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New binary paradigm just dropped (https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/sf41or/new_binary_paradigm_just_dropped/)
posted on January 28, 2022 11:34 PM by u/VersletenZetel
37

Are you a numerator thinker or a denominator thinker?

  • Numerator thinking: A heavier lens on the absolute numbers—How many children are hospitalized? Is this number increasing? How many children have died?
  • Denominator thinking: A heavier lens on the population in which the numerator arises—How many children have died compared to adults? How many myocarditis cases per 1,000,000 doses?”

But don’t sweat it, we should treat both equally!

*“There are a lot of people making really difficult decisions right now (parents, teachers, policymakers, etc.). As a parent of 2 under 3, a recent Slate* headline(and article) resonated with me: “The Agony of Parents With Kids Under 5”. This landscape is complicated and hard. We need to approach everyone’s decisions with empathy and recognize how (and why) people may put more emphasis on numerators or denominators*.”

But also not!

“For example, clinicians care for these patients every day, and the numerator is top of mind. As a parent, having my kid in the numerator is not comforting even if the probability of that happening was small. Policymakers, on the other hand, need a more denominator-oriented perspective. But, everyone needs to consider both elements.”

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-pediatrics-and-omicron

(Pro-vax standpoint, retweets Neoliberal John Snow on Twitter and gets recommended by open-the-schools people like Emily Oster.)

u/DiceyWater 44 points at 1643414645.000000

I’d say I’m more of an INTJ Pisces type, with Numerator tendencies.

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u/Klosterheim 20 points at 1643421614.000000
i'm a low decoupler denominator Hufflepuff and i hate everything you stand for (Is that a bad joke ? I mean I'm generally supportive of such labels as a way to help people be introspective and know themselves, and I don't think they're necessarily divisive though they can be. Mostly I'm making fun of the hypocrisy of the rationalsphere trying to be better than astrological signs and tarot cards but just doing that again except pretentious. I'm just gonna leave the joke there with the awkward explanation.)
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u/DiceyWater 11 points at 1643426437.000000
You're good, that's what I was getting at too. It's not that these types of things are *inherently* wrong, but the above is trying to separate itself from these things, when it's just the same type of stereotype-organizational method many try to slot themselves into. Of course, horoscopes and Myers-Briggs and Wizarding Houses can all *also* take themselves just as obnoxiously and absurdly seriously as someone who buys into being a Denominator, but that's also when they deserve ridicule. When they're used just as a way to better consider yourself or describe yourself to others, they're harmless, but using them as a Sacred Essence is where I think they start causing problems.
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u/low_sock_rates 8 points at 1643510942.000000
Yeah I can say first hand some people can be *dicks* about astrology. But the Myers-Briggs stuff tends to be more accepted as true in places with higher social capital so it's more "punching up" to make fun of usually even if it were the case that both had a similar mix of "helpful self exploration" and "insufferable identity enforcement".
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u/DiceyWater 9 points at 1643522336.000000
I think it's because so many business settings use Myers-Briggs, for *some* reason. It was mentioned and used multiple times in leadership and management seminars I've attended.
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u/DELETED 2 points at 1643617750.000000
And yes by the way, I DO have a Yud tattoo.
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u/finfinfin 1 points at 1643712360.000000
May I see it?
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u/DELETED 3 points at 1643733905.000000
For doubleplus cores only!
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u/Soyweiser 22 points at 1643461709.000000

I’m still a bit confused people actually do the ‘are you an X or an Y’ and make it part of their identity, and not ‘here are some ways to look at a thing’.

But that is also a thing which confuses me about ethical systems. How people go ‘I’m a consequentialist’ vs ‘this is how various ethical systems think about it’. (Of course the latter method leads to ‘I will pick the system which allows me to do whatever I already wanted to do’ but that is also possible if you hardline an ethical system by just selectively picking and choosing arguments (dustspecks!)).

I guess there are 2 kinds of people in the world, people who pick a paradigm and make it part of their identity, and people who just use all paradigms as part of their toolkit. Obv I’m the latter. oh no

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u/lobotomy42 5 points at 1643665486.000000
To some extent, it's just language games. "Some people are an X, other people are a Y" is a more conventional way of saying "there are two broad ways of thinking about at a thing, the X way and the Y way." Describing it in terms of the ant and the grasshopper serves to humanize the differences and keep the reader's interest. It's also convenient if you want to slide from "two ways of thinking" straight into a tidy moral fable where one way is obviously correct and normal and the other is for stupid lazy plebs.
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u/low_sock_rates 5 points at 1643510623.000000
I have this same feeling about epistemology as well. One thing I've seen argued in academia is that you ought to pick an epistemology and stick to it, which is understandable in the case of like a single study where you could be really misleading if you use methods that are grounded in different epistemologies. But since we can't actually discriminate between valid epistemologies it seems like a better call to analyze a problem from multiple and hedge your bets in the broader scheme of things, even if you embody a particular paradigm for a particular analysis. Just like with your above example of picking and choosing, it technically gives you an out to being intellectually or morally slippery, but you can do that under a static paradigm too. Paradigm flexibility is just one more avenue through which you can be slippery, and the advantages of doing it probably outweigh that downside imo. All that to say, yeah, any human perspective is imperfect and seeing these things as toolkits rather than identities or ardently held positions is probably the better call.
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u/xenophonf 14 points at 1643470949.000000

So this is what the kids are calling “tops” and “bottoms” these days? That’s one way to avoid content filters, I suppose. Well, as long as they’re using protection and keeping it consensual, it’s no skin off my “slide rule” (am I doing it right?)

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u/dgerard 15 points at 1643422585.000000

i highly couple and you do not couple

my numerator highly dominates

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u/JimmyPWatts 13 points at 1643425087.000000

TIL how fractions work. Fuck me

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u/finfinfin 4 points at 1643712342.000000
this is \/r/SneerClub not \/r/Denom4Num
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u/DELETED 9 points at 1643427009.000000

Fuck the fractional hierarchy! Decimals thinkers of the world, unite!

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u/chaunceywilliamups 2 points at 1643432959.000000

God I love math

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