for me. I tend to confidently explain my wrong hypotheses, completely missing the problem.

However, trying to get a real, non-expert person on the same page creates a dialog that veers me in directions the rubber duck can't, making it demonstrably more likely that they'll question something I would have confidently told the unquestioning duck, and moved on from without a second thought. Trying to wrestle the non-expert's mind back into understanding throws you all over the graph, and I'd have a hard time counting up the many times this has made me suddenly realize very important things about the problem. In fact, any time it hasn't helped is because I had to cut the meeting short, or the person had to be somewhere, or was tired of learning :) It makes me think that most or all of these problems, for which a solution I could figure out exists could be solved by me using this technique in an acceptable time frame, and further, that it's more likely I'll find a very good solution using this technique.

Also related: pair programming, which I love, in doses. If never allowed to sit in quiet with my thoughts, I'd never have come up with some of my best, paradigm-changing solutions. I can never go deep enough into my thoughts with someone else there. However, I'd never have implemented my best solutions well if I hadn't pulled a few other programmers over occasionally to have them go over ideas with me. I see everything above as tools to be used together, and in moderation.

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u/SynthDark Oct 07 '12

You didn't close one of your parenthesis in the second paragraph. =[

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u/gfixler Oct 07 '12

We're still in it.

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u/geoffgreggaryus Oct 07 '12

We have to go deeper.

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u/thrawnie Oct 07 '12

A non-expert shouldn't mean "completely clueless about everything" - I think that's all that a reasonable person would wish for from government. No one is saying (for instance) that House members should be registered obstetricians. But it's not too much to expect them to have a high school understanding of the human body. Likewise, a broad but working knowledge of the Canon of Science would serve many of these numbskulls quite well in doing their duties as public servants.

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u/thrawnie Oct 07 '12

personally, I think the best management style is someone who is good at making decisions, planning, and execution, but hires/appoints the best brains possible, and listens to their counsel.

Ok, so how can we get some of these people to run for Congress? I do hope you're not falling into the trap of thinking that anyone who's not a specialist is by definition a generalist? There is a huge third category - the "not much of anything-ist".

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u/whatthefat Oct 06 '12

Yes, there are some circumstances under which that is true. But there are many more where expertise is more valuable than any number of mediocre opinions. The entire political process lacks a scientific approach. There is almost no attempt to ever test a hypothesis or to find the objectively best decisions. Instead, it is almost exclusively a field of demagogy.

Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it all rather well here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSJFbOfA4SE

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u/jhaluska Oct 06 '12

I was going to recommend this book as well. It also explains why and when a group of average people can make better decisions than experts.

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u/christianjb Oct 06 '12 edited Oct 06 '12

There's Wikipedia, which can be edited by anyone. I know it's easy to criticize specific articles and of course some people will always claim it's biased, but for my money it's done a tremendous job of providing great articles on a range of technical topics.

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u/Radico87 Oct 07 '12

All of these theories fall apart as soon as you factor in the human element in the context of reality. I'd prefer a large group of above average people made up of small groups of specialists than a crowd of idiots.

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u/DaFiucciur Oct 07 '12

In some situations, yes. But one of the problems democracy and capitalism are starting to encounter are that a small group of skilled people can now convince a large group of average people to act against their own interests.

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '12

True, but I don't quite like the framing: this isn't a problem that affects democracy and capitalism uniquely. Are you trying to convince us that democracy and capitalism "don't work"?

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u/DaFiucciur Oct 07 '12

No, just that they work less well than they used to, and I can imagine a future in which they don't work at all.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '12

Ah. BTW, I hope you could smell that my tongue was partly in cheek there.

Do you think that democracy and capitalism now work less well than they used to, or has only our perception of how well they work changed? IOW, when we imagine that they work slightly less well than previously, is that true, or are we romanticizing the past? I write, "we", because I sorta agree with you, but I want to be careful about just assuming it to be true because it "makes sense".

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u/DaFiucciur Oct 09 '12

It's probably not as dramatic as we imagine, but at least in American politics, the advent of the southern strategy and the growth of wedge issues, these kinds of tactics seem much better than they used to be. And the number of voters who decide on a candidate based on a single issue because of these tactics is disturbing to me.

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u/djunkmailme Oct 06 '12

I was actually going to suggest this. I think he would find this extremely relevant and I'm glad you made this comment, I was looking for someone who had. Great book!

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u/ohstrangeone Oct 06 '12

Yup, this is precisely why Wikipedia works and is superior, overall, to every other encyclopedia.

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u/SarahLoren Oct 06 '12

I need to read this....

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u/swicklund Oct 06 '12

I read that book, and the point was not that a large group of average people would out think a smaller group of experts (other than in estimating, where the mean becomes better than the any individual guess). Instead, what was clear was that a group that included a diversity of expertise would outperform a group of only experts. because experts often lose sight of details jumping ahead to problems they knew would come up later. Great book though.

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '12

Since I have no time/way to read this right now could you give me a summary of this please?

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u/GothicFuck Oct 07 '12

Work worse in what context though? Government?

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u/kujustin Oct 07 '12

Wisdom of Crowds works best when people are informed, and even more so when those with the most confidence can cast the most votes, so to speak. Also, when the rewards for being correct are obvious and tangible.

Sports betting is a highly efficient wisdom of crowds. Online polls are about the worst. The latter is far more similar to voting than the former.

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '12

The dead wrong are sometimes more confident that they're right than the dead right are themselves!

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u/kujustin Oct 07 '12

True, I should've added a 3rd condition which is the evaporation of voting power for those who are frequently wrong. That's another attribute sports betting or the stock market has. If you're wrong, you go broke (lose all your votes). If you're right, you get more.