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ivelltoday at 12:28 PM2 repliesview on HN

I think many academics are often specialized in one area of their expertise and overfit in that dimension. Journalists pick this up and promote those views a bit too much. This results in non-optimal decisions due to skewed public perceptions.

We need to promote holistic thinking considering multiple dimensions and not just one where academics are proficient in.


Replies

JumpCrisscrosstoday at 2:09 PM

> many academics are often specialized in one area of their expertise and overfit in that dimension

An economist saying a national-security measure costs this much is fine. Where it goes off the rails is in turning costs into damnation without accounting for what one gets in return. In an attention-driven media environment, that sells.

Iuliohtoday at 12:32 PM

The problem is that there isn't simply an efficient solution for everything. At one point every problem has solutions with pros and cons

France could do it as it is a rich and big country but smaller countries do not have a viable choice. This reasoning could have been applied to France too in another universe.

It's a balance impossible to totally tilt one way or another.

So no amount of extra information could help when it's matter of opinion at the end of the day