TITLE: Context Matters
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: March 05, 2023 9:47 AM
DESC:
-----
BODY:
In
this episode of Conversations With Tyler,
Cowen asks economist Jeffrey Sachs if he agrees with several
other economists' bearish views on a particular issue. Sachs
says they "have been wrong ... for 20 years", laughs, and
goes on to say:
They just got it wrong time and again. They had failed to
understand, and the same with [another economist]. It's the
same story. It doesn't fit our model exactly, so it can't
happen. It's got to collapse. That's not right. It's
happening. That's the story of our time. It's happening.
"It doesn't fit our model, so it can't happen." But it is
happening.
When your model keeps saying that something can't happen,
but it keeps happening anyway, you may want to reconsider
your model. Otherwise, you may miss the dominant story of
the era -- not to mention being continually wrong.
Sachs spends much of his time with Cowen emphasizing the
importance of context in determining which model to
use and which actions to take. This is essential in
economics because the world it studies is simply too
complex for the models we have now, even the complex
models.
I think Sachs's insight applies to any discipline that works
with people, including education and software development.
The topic of education even comes up toward the end of the
conversation, when Cowen asks Sachs how to "fix graduate
education in economics". Sachs says that one of its problems
is that they teach econ as if there were "four underlying,
natural forces of the social universe" rather than studying
the specific context of particular problems.
He goes on to highlight an approach that is affecting every
discipline now touched by data analytics:
We have so much statistical machinery to ask the question,
"What can you learn from this dataset?" That's the wrong
question because the dataset is always a tiny, tiny fraction
of what you can know about the problem that you're studying.
Every interesting problem is bigger than any dataset we build
from it. The details of the problem matter. Again: context.
Sachs suggests that we shouldn't teach econ like physics,
with Maxwell's overarching equations, but like biology, with
the seemingly arbitrary details of DNA.
In my mind, I immediately began thinking about my discipline.
We shouldn't teach software development (or econ!) like pure
math. We should teach it as a mix of principles and context,
generalities and specific details.
There's almost always a tension in CS programs between timeless
knowledge and the details of specific languages, libraries,
and tools. Most of students don't go on to become theoretical
computer scientists; they go out to work in the world of messy
details, details that keep evolving and morphing into something
new.
That makes our job harder than teaching math or some sciences
because, like economics:
... we're not studying a stable environment. We're studying
a changing environment. Whatever we study in depth will be
out of date. We're looking at a moving target.
That dynamic environment creates a challenge for those of us
teaching software development or any computing as practiced
in the world. CS professors have to constantly be moving,
so as not to fall our of date. But they also have to try to
identify the enduring principles that their students can count
on as they go on to work in the world for several decades.
To be honest, that's part of the fun for many of us CS profs.
But it's also why so many CS profs can burn out after 15 or
20 years. A never-ending marathon can wear anyone out.
Anyway, I found
Cowens' conversation with Jeffrey Sachs
to be surprisingly stimulating, both for thinking about
economics and for thinking about software.
-----