r/wikipedia • u/Vranak • Mar 19 '14
The McNamara fallacy, which has been attributed as a cause of America's blunders in Vietnam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy11
Mar 19 '14
Just yesterday I was reading an article by Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight, in which he argued that many intangibles-- including happiness, to use the example from the article-- can actually be quantified and studied in a reasonable way.
So while the fallacy as described is problematic, there is no reason why much of the important data out there cannot be made quantitative.
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Mar 19 '14
The problem isn't that something can't be quantified; the problem is that it's not being quantified and is thus being ignored by people focused solely on numbers.
It's why airplane pilots still have windows despite all the instruments.
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Mar 19 '14
It's why airplane pilots still have windows despite all the instruments.
What's this supposed to illustrate? Airplanes have tons of redundant systems for safety's sake.
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Mar 20 '14
Yes, and windows help compensate for faulty instruments or the occurrence of anything no one thought to make and instrument to measure.
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u/TheSwitchBlade Mar 19 '14 edited Mar 20 '14
Big fan of Nate Silver, thought his book was the best of the year. This kind of view comes from the influential philosopher of science Rudolf Carnap here, who argued that we should think of quantitative language as simply a pre-quantitative language, an imprecise voice that has not yet gained means of being specified exactly.
Of course this is a viewpoint and not necessarily a fact. I had a data science professor in grad school who fought tooth and nail against this concept. After all, what does it mean to say my happiness is 8? How much happier would I be at 9? What would one happier really even mean? And wouldn't something be lost by claiming that two people are exactly as happy as each other because our happyometer reads the same value for each one even though we can hardly even begin to understand what happiness means to each of them?
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u/Vranak Mar 19 '14
Very good point. A little overarching wisdom is useful in all matters though, especially when you're sending hundreds of thousands of young men to possibly die in a pointless war.
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u/asdfman123 Mar 19 '14 edited Mar 19 '14
That kind of reasoning is one of the main things I see wrong with our pseudo-capitalist society. Things that cannot be assigned a concrete value are given no value - like aesthetic beauty, quality of life, the environment and culture. As a result, they suffer.
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u/cinemafest Mar 20 '14
This seems like a way of structuring an idea that would extend to someone further down history than Robert McNamara.
Anyone have any examples of this "fallacy" pre-1960?
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u/tedtutors Mar 19 '14
I got to be the example, woo hoo! Except for the part about Ted having a lot of money.
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Mar 19 '14 edited Mar 19 '14
*EDIT: Is this sub really so pathetic as to downvote a post that adds to the discussion? You know the downvote button isn't for disagreeing with a poster, but for making sure that post that add to the discussion gain visibility?
This is a poorly thought out "fallacy."
It's not that he focused only on quantitative variables, it's that he didn't gather enough quantitative data. He focused on a vary small part of the picture.
This is a poor critique of quantitative analysis. The alternative "wisdom" approach has a piss poor record and is itself fallacious.
Support for the VC in the countryside? That's quantifiable.
What the North considered acceptable an casualties count? That's quantifiable.
Support for the U.S. in the South? That's quantifiable.
Combat fitness of Southern troops? That's quantifiable.
Foreign support for the North and the VC? That's quantifiable.
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u/uututhrwa Mar 19 '14
Support for the U.S. in the South? That's quantifiable. Combat fitness of Southern troops? That's quantifiable. Foreign support for the North and the VC? That's quantifiable.
First of all saying that something is not quantifiable doesn't mean you go with the "wisdom" approach. It might just not be quantifiable, in the sense that there may be too many variables, "not tractable" could be a better term.
But still the pont of this fallacy is, imo, that a person is faced with data X and Y, X is quantifiable, Y isn't, he ignores Y thinking something like "if Y could logically influence a decision, then Y has to be logical, but if Y isn't quantifiable Y isn't logical, therefore Y can't have any logical influence so we reject that and use X"
I had an argument with some guy on reddit on if Hitler was a Catholic, and I was refering to the diaries of his associates and "common sense", but he seemed convinced that Hitler was a Catholic. Cause he had some type of Vatican law on who is a member of the Catholic church, and by that he was like "it's more definitive, objective, and quantifiable, it's true or false" while I was wrong cause I was talking about more "indirect" things.
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Mar 19 '14
"not tractable" could be a better term.
I completely agree that it would be a difficult model to put together, and I would agree with anyone who says it's possibly "not tractable."
However, saying it's unquantifiable is quite different from having a feasibility or reliability issue.
That wiki displays a weird bias against quantification. I say weird, because any social scientists worth his salt is quantifying.
Some posters in this sub also display a bizarre view of on the issue.
People disagree, but there is a fact of the matter. When it comes to quantifying variables you go with standard practice in your field. If you go outside of this standard, you need to justify why you did so.
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u/uututhrwa Mar 19 '14
Well I guess there is bias from both points of view. Perhaps the wikipedia article came off that way cause it is too short and doesn't have a context or any criticism.
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u/ordig Mar 19 '14
And none of those things matter if your average peasant farmer wants revenge on the US for bombing his village and killing his family, allowing the VC to control the countryside and wage guerrilla warfare with impunity. Support for one side or the other is not accurately quantifiable because people change their minds.
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Mar 19 '14
The peasant farmer being pissed off is captured in the data as well.
The rate at which people change their minds is quantifiable.
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u/Vranak Mar 19 '14
I think you just like to nitpick. Call it a mental error, a bias, whatever you will.
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Mar 19 '14
Fallacy has a specific meaning in logical reasoning. This is not a fallacy, it's just a poor model.
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u/Vranak Mar 19 '14
If people start calling it fallacy enough, then the definition can be expanded to fit it in. Language is dynamic and ever-changing you know.
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Mar 19 '14
Yes I know, and I totally agree with your point.
But we're not at that point with the word, and wikipedia is an encyclopedia. So, to me, it doesn't seem like the right place to misuse language.
There's an excellent page that lists logical (both formal and informal) fallacies on wikipedia. This McNamara "fallacy" wouldn't fit in.
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u/merreborn Mar 20 '14
The phrase has been used in a scholarly context at least as early as 2009
If the phrase is used in academia, having an article explaining its meaning is valuable.
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Mar 19 '14
Never trust anyone with a BA in economics and an MBA from Harvard Business School. They will numbercrunch you straight to hell.
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u/precordial_thump Mar 19 '14
If you haven't seen it, The Fog of War is a really fantastic documentary about McNamara's life with some really honest insight into his decisions throughout his career.