gwern comments on Group rationality diary, 8/20/12 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: cata 21 August 2012 09:42AM

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Comment author: MileyCyrus 21 August 2012 05:57:10PM -1 points [-]

It just seems like a large coincidence that I would pick the wrong thing to look at every time. Your justifications sound post-hoc and too specific. Either I'm systematically picking out overrated careers, or people are systematically pessimistic about their jobs. Now I might be inclined to believe the former if the objective sources agreed that these jobs were overrated. But the objective sources (official statistics, articles written by people who have done research) provide some reasons to be optimistic, such as:

  • Computerization of accounting an actuaries seems to be a non-issue at least, for the moment. BLS statistics indicate that these are still fairly easy jobs to get, if you have the qualifications.

  • It's true that the Korean and Japanese ESL markets are getting more competitive, but the Middle East offers salaries that are 50% higher and growing 6% a year. Saudi Arabia said that it was going to place new restrictions on foreign workers "soon", but that was a year ago and they haven't made any announcements since.

  • The Australian government loves backpackers and will probably approve yet another round of WHV deregulation this year. On the table: allowing all nationalities to get a second WHV, raising the age limit to 35, giving backpacker incentives to work in the tourism industry, and lowering the application fee.

Now there is negative evidence too, but the ratio of positive to negative evidence in objective sources seems to have no correlation to how these jobs are discussed among forums and personal blogs. So I conclude that forums and personal blogs probably have little value to someone who wants to know if a job market is doing well.

Comment author: gwern 22 August 2012 01:06:00AM 1 point [-]
  1. Actuaries: you may be right here, although my vague impression of actuarial science was that there should be a squeeze, and I would want to look carefully at the statistics to see how they might be misleading - eg. is there a Simpson's paradox going on? Are people being squeezed out later in their career? Is the data for a uselessly narrow - or uselessly broad - category of 'actuaries'? etc.
  2. So you do agree some fields are in decline! When the Japanese and Korean ESLs complain that the field is getting worse for them (=becoming more competitive), you agree they are. I specifically mentioned Korea because of this potential for you to just say 'ah, but if you look somewhere else....' See comment #1 about definitions and sizes of categories.
  3. The broader economic point is still true; Australia's mining rise is the defining characteristic of their economy for the past decade or more. Your regulation points are interesting, though, but point to other possibilities: maybe the complained about decline is precisely the growth or increases - how well do you understand what the existing backpackers value or are complaining about? (A personal parallel that comes to mind is the growth of anime in the late '90s and early '00s in the USA: old-time fans were more than a little bitter because the growth shattered the old fanzines and blew up convention sizes and introduced so many people that a kind of Eternal September set in.)

So I conclude that forums and personal blogs probably have little value to someone who wants to know if a job market is doing well.

An unduly harsh appraisal. I'd phrase it more as 'vague opinion not backed by specifics or statistics are of little value for assessing large-scale trends', which is not an appraisal I'd consider unjustified in very many areas!

Comment author: MileyCyrus 22 August 2012 03:56:01AM 0 points [-]

Is the data for a uselessly narrow - or uselessly broad - category of 'actuaries'? etc.

The actuarial field has a bright line around it's borders: if you haven't passed your country's standardized exams, you're not an actuary.

So you do agree some fields are in decline!

Well yeah, I'd expect half the fields to be doing worse than median. My point was that it was unlikely that all fields I look at are in decline.

I specifically mentioned Korea because of this potential for you to just say 'ah, but if you look somewhere else....' See comment #1 about definitions and sizes of categories.

So.... you got me? I didn't single out Korean ESL teachers in my OP, so I don't think can accuse me of broadening the definition.

Your regulation points are interesting, though, but point to other possibilities: maybe the complained about decline is precisely the growth or increases - how well do you understand what the existing backpackers value or are complaining about?

So if Korea makes it harder to enter the job market, that's bad for workers; and if Australia makes it easier to enter the job market, that's also bad for workers?

Comment author: gwern 22 August 2012 02:34:14PM 1 point [-]

Well yeah, I'd expect half the fields to be doing worse than median. My point was that it was unlikely that all fields I look at are in decline.

I think you're tying yourself in circles. You can't argue 'every field I look at is not in decline' and then immediately turn around and admit that some fields are in decline. More generally, your median point applies to the self-assessments too: even if self-assessment is completely random and actual field performance is random too, you'd still expect a quarter to be - by sheer luck - above the median in actual performance and self-assessed performance. So if a full quarter are optimistic and outperforming, how did you miss them?

So if Korea makes it harder to enter the job market, that's bad for workers; and if Australia makes it easier to enter the job market, that's also bad for workers?

Sure. Someone drowning has too much water, and someone dying of thirst in the desert has too little water; is it really so absurd to say that 'some people need more water, and some people need less water'?

Comment author: MileyCyrus 22 August 2012 09:47:54PM 0 points [-]

You can't argue 'every field I look at is not in decline'

I never said that. I said the evidence was mixed.

More generally, your median point applies to the self-assessments too: even if self-assessment is completely random and actual field performance is random too, you'd still expect a quarter to be - by sheer luck - above the median in actual performance and self-assessed performance. So if a full quarter are optimistic and outperforming, how did you miss them?

By "self-assessment" you mean forum posts and personal blogs? Well that was exactly the point I made originally. It seems the is bias that causes that vast majority of self-assessment to pessimistic, even when field performance is good.

Someone drowning has too much water, and someone dying of thirst in the desert has too little water; is it really so absurd to say that 'some people need more water, and some people need less water'?

If I tell you "Sarah will get more water next year.", it would be absurd to tell me that that is a good thing or a bad thing, unless you have information about how much water Sarah already has. You can't say that Korea's stricter laws will be a bad thing, unless you have information suggesting Korea's. You can't say that Australia's more lenient laws will be a bad thing, unless you have information suggesting Australia's laws were already optimal or too lenient.

Now maybe you have this information about Korea, but I doubt you have it about Australia. And I doubt the that backpackers have this information either, considering that they don't even seem to know about new deregulation.

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