Quote:
Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
There was a big story in NYT a few Sundays back. Contrarians, the kind of people who eliminate from their wine choices what the waiter recommends, are a pretty big group. So your not following the crowd, is simply following the group.
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I'm not a contrarian all the time, which I guess makes me a contrarian in regard to the average contrarian ethos. My thinking is that you're just as likely to be safe following your gut, as spooky suggested, as you are following volumes of studies. Say that to a person who believes in statistics and you're decreid a heretic.
Re epidemiology, a family member who is an oncologist scoffs at the idea of predicting anything unless the predictor being used is genetic heritage. He showed me that govt stats on what you're "supposed" to get if you do "[insert behavior]." If these stats were at all even close to accurate, we'd have all died of STDs, liver disease, cancer and heart attacks years ago. As this particular person said once, "Other than the genetic thing, we have as much clue about what causes disease now as we did in 1950. Its a crapshoot - a variety of circumstances all hitting at the right place at the right time which probably causes disease, so trying to find a single cause is pretty futile" (paraphrased). I think the same applies to most economic studies. Too many intervenin circumstances IRL.
