Comment by anemoiac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anemoiac | Hacker News Reader

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The comment you responded to above poses a valid question - what should we do if empirical data seems to contradict our own lived experience?

"The data" is not homogeneous or infallible, nor can it fully describe all phenomena it's applied to. At best, data can provide us with a rough approximation of the landscape it attempts to describe. In this particular case, I think that landscape is smaller than the territory established by the OP's linked blog post (which seems to transcend the easily-measurable world of simple economic indicators).

Would you consider it prudent to dismiss one's lived experience offhand, at the mere site of a few quickly-pasted links to tweets containing simple, decontextualized data points? What, then, if another commenter subsequently provides contradictory data? Scrolling through a typical HN thread would turn into a nauseating ride on some sort of intellectual see-saw.

If the commenter you responded to is "not convinced" by some tweeted factoids claiming that Americans are working less and making more than ever, does that imply that they're ideologically motivated?

I don't think so, no more than I think your reply to them implies that your own motivation is ideological. Without additional context, those "facts" don't significantly imperil any specific worldview.

Lived experience, while important, should be treated like anecdotes.

While anecdotes are valuable, the plural of anecdote != data.

Should we help people whose lived experience is worse than ours? Absolutely.

Does the mere existence of people whose lived experience contradicts that of the aggregate majority suggest that we ought to upend our systems? No, and that's the point.

In general, when we see (overwhelming) empirical outcomes that don't confirm our priors, we ought to shift our priors. We do this in the context of climate change, there's no reason we shouldn't also do this in the context of the economy and labor markets.

For sure. I think the question is what does the empirical evidence say in this case. And, for complex issues where drawing conclusions from data is nontrivial, using judgement.

Lived experience is certainly anecdotal, and I agree that anecdotes don’t simply transform into data when aggregated. That’s not the point I was trying to make.

You ask, “Does the mere existence of people whose lived experience contradicts that of the aggregate majority suggest that we ought to upend our systems?” First of all, I’ve said nothing regarding “upending our systems.” More importantly — just as anecdotes != data, neither can data replace the role of lived experience. If many people feel like they’re struggling today, that doesn’t contradict data saying that they should be making more money in less time - to me, it suggests that there may be more to the “equation” of positive lived experience than income.

In other words, while I don’t think that it’s feasible to precisely compare the “difficulty” of living across different eras, it’s certainly possible that people can be making more money than ever before and also struggling en masse. The whole of life can’t be explained by simple economic data. Scratch that - the whole of economic life can’t even by explained by economic data... I expanded on this concept in a reply to another comment of yours, but you may not have seen it.

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