[HN Gopher] How to Mislead with Facts
___________________________________________________________________
How to Mislead with Facts
Author : denial
Score : 256 points
Date : 2022-02-01 03:25 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (consilienceproject.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (consilienceproject.org)
| ncmncm wrote:
| The New York Times mastered all this long ago.
|
| It is not necessary to lie. All you need is to be selective about
| what truths you tell, and where. Some goes on the front page,
| some on page 13, other bits nowhere at all.
|
| Hans Blix's UN reports, before the invasion, about Iraq's entire
| lack of any WMD whatsoever were too important to completely
| ignore, but were easy enough to bury in a back page. The entire
| lack of any primary source information indicating Russian
| interference in the 2016 election was easy to avoid mentioning
| anywhere.
| pphysch wrote:
| I would be surprised if any major establishment media outlet
| has a foreign/international office _not_ staffed with
| individuals _very friendly_ with the national security
| establishment. I would _not_ be surprised if many foreign
| editors and correspondents are undercover intelligence
| operatives. It 's a great cover, like anthropology or human
| rights work, that gives individuals access to geopolitically
| sensitive regions.
|
| > The role of war correspondents in the Gulf War would prove to
| be quite different from their role in Vietnam. The Pentagon
| blamed the media for the loss of the Vietnam war, and prominent
| military leaders did not believe the United States could
| sustain a prolonged and heavily televised war. As a result,
| numerous restrictions were placed on the activities of
| correspondents covering the war in the Gulf. Journalists
| allowed to accompany the troops were organized into "pools",
| where small groups were escorted into combat zones by US troops
| and allowed to share their findings later. Those who attempted
| to strike out on their own and operate outside the pool system
| claim to have found themselves obstructed directly or
| indirectly by the military, with passport visas revoked and
| photographs and notes taken by force from journalists while US
| forces observed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_correspondent#Gulf_War
| hguant wrote:
| US National Security, and the groups moving within it, are
| not monolithic. Different groups and agencies have very
| different policies regarding how to deal with journalists
| specifically.
|
| DoD has been very up front - it's pay to play, as you noted.
| Stay in the lines, do what we want, keep your eyes on the
| narrative we're interested in, and opportunities and access
| with magically open up for you. Step outside the dotted line
| and whoops, you're in a warzone buddy and you need to leave
| now, base commander said so, sorry.
|
| Whereas US foreign correspondents were, and as far as I can
| tell still are, entirely off limits for intelligence agencies
| to recruit from, work with, or even really interact with.
| State has put down as US policy that we respect the
| institution of (US) journalism, so no co-opting them. It's
| kind of a point of pride. Now, that doesn't mean avoid lying
| to them, no selling them, or just doing any of the various
| government tricks to throw a journalist onto a particular
| path, it just means none of the very obvious "you're going to
| drink the Kool aid" that DoD does.
|
| Of course this is in abstract, I'm sure there are exceptions
| and people who broke the rule, but compared to the British
| intelligence services, who absolutely co-opted any and all
| foreign correspondent they could get their hands on, both as
| intelligence sources and to plant stories, or the
| Soviet/Russian Fed groups, the US has been relatively
| principled... relatively being the key word
| pessimizer wrote:
| Their best method is hiding editorial and misinformation with
| references to earlier stories where the opinion or falsehood is
| in a (sometimes unattributed) quote, but in the later story is
| stated as a well-known fact. That's why they're in court with
| Palin right now.
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| I agree. The problem isn't just cherry-picked truths either. It
| is the use of non-sequitur arguments by "fact-checkers" like
| Politifact, WT.Social, Snopes, etc. to draw false conclusions
| from various things that are indeed true.
|
| For example, WT.Social had a big list of accomplishments that
| "the right" claimed Trump had done while in office. The entire
| point of the list, put up by one of the employees at WT.Social,
| was to crowd-source arguments they could use to claim each of
| the items on this list was either false or mostly false. One of
| the items, I remember, was regarding Trump giving money to
| HBCUs. Trump definitely did provide them the funding. That fact
| is well-documented and easy to confirm; however, WT.Social
| marked it as "false" because, "Obama gave HBCUs a lot of money
| too, but the media didn't cover it as much."
|
| Trump did give a lot of funding to HCBUs and so did Obama, but
| let's say the media covered Trump in 100 articles and only
| covered Obama in 1. The only logical conclusion that can be
| drawn from that scenario is that the media didn't cover Obama's
| funding as much. It does nothing to negate Trump's funding, as
| WT.Social was trying to claim. Their entire conclusion was
| false.
|
| This same sort of illogical nonsense is used by fact-checkers
| all the time and it is extremely annoying. I want facts, not
| opinion/propaganda, but they're hard to get nowadays. What's
| worse is that you see these types of arguments being parroted
| back on social media platforms by consumers of such propaganda
| too. It's a problem on both sides of the political fence and is
| causing a huge division in America (and elsewhere) that doesn't
| need to exist.
| kilna wrote:
| I have a friend who used to work for Snopes. The organization
| absolutely engages in what you describe. The sad thing is,
| it's not some big conspiracy, it's what humans do naturally
| and subconsciously to shore up their cognitive dissonance...
| particularly when faced with uncomfortable facts pertaining
| to establishment systems, organizations and identity
| politicians they supported.
|
| The Snopes article that made me take notice of this bias was
| the one letting Clinton off the hook for equating millennials
| to "basement dwellers" while speaking to wealthy donors
| during the 2016 election.
|
| Clinton never used the exact sequence of words "basement
| dwellers". Clinton absolutely, 100%, used the exact phrase
| "they are living in their parents' basement" to describe
| Sanders supports. If you actually find the text of what she
| said in that meeting, putting the basements statement in
| context, it was absolutely dripping with derision. The cherry
| picked position of asserting that "basement dweller"
| specifically wasn't used... is fundamentally meaningless, and
| is exactly the same sort of straw-man you were describing
| above.
|
| She also said in the very same leak (but curiously not
| included by Snopes in their article):
|
| "And on the other side, there's just a deep desire to believe
| that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what
| we've done hasn't gone far enough, and that we just need to,
| you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that
| means, and half the people don't know what that means, but
| it's something that they deeply feel."
|
| There is no way to read that statement without it dripping
| with condescension. Without full context, what Snopes
| advanced was patent misrepresentation... and then on top of
| that to call the "basement dweller" accusation untrue...?
| Bullshit. It's "mixed" at best. Any intellectually honest
| person with full context would recognize her statements for
| what they were.
|
| [1] https://www.snopes.com/hillary-clintons-basement-
| dwellers/
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You believe that the NYT has a goal of misleading people with
| facts?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I do. The NYT is chock full of partisans who seem to have
| little to no apprehension about framing "the facts" in
| whatever way helps to shape public opinion in a direction
| that aligns with their worldview. All the while presenting
| themselves as some beacon of objective truth and journalistic
| integrity.
|
| And, they're notoriously obtuse to work with. Remember what
| they did to Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex)?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Apparently, you see no difference in the goals of "shaping
| public opinion" and misleading people (with or without
| facts).
|
| I'm not interested in defending the NYT. I'm just
| interested in the judgements of other people about the NYT
| that seem to me to be, shall we say, a little over the top.
|
| And note: I think it would as true of SSC/SA as the NYT
| that they seek to shape public opinion in a direction that
| aligns with their worldview. If you speak publically, and
| don't speak complete jibberish, what else are you doing
| than seeking to shape public opinion?
| jimmydoreornot wrote:
| I concur that the term "shaping public opinion" is more
| accurate in many cases, but not in others. There are
| enough stories where the author clearly understood
| something about the story and attempted to convey
| something else to the reader for political/cultural
| effect. For example, not reporting on the race of a black
| perpetrator but always reporting on the race of a black
| victim.
|
| There is a less activist way of presenting the news that
| doesn't attempt to "shape public opinion". I'm old enough
| to remember Walter Cronkite. I've read (some of)
| Manufacturing Consent. Today's media in America (almost
| all of it, NYT being no exception) heavily shapes public
| opinion, turning news reporting into a political
| battleground.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I sense debating my choice of the words "shaping public
| opinion" is going to be tangential. While what you said
| "If you speak publically, and don't speak complete
| jibberish, what else are you doing than seeking to shape
| public opinion?" is true, that isn't the heart of what I
| was getting at.
|
| If the NYT is going to brand itself as some paragon of
| journalistic integrity, I would expect them to be
| dramatically more consistent with _how_ they choose to
| cover and editorialize things.
| sophacles wrote:
| Another interesting way to lie with facts is to use one
| scapegoat as a factual example, but ignore all the other
| factual examples.
|
| For instance, right wing hacks love to point out the flaws in
| NYT over and over on thier quest for "media is bad", while
| ignoring:
|
| * they too are media
|
| * there are just as many examples in their own organization and
| almost every other
|
| *choosing to play dumb that they choose the examples as part of
| a targeted smear campaign
| orangecat wrote:
| _use one scapegoat as a factual example_
|
| _For instance, right wing hacks_
|
| Hmm
| [deleted]
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Misrepresenting facts in this way is still a form of lying.
| Speaking technical truths doesn't change that. Most lies aren't
| complete fabrications, honestly, even when they do contain a
| few.
| clairity wrote:
| i was told growing up that this was the difference between
| being honest and being truthful: honesty is about telling
| allcomers everything you know (or believe, with appropriate
| caveats) to be true, whereas being truthful is simply not
| advancing as truth things you know (or believe) to be false.
|
| in any case, i've watched npr and nyt, two of my mostly
| former news sources, wrench from simply being biased to being
| outright hysterically partisan and dishonest. covid
| (over-)coverage being the most blatant, but it's been a long
| disintegration of truth and trust.
|
| this is just a little part of the overall movement toward
| captured capital and centralized power, sweeping up news
| media along the way (note that these are editorial decisions,
| with editors seeking favor from the powerful). we're in for a
| rocky ride.
|
| p.s. - a little tremor hit LA while writing this...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Through 200x, NPR was always having CIA flacks on. They
| seem not to be doing that anymore, since about
| Manning/Snowden.
| pphysch wrote:
| YMMV but every time I happened to be tuned into NPR
| (world) news I get an unhealthy dose of State Dept-
| curated misinformation on topics like Russia, China,
| Iran, etc.
|
| If anything changed in the post- _Collateral Murder_
| world, its that the Washington 's content filtering and
| propaganda subtly intensified.
| ncmncm wrote:
| NPR seem to get all their "world news" patched through
| from the BBC, which we know is badly compromised.
| zaphar wrote:
| The most effective form of lying is lying by omission. It's
| harder to detect, easier to defend as just ignorance, and is
| perhaps more effective than outright false claims.
| [deleted]
| ksdale wrote:
| It's always interesting to me, the mental gymnastics people
| will do to convince themselves that they're not doing
| something they believe to be morally wrong. Like, if your
| intent is to mislead, what do you care if you're technically
| telling the truth?
| areyousure wrote:
| In case anyone is curious, one can read the following _front
| page_ article from March 8, 2003 to see how the NYT discussed
| reports from Blix and ElBaradei: https://archive.is/EdUCX
| abraae wrote:
| This article is desperately in need of some examples. I can't
| believe there isn't one.
| paulsutter wrote:
| Imagine papers with conflicting results. One side cites one
| subset of papers. The other side cites the other subset. Both
| feel the other are are disingenuous.
|
| Both sides are citing true facts ("these papers exist"), both
| sides are wrong (the data is in fact inconclusive)
| metaphor wrote:
| I thought the generalized examples here[1] were objectively
| adequate.
|
| Using real world examples in this context strikes me as dancing
| into a mine field and a dismissal of the nuanced exercise
| towards understanding that the author suggests[2].
|
| [1]
| https://consilienceproject.org/content/images/size/w1000/202...
|
| [2]
| https://consilienceproject.org/content/images/size/w1000/202...
| blueflow wrote:
| "The Rainbow has 5 colors"
| dang wrote:
| That may be a strategic decision. The minute they provide
| examples, they start losing anyone in their audience who is
| pre-committed politically to that example.
| throwawayarnty wrote:
| One example: people who simply state "women make 82 cents for
| every dollar a man makes" to imply the advantage of being a man
| vs a woman.
|
| The reality of how this number is calculated (eg averages
| across professions, even though men and women tend to work
| different professions, part time vs full time is not taken into
| account) suggests the conclusions that come from this 82 cents
| number is more nuanced than the initial statement.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| Overtime is also not taken into account in those
| calculations. Men tend to work more overtime than women.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| And then you can take another step and ask why professions
| dominated by women in general are less well paid than similar
| ones dominated by men, and why it is mostly women who reduce
| their work hours while the kids are small and why not more
| men do the same.
| drran wrote:
| > why it is mostly women who reduce their work hours while
| the kids are small and why not more men do the same.
|
| Because evolution did this decision for us. Woman stays
| with children, while man risk their lives, because those,
| which did the opposite, lose evolutionary competition.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| No, it didn't. You may choose to follow old traditions
| that don't make sense any more, but that is something you
| choose. There are very few jobs today where physical
| strength make a difference, and before the industrial
| revolution the fathers were mostly at home and played
| important parts in raising the children.
| drran wrote:
| If you look at birth and death rates, you will see that
| more boys are born, but mortality for boys is higher[0].
| Moreover, you will see same numbers as for salary
| difference. Natural selection did not stop that, so it's
| beneficial for society somehow.
|
| [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/infant-death-
| rates-by-cau...
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Your link says that infant mortality rate is slightly
| higher for boys. How is that supposed to help your
| argument?
|
| > Moreover, you will see same numbers as for salary
| difference.
|
| Is your argument that since there seem to be a
| correlation between mortality rate for boys and higher
| salary for men, that there is some kind of causation that
| make it good? You really have to expand on that if you
| want to make it comprehensible.
|
| > Natural selection did not stop that, so it's beneficial
| for society somehow.
|
| Here you reveal that you don't understand natural
| selection. Natural selection doesn't select for what is
| beneficial for society at all. Often what is good for the
| gene is bad for society, and the other way around.
|
| Natural selection works on time scale much longer than
| the industrial revolution, and most factors are probably
| older than agriculture. It would be rather stupid to let
| what was useful behaviour 100k years ago control our
| lives today. We live in very different environments, in
| very different societies, and faces very different
| dangers.
| andrekandre wrote:
| so is the point that difference of salary of men vs women
| is because of natural selection?
| xdennis wrote:
| Because the jobs are less valuable, not due to who's doing
| them but due to the market (i.e. all of us) seeing them as
| less valuable.
|
| Teachers and nannies aren't paid a whole lot because
| they're easily replaceable, not because they're jobs
| dominated by women.
|
| Doctors used to be exclusively men. Have salaries gone down
| now that women make up a significant percent of the number
| of doctors?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Teachers and nannies aren't paid a whole lot because
| they're easily replaceable
|
| I don't know any nannies, but it's not true that teachers
| are easily replaceable. Not good ones, anyway.
|
| Good teachers need to show these skills:
|
| * Classroom management (possibly in classes with
| disturbed kids)
|
| * Curriculum knowledge (requires regular training)
|
| * Social work skills
|
| * Child psychology
|
| * Understanding of various learning impediments
|
| The fact that teachers are cheap is not evidence that
| they're easily replaced.
| nec4b wrote:
| Unfortunately we don't hire only good teachers.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Even bad teachers have to meet the standards, which are
| usually set by law. A preschool teacher, who often gets
| paid just over minimum wage, usually requires a 2 year
| degree (for head start-like programs). A teacher? 4 year
| degree, with a preference for a masters and in many
| places, absolutely no pay during the summer months.
|
| It isn't like any other industry hires only "good"
| people, though, so calling out teaching for that -
| especially if your area has a shortage - seems a bit
| unfair.
| Jensson wrote:
| But those standards doesn't mean anything if they are
| still bad teachers. Would you hire a software engineer
| with a 4 year degree who can't code? No, of course not.
| But would you hire a teacher with a 4 year degree who
| can't teach? Of course you would! You just need them to
| tick a box, their skill as a teacher isn't relevant, if
| they have a piece of paper they meet the bar and are
| hired.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| In general, teachers start out with a bit of experience
| as most schools require teachers to, you know, teach as
| part of their schooling. In other words, you simply
| aren't hiring someone that doesn't know how to teach
| _and_ has demonstrated it in the classroom.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Of course you would!
|
| I suspect that perhaps you are not a teacher, and have
| never applied for teaching work. Or maybe you live
| somewhere where school hiring practices are _very_
| irresponsible.
|
| My daughter is a teacher who has just changed jobs. The
| process was something like this:
|
| * Apply (CV, plus extensive covering letter)
|
| * Prospective new head knows old head (they all know one
| another) so they talk
|
| * Candidate gets an interview, and has to prepare a class
|
| * Interview day: candidate delivers prepared class,
| observed by head and head-of-year
|
| * Candidate is interviewed at length by a panel of three
| teachers, including head
|
| * Decision made subject to references
|
| * References taken up; award position
|
| What you've described is a process that isn't even
| appropriate for a supermarket checkout clerk.
| coliveira wrote:
| Companies don't hire only good software engineers either,
| they hire plenty of ineffective ones. I don't see this
| changing their salaries.
| Jensson wrote:
| Companies also fire a lot of bad software engineer and
| have technical interviews so there is pressure to
| perform. You never see teachers fired for being bad at
| teaching. They only get fired when they do something
| illegal like harass their students or when they refuse to
| go to work. If companies hired every person with a CS
| degree from any school to work as a software engineer and
| never fired anyone for bad performance you'd see software
| engineering salaries sink like a rock as well.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > They only get fired when they do something illegal
|
| Here in the UK, people have employment rights, including
| the right not to be dismissed without process. That
| involves warning the employee twice verbally, putting in
| place measures to help them improve their performance,
| and then a final written warning. Teachers here are
| unionised; they can take their employer to an employment
| tribunal, which is a kind of court, for the offence of
| Unfair Dismissal. It takes time and money to fire someone
| for underperformance.
|
| Consequently recruitment is done rather carefully - more
| carefully than in many software companies, judging by the
| calibre of some of the colleagues I've worked with.
|
| FTR I used to be a school governor in a state-run primary
| school.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| The jobs are viewed less valuable once women start
| working them. As in, a profession that was male-dominated
| starts paying less once it becomes the opposite [1}. It
| isn't really fair to use doctors as and example since it
| is still a male-dominated profession, with over 60% being
| male [2]. I'd also mention that obviously, teachers
| aren't _that_ easily replaced, considering the shortage
| that has only gotten worse during covid [3]. A lot of
| states in the US will basically let anyone be a
| substitute: I know of at least one person that is
| teaching high school without a teaching license, but they
| might be technically a long-term substitute.
|
| [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-
| take-over... [2] https://www.aamc.org/news-
| insights/nation-s-physician-workfo... [3]
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59687947
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Are doctors being paid less? Isn't this about supply and
| demand? If you flood the market with women that used to
| be housewives, the salaries will go down. But high demans
| fields stay highly paid, even increase.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Obviously, the job market doesn't respond to demand in
| that way. Otherwise, more places would be paying more
| right now with the current shortages. Teachers, for
| example, should be getting raises.
|
| I was responding to the fact that doctors _aren 't_
| female-dominated right now, a point you missed. Which
| they aren't. We haven't flooded it with a bunch of women:
| We have a limited capacity to train doctors. Nor are we
| getting folks in the market that used to be housewives:
| That time period has long since moved, though in many
| places, women still carry household responsibilities in
| addition to work. Rather than a flood, women are
| _replacing_ men, mostly. Which is generally how it goes:
| Women replace men in some fields, and _then_ pay goes
| down.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > It isn't really fair to use doctors as and example
| since it is still a male-dominated profession, with over
| 60% being male
|
| from the second link: One of the steadiest movements has
| been the rise in women as a percentage of the physician
| workforce: It rose from 28.3% in 2007 to 36.3% last year,
| according to the AAMC's Physician Specialty Data Reports
| from 2008 to 2020:
|
| 2007 -- 28.3% 2010 -- 30.4% 2013 -- 32.6% 2015 -- 34.0%
| 2017 -- 35.2% 2019 -- 36.3%
|
| the above growth rates are not domination unless you're
| talking about women being dominant.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| > Because the jobs are less valuable, not due to who's
| doing them but due to the market (i.e. all of us) seeing
| them as less valuable.
|
| It is a rather sad and naive view of the value of work if
| you think that it is decided by market value. My work as
| a developer has a high market value because what I do is
| generating revenue for my employer. The work of the
| teacher who shapes the future of our children or the work
| of nurse that take care of our dying parents don't
| generate any revenue, and thus has a lower market value,
| but I, and I think we as a society should, value it much
| more.
|
| Good teachers and good nannies aren't easier to replace
| than good carpenters or construction workers. But since
| many men who are in charge of setting salaries don't
| understand that they aren't as well paid.
|
| > Have salaries gone down now that women make up a
| significant percent of the number of doctors?
|
| Yes. I don't have the time to dig up the sources right
| now, and I don't remember seeing it specifically about
| doctors, but in many lines of work the relative salaries
| have gone down when traditionally male professions have
| been taken over more and more by women.
| clairity wrote:
| (good) teachers generate great value and positive
| externalities into the future, but are simply unable to
| capture that value generation because of the time factor.
| many teachers accept pride and esteem in lieu of economic
| gain, but they should get paid accordingly as well if we
| had a fair politicoeconomic system.
|
| economics in general has no answer for this differential
| temporal factor in value creation vs value capture. it's
| all predicated on immediate, atomic transactions,
| although the concept of externalities at least
| acknowledges the issue.
| rajin444 wrote:
| > The work of the teacher who shapes the future of our
| children or the work of nurse that take care of our dying
| parents don't generate any revenue, and thus has a lower
| market value, but I, and I think we as a society should,
| value it much more.
|
| Teachers are glorified babysitters in the vast majority
| of instances due to many countries making truancy
| illegal. Yes, a great teacher is extremely valuable, but
| the vast majority of teachers are not great because there
| is not a high demand for great teachers. It's even worse
| that we're ruining the environment for both great
| teachers and great students by forcing students who have
| no interest in learning to be there.
| kareemm wrote:
| > Good teachers and good nannies aren't easier to replace
| than good carpenters or construction workers. But since
| many men who are in charge of setting salaries don't
| understand that they aren't as well paid.
|
| I'm not sure teachers and nannies are good examples.
| Public school teachers are largely unionized which would
| eliminate differences in pay between men and women. And
| many nannies are effectively small business people who
| set their own rates.
| the-alt-one wrote:
| >Public school teachers are largely unionized which would
| eliminate differences in pay between men and women.
|
| No, it wouldn't. Why would it?
| kareemm wrote:
| Maybe I misunderstand how unions work but my
| understanding is that unionized pay is based on
| experience levels and not gender.
| YATA0 wrote:
| >Yes. I don't have the time to dig up the sources right
| now, and I don't remember seeing it specifically about
| doctors, but in many lines of work the relative salaries
| have gone down when traditionally male professions have
| been taken over more and more by women.
|
| No. I don't have the time to dig up the sources right
| now, and I don't remember seeing it specifically about
| doctors, but in many lines of work the relative salaries
| have gone up when traditionally male professions have
| been taken over more and more by women.
|
| _" That which can be asserted without evidence..."_
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Broken_Hippo dug up some, so here you go: [0]
|
| and some of the research behind the article: [1]
|
| The article contains quite a few interesting links to
| research if you are interested to learn more.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-
| take-over...
|
| [1] https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-
| abstract/88/2/865/223534...
| known wrote:
| erwincoumans wrote:
| cherry picked article :)
| bjoli wrote:
| This inevitably makes me think of a video about how meat
| consumption is not as bad by "things I've learned" on youtube.
| Search for that name and "meat" and you will inevitably find it.
| I thiught the claims in the video sounded too good to be true, so
| I read the study most of the claims in the video were based on.
|
| They were comparing against a scenario where we kept producing
| the food fed to animals, but that humans had to eat it. Which
| meant no actual land gains, only a modest reduction in co2
| emissions, and that people would become unhealthy by eating
| 4500kcal/day, mostly from corn.
|
| Even worse than the 3.1mn views is that the study in question was
| covered positively on TV and in newspapers.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Faster heustistic is to check not whether the facts are true, but
| if the implied conflict that connects them is real.
|
| The old adage about how "dog bites man," may be true but it's not
| news, whereas "dog bites capitalist oppressor" is essentially all
| news these days, and it may even be construed as not entirely
| untrue, even though it seems obvious the dog has not developed
| class consciousness and thrown off the leash of exploitation and
| seized the means of food production in its righteous jaws of
| justice on behalf of the global oppressed, but by manufacturing
| the conflict that links the facts, an entirely contrived
| fabrication qualifies as not entirely un-true.
|
| Simply, just ask whether the facts are used as decoration and
| plumage for what reduces to an extravagent lie.
| Nursie wrote:
| > What if we really wanted to understand what was going on in a
| way that accounted for all the facts and their various frames and
| interpretations?
|
| Then we are demonstrating a level of good faith and interest that
| seems missing in most discourse.
|
| I like the drive behind this - to really get to the bottom of
| things and promote rational comprehension rather than have people
| simply sniping at each other with misunderstood datapoints - but
| I'm not sure a lot of the people who are engaging in such
| behaviour are really that interested. As mentioned in the
| article, what they are really after is ammunition.
|
| Still, I welcome this, as it's far better than just throwing up
| our collective hands and deciding any attempt to improve the
| quality of public discussion is necessarily censorship.
| ouid wrote:
| This conversation isn't formal enough to be meaningful.
|
| If you want to talk meaningfully about how "facts" are used, you
| need to be able to invoke any notion at all of propositions and
| implications. It doesn't matter if your implications are
| mathematical in nature or scientific in nature or just
| correlation, facts exist in the structure imposed by implication.
| And facts without an implication structure are _useless_.
|
| In order to mislead with a "true" fact A, it needs to already be
| the case that there is a false fact of the form A implies B
| already sitting in there. The combination of a belief in A
| implies B (false) with this newly introduced belief A (true)
| yields a belief in B (false).
|
| The essence of "lying by telling the truth" is then just finding
| these false implications, and exploiting them.
|
| Fortunately, It's much easier to fact check implications. If A
| implies B is false, then you just need to come up with an example
| of A and not B.
|
| Unfortunately changes to belief do not always propagate reliably,
| and the combinatorial game is against the implication checkers.
| For any given true fact A there are as many potential false
| beliefs of the form A implies B as there are propositions B.
|
| Fortunately, most humans make do with as few (quantified)
| implications as they can. Rules are hard to remember. Getting rid
| of false implications is much easier when you can replace them
| with "true" implications.
|
| I suppose I am arguing then that the solution to all of this is
| education that doesn't teach facts, but rather implications
| (which are themselves just higher order facts).
| afro88 wrote:
| This is super interesting. Do you mind giving a concrete
| example?
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Getting to the truth is really difficult.
|
| For example, in a court of law, where you have a handful of
| jurors, some witnesses, a carefully curated set of rules, and
| highly trained professionals guiding the process. Errors are
| made. The truth is not always found and an innocent person gets
| locked up or a guilty one walks free.
|
| Epistemology is an ancient practice. In the western tradition
| this was first pointed out over 2,000 years ago.
|
| Then there is the problem that human beings are not rational
| actors and it gets a whole lot messier.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| Slightly different perspective: facts are completely unimportant,
| because:
|
| - what seems like a fact may not be a "fact" at all, it may be a
| misunderstanding
|
| - knowing all the known facts may give you a false sense of
| understanding of the truth; one more fact can change your entire
| outlook... and yet one more can change that... you don't know the
| facts you don't know
|
| If certain truths are probable, the facts known today (or
| perceived as knowable today) should not get in the way of
| exploring them.
|
| Do not let any fact or a collection of facts get in the way of
| your exploration of the truth.
|
| If one is extremely conservative, it may seem like a good idea to
| only stick to what is already known (i.e. the "facts") but even
| then, because of the fact that you can never be sure that
| everything there is to know is known at this time, one should
| still keep an open mind.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| You should read Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations.
|
| You can be open to new evidence defining what objective truth
| is without dismissing the existence of objective truth due to
| unknown unknowns.
| specialist wrote:
| Tinkerbell School of Progress. Clap louder and surely Tinkerbell
| will fly. Like the evergreen advice to teach critical thinking.
| Certain to work. Next time.
|
| There's no profit in pursuing "truth" in the face of tenacious
| anti-truth. Truthiness is an outgrowth of identity. And identity
| is impervious to logic, reason, facts.
|
| The best we can do is help ourselves navigate the chaos.
|
| It's a real simple checklist:
|
| - Share your work.
|
| - Cite your sources.
|
| - Sign your name.
|
| And then you can start productive analysis, fact checking,
| verification. Anything less should be treated as gossip,
| propaganda, or trolling (distraction).
|
| Lastly, I have no idea what to do about identity.
| groby_b wrote:
| Identity isn't entirely impervious to logic. But if you can
| create the impression that your identity is under threat - by
| setting up an either/or scenario - it means, to your amygdala
| at least, your survival is at stake. Very straightforward way
| to shortcut rational thinking.
|
| The problem is that journalism stokes the formation of camps by
| a) conflating ideas and identities, b) bothsidesing everything,
| and so creating artificial identities to be perceived as
| neutral, and c) knowingly exploiting that "fear sells" and
| targeting the identities they manufacture.
|
| Which then becomes ripe pickings for any sociopath out for
| their own interests.
|
| The only way I'm aware of that can overcome this at scale is
| forming a larger group identity that's more inclusive. But that
| only seems to work if there's a large outgroup you can unite
| against, as far as I can tell.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| I saw an example of how one could make the claim that 50% of
| infected are vaccinated and it worked like this:
|
| population of 100, 84 are vaxxed, 16 are unvaxxed. 2 infected in
| the vaxxed pool, and 2 infected in the unvaxxed pool. If you then
| look only at the total infected you can factually claim that 50%
| of infected are vaccinated and thus peddle whatever grift you
| want. But even though it's a true statement, it's a gross
| misrepresentation of reality that hides the important fact that
| only 2/84 vaxxed people got infected and thus you should get
| vaccinated.
|
| And that's the world we live in. Those grifters have huge
| incentives to generate this type of misinformation. Whereas the
| scientific community has no skin in the game like the grifters to
| communicate their information. The grifter's statistic is
| concise, easier to understand and plays into whatever biases the
| audience has. The scientific person's main job has never been to
| communicate clearly their findings to a regular audience, and
| that's where the system fails. Misalignment of incentives. The
| grifter needs to interact with a regular audience to peddle
| whatever products/podcasts/supplements for a living and will find
| these technically true statistics which muddle the water. The
| science person needs to write grants and papers that get judged
| by a small slice of society and are mostly confined to interact
| within a bubble. There's a giant asymmetry here and we don't
| address it systematically, we just embark on twitter-shouting
| matches that mostly have the effect of disillusioning the
| sciences while the grifters walk away with a wad of cash.
| bena wrote:
| When people talk about "lying with statistics", this is what
| they mean.
|
| Because when people hear "50% of the infected were vaccinated",
| they're going to misapply the symmetric property and assume 50%
| of the vaccinated were infected. Even though these are entirely
| separate things.
|
| Edit: You realize that I'm agreeing with the person I'm
| replying to and providing a slight paraphrase to what he's
| saying, right?
| nvusuvu wrote:
| Great, easy to understand example of a statement of 'fact'
| without context.
| rory wrote:
| To be honest I don't find that sort of claim overly deceptive.
| % of infected that are vaccinated is an important metric
| because it helps describe the further reduction in infection
| that is possible through further vaccination. That's an
| obviously different metric than _infection rate_ , and should
| be understood as such. The root problem is widespread
| statistical illiteracy.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Looks like a wonderful project! Society'd seem to do well to
| focus on how we can have real, honest dialogs. Current forums for
| stuff like political debates have malicious, deceptive strategies
| that may work better than honest ones, which just seems like a
| bad thing for society as a whole.
|
| The solution'd seem to be to have cultural dialogs, e.g. on
| politics, occur on platforms where optimal strategies are
| constructive. This is, where deceptive strategies would lose out
| to honest ones.
| oreally wrote:
| "There are no facts, only interpretations." - Nietzsche
| a_imho wrote:
| "I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself" - Winston
| S. Churchill
| dang wrote:
| That's not an authentic quote.
| https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill
| tgv wrote:
| Which in and of itself doesn't mean anything. At face value, it
| promotes extreme relativism, but contradicts itself. Nietzsche
| as the proto-edge-lord.
| blueflow wrote:
| He is exactly right. The universe as it is and how we humans
| perceive it are two different worlds. Many words that we
| consider "abstract" are made up and have no equivalent in the
| physical universe, but we still use them because it fulfills
| some purpose for us.
| tgv wrote:
| > Many words that we consider "abstract" are made up
|
| What have you been smoking? All words are made up. But that
| isn't related to the question fact vs interpretation at
| all. The word "Earth" is made up, your name is made up,
| "human" is made up, the air that you breathe is made up,
| yet you are (most likely) a human on Earth, and you'd hate
| it if that air suddenly disappeared.
|
| Anyway, the quote contradicts itself/reduces itself to
| ravings of a lunatic, so isn't worth taking seriously.
| blueflow wrote:
| "Earth", "Air" and "Human" are not abstract nouns because
| they have physical things we can match those words to.
|
| Contrast that to abstract nouns like "truth", "danger" or
| "happiness", which are actually interpretations of
| something other. Statements using these tend to be
| opinions or non-verifiable. Fact-Checking doesn't work
| for them.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| That supports what @tgv is saying, not the quote.
|
| > "There are no facts, only interpretations.
|
| Too absolute, some things are objective, some subjective.
|
| Not everything is subjective, like he's implying.
|
| The quote sounds deep, but it falls apart to 3rd grade
| reading comprehension.
| blueflow wrote:
| I was more arguing his post. In hindsight, i think he
| interpreted the "have no physical equivalent" part
| differently. I meant it more like, that what the words
| are referring to, the concepts behind it. Not the words
| itself.
|
| I'm still saying Nietzsche is right with the quote. That
| he is right does not forbid to mentally work with the
| concept of objectivity. See it more of an invitation to
| question the objectivity of everything.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| > That he is right does not forbid to mentally work with
| the concept of objectivity.
|
| Yeah, that doesn't mean anything. The quote taken
| directly makes it wrong as it conflicts with objectivity,
| any other interpretation makes it edgy, fanciful, and
| pointless, as GP pointed out.
|
| > See it more of an invitation to question the
| objectivity of everything.
|
| That's what everyone already does when they reason
| through something objective. The quote is un-profound in
| that interpretation (which imo is reaching)
| zekica wrote:
| Scientific method tries to get as close as possible to facts.
|
| The issue is that popular press and "influencers" ignore
| limitations in studies and always tell just their
| interpretations while pointing to "the science".
| Chris2048 wrote:
| It's not even limitations. It's studies that are non-peer
| reviewed, or non-replicated (not failed to replicate
| sometimes, just hasn't yet been replicated).
|
| Especially certain subjects where poor, biased, studies seem
| rife. They take a study and run with it because a scientific
| study is "science", even if a study is just one step one the
| way to an accepted truth.
|
| Sometimes is more explicit, cherry-picking certain studies
| over others; possibly even dismissing those with the "bad"
| result as biased (or *-ist).
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Not all science is equal, either. A paper published in an
| evolutionary psychology journal is not as valid as the
| theory of evolution itself. Yet, we tend to lump everything
| in under "Science".
| rory wrote:
| Aside from interpretation, a major issue is the press and
| "influencers" selecting to promote studies that affirm their
| preconceived notions, and simply ignoring other studies that
| contradict them.
| dandanua wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Besides being flamebait and against the site guidelines,
| that's a painfully shallow dismissal, and we don't want those
| here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I appreciate that they didn't blame one "side" here, just
| described what's happening.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Adversarial wielding of facts could be the basis for a new model
| of public knowledge, one that corrects the shortcomings of
| current news media and social networks.
|
| Causal mapping [1] websites can aggregate the back and forth of
| heated discussions, eliminating emotional responses and
| distilling the core ideas of each opposing position. Such
| compilation of facts an argument in a readable, neutral format
| (e.g. see Kialo)[2] could work like the academic debates of old,
| allowing facts to be analysed in context and the validity of
| arguments to be tested on their own merits, not on their
| emotional appeal.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causal_mapping_softwar...
|
| [2] https://www.kialo.com/
| donw wrote:
| The problem is policy.
|
| Imagine two friends, Alice and Bob. Alice thinks COVID is not a
| problem. Doesn't mask, hasn't had a single shot, all the rest.
| Bob is terrified of COVID. Masks up at home, space bubble helmet
| outside, all the rest.
|
| The only outcome that works is Alice and Bob agreeing that they
| have different risk preferences. That they each should live their
| lives in accordance, but that they have no right to force each
| other to adopt the same behaviors. Bob gets used to doing a lot
| of stuff over Zoom, and Alice gets used to doing a lot more Zoom
| calls than she did before.
|
| What if, instead, Bob tries to force the entire world to wear
| masks all the time, and undergo an endless stream of boosters,
| all in order to satisfy his risk preference? Alice will respond
| in-kind, and now we're in a tit-for-tat situation. Endless
| retaliation.
|
| Now, imagine that Bob has political power, and can mandate his
| desires into law. Bob has now used deadly force -- the police --
| to coerce Alice into doing what he wants.
|
| Alice, being a big fan of consent, is having none of it... and
| that's where we are today.
|
| Same would be true if the roles were reversed.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| stirfish wrote:
| [deleted]
| Chris2048 wrote:
| There's a big difference between "can't go to a restaurant
| without vaccine" and "must be vaccinated".
| coliveira wrote:
| Imagine two friends, Alice and Bob. Alice thinks that wearing
| seat belts in airplanes is not necessary...
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| What if Bob is afraid of other people firing their guns in
| their backyard because he doesn't want to get killed by stray
| bullets. It just doesn't work anymore because the risk Alice
| and Bob are taking depends more on what other people do than
| what they themselves do. After all Bob isn't gonna kill himself
| with a stray bullet. Bob not shooting guns but Alice shooting
| guns while pointing in Bob's house direction doesn't solve the
| problem.
| mindslight wrote:
| Thank you for your example of how to mislead with non-factual
| strawmen. This example might be connected to reality if:
|
| 1. There actually was a law requiring individuals "wear masks
| all the time".
|
| 2. There actually was a law requiring individuals to get an
| "endless stream of boosters".
|
| 3. Alice respected the boundaries of private businesses that
| made wearing respiratory protection or vaccination a
| requirement of associating with them.
|
| 4. Alice respected personal preferences of people wearing
| respiratory protection, rather than violating their personal
| space or perhaps even assaulting them.
|
| 5. Alice paid the costs of her own healthcare, and/or her
| "insurance" company were efficient enough to charge for her
| expected increased costs.
|
| 6. Healthcare providers were able to freely disassociate with
| Alice as to not have an undue burden on their resources due to
| the results of Alice's choices.
|
| 7. Alice displayed rational recognition of the scientific and
| legal realities she was dealing with, rather that irrational
| rejection of such.
|
| 8. Alice displayed some understanding of historical precedents,
| as pandemics are infrequent events that only appear novel.
|
| I'm a libertarian, so if you want to discuss practical ways of
| making it so that different value judgements can coexist, I'm
| all for it. It starts with acknowledging the existing non-
| independence like the points I listed, and will generally be
| about nuanced corrections to the medical consensus rather than
| wholesale rejection. But really, it's fallacious to frame the
| larger situation as being about individual freedom when the
| overriding characteristic is political herd behavior. What has
| really happened is an abrupt change in prevailing conditions,
| combined with professional political machines preaching
| simplistic easy answers that play to peoples' biases.
| stirfish wrote:
| >Alice respected personal preferences of people wearing
| respiratory protection,
|
| I've found that a lot of people think of the masks like a gas
| mask - supposed to keep everything bad out. They are more
| like the breath guard at the salad bar - keeping you from
| exhaling droplets six feet in front of you.
|
| Bob's mask protects Alice more than it protects Bob.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i've stopped wearing a mask period. risk isn't declared
| const
| stirfish wrote:
| There are like 70 ICU beds left in Dallas. May the odds
| be ever in your favor.
|
| https://covid-texas.csullender.com/?tsa=E
| mindslight wrote:
| If you're still making do with an ersatz cloth mask, sure.
| I've been wearing a P100 from the start of the pandemic.
| Both bowls of political Kool Aid are actively harmful -
| framing PPE as being about protecting others has also
| damaged the discourse.
|
| Edit: also, I do agree that keeping stuff out of the air is
| preferable to filtering it after the fact (especially with
| mucous membranes etc). This concern is addressed somewhat
| by (3), and also by the additional point that Alice needs
| to demonstrate empathy of understanding and respecting
| Bob's choice as well.
| stirfish wrote:
| Where did you get your P100? Everywhere around me has
| been out of both those and oxygen tanks. It's made
| welding pretty difficult.
|
| Edit: I appreciate your thorough and patient response to
| the parent comment.
| mindslight wrote:
| I had them before the pandemic, but I've seen them in
| stock quite regularly. Zoro appears to have my 3M 7503
| half-face piece and 2297 filters in stock right now. For
| welding you might want a proper vapor filter though
| (60921?). 3M has some nice pdfs that list all the
| different options.
|
| For pandemic usage when I need to filter my exhale, I
| disabled the check valves by popping the mask apart,
| removing all 3 valve flaps, and sealing up the output
| hole. This makes air flow through the filters
| bidirectionally. I've also seen a 3d-printed adapter for
| the 6100 series (I think) that attaches a third filter to
| the output. Separate input and output filters is probably
| a better way to go.
| stirfish wrote:
| Thank you. I'd never heard of zoro before, but I'll be
| depositing my paychecks here from now on. It looks a lot
| more fun than the bank :)
| mindslight wrote:
| Haha, yes it is. They're the customer-facing brand of
| Grainger so they've got everything. Their search is okay
| and some of their product data can be lacking, but their
| selection is massive. As I alluded to, it's often worth
| it to go find the manufacturer's pdf catalog and then
| search by part numbers.
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| Tangentially, some years ago I recall reading a few articles
| about the problem with 'misconception busting' articles [I may
| try to find such an article later]. Apparently, content formatted
| like...
|
| > _Myth:_ Spinach has a high iron content
|
| > _Fact:_ Spinach does not have a particularly high iron content
|
| ... actually tends to _reinforce the misconception_ in readers.
|
| This suggests to me that similar fact-checking content is
| inherently harmful for their achieving their intended purpose.
| chaostheory wrote:
| One big reason for the rise in both far right and far left
| extremists is that mainstream media has mastered this practice a
| long time ago. This is why people don't inherently fully trust
| mainstream news that is mostly bought and paid for aka submarine
| PR. Catch & kill and China buying articles in the MSM weren't
| revelations, they were just confirming everyone's suspicions.
| Brannon121 wrote:
| nailer wrote:
| The person reading this drinks engine coolant.
|
| That is absolutely truthful.
|
| I will omit to mention that engine coolant is water.
| darawk wrote:
| I love the idea of this article, but it doesn't address the
| reason things are the way they are. Facts get checked for literal
| accuracy because that's what's easy to actually do in a
| reasonably unbiased way. We stop there not because that's all we
| want, but because everything after that is too messy to even come
| close to systematizing.
|
| If they've got a well thought out framework for systematizing
| high quality contextualization, i'd love to hear about it,
| though.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Well, if we talk about the big issue of the past couple of
| years, we can certainly contextualize in the context of that
| because we have an end goal for the communication, which is to
| attempt to convince an individual to take action A over action
| B.
|
| So you can easily show high quality contextualisation - it's
| showing that the case against is less preferable, e.g. arguing
| against yourself.
|
| For example, Government posters can say "if you go outside, you
| have an x% change of having coronavirus, an y% chance of
| passing that on to someone, who then has a z% chance of being
| seriously disabled or dying, and they have an a% chance of not
| obtaining that disease via some other mechanism".
|
| You take the opposing viewpoint and try to dismantle it. This
| is the role of the media, to inform, not to latch onto micro-
| facts like "lockdown saves lives" and push them because they're
| easy wins.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| As a stop-gap, it may help to aggressively denounce things
| taken out-of-context as being out-of-context.
|
| In usual communication, we focus on fact-checking things in the
| context in which they're most valid, with the presumption that
| any contextual ambiguity'd be understood/resolved. In such
| scenarios, it can make sense to fact-check something literally,
| in the context in which it's claimed, then handle the
| contextual-migrations appropriately in discussing inter-related
| points.
|
| But Twitter-like platforms destroy this -- short blurbs in a
| relatively context-free space make it difficult to be honest
| even for folks who'd want to be, and seems to be a playground
| for folks who'd want to lie under pretense of factuality.
|
| The appropriate reaction to claims removed from context would
| seem to be to deny them. Not to say that the claim is false (at
| least, not in a context in which it'd be true), but to note
| that the claim isn't relevant to the current-context (at least,
| not without a basis for connecting it to the current-context).
|
| ---
|
| To note it, a problem with allowing folks to declare claims as
| being out-of-context (if they're not required to support it) is
| that it gives everyone a free-pass to weasel out of
| acknowledging anything that they dislike. So, it's unsuitable
| for adversarial contexts or otherwise unreliable exchanges.
|
| Which is what I think makes debates, politics, etc. on
| platforms like Twitter basically garbage: it's too easy to lie
| if context isn't observed, and it's too easy to dodge stuff if
| it is.
|
| So while Twitter-like platforms might workable for non-
| adversarial exchanges (like sharing pictures, announcements,
| etc.), adversarial exchanges on such platforms would seem
| structurally predisposed toward undesirable behavior.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| All the "fact checking" sites I am aware of are heavily biased.
| It seems very unlikely that they actually try to be unbiased in
| their checking. It already starts with selecting the facts they
| check (cherry picking).
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| noacct152437 wrote:
| blueflow wrote:
| The scientific method exists for a reason, and the
| "experimentally verifying against reality" part is what
| makes it better than "fact" "checking".
| throw3838 wrote:
| Facebook recently admitted at court, that its fact checking
| is "personal opinion" rather than authoritative source.
| They did it to avoid fine.
|
| If something claims authority, but with no responsibility
| and no oversight...
| xdennis wrote:
| And the judge bought it:
|
| > The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory;
| to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion.
|
| [1]: https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/12/Faceb...
| jml7c5 wrote:
| "Protected opinion" is not equivalent to "opinion".
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Sounds like perhaps it was the judge that was bought?
| agumonkey wrote:
| are these scare quotes or sarcastic quotes ?
| mandmandam wrote:
| How many "fact checkers" broke the artificial consensus
| view on the lab leak theory being "impossible"? None that I
| saw. The facts were pretty clear from the start if you
| actually read Daszak's bullshit, as eventually became clear
| despite the removal of millions of posts.
|
| I recently saw USAToday "fact check" the claim that Fauci
| once said masks provided no protection from Corona. This
| was classed as misleading and lacking context - despite the
| fact Fauci said this on primetime national TV. There's
| video for it easily findable (thought certainly a little
| hard to find thanks to search engine fuckery). - https://eu
| .usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/03/fact...
|
| Did any fact check sites cover America's lies to go into
| Iraq?
|
| How many of them looked into the promotion of a known
| torturer and destroyer of congressional evidence to a top
| US position?
|
| How did your favorite fact check site cover the Deepwater
| Horizon spill? Are they talking about Stephen Donziger?
|
| We could go on all day, but it's farcical that anyone still
| believes these people.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The very fact of being unbiased, or claiming to be, is
| quite a big claim and the _burden of proof of being
| unbiased should lie on the side that claims being so_.
|
| Because the normal, expected state of things is that humans
| and the organizations that humans create are biased like
| hell.
| croon wrote:
| > The very fact of being unbiased, or claiming to be, is
| quite a big claim and the burden of proof of being
| unbiased should lie on the side that claims being so.
|
| This is a ridiculous claim. You can't prove a negative.
| If they are being biased, it's on the person making that
| claim to provide examples/proof.
|
| Analogue: "Prove you're not hitting your wife", etc.
| LocalH wrote:
| Your point is very poignant. Perhaps people should drop
| the pretense of unbias and wear their bias on their
| sleeves? It's not like that's too far from the current
| meta. Everyone is biased to all hell while saying on the
| tin "fair", "unbiased", "balanced", or other weasel words
| croon wrote:
| That's not my point. Everyone is unbiased until pointed
| out where/how they are biased. Maybe that is every action
| of every person on the planet, but in my biased opinion
| some are clearly less biased than others, and it's not
| that hard to compare.
| LocalH wrote:
| It's closely related if it's not your actual point. Some
| people actively try to minimize their bias, some lean
| into it. Also, not all bias is harmful. At some level,
| it's also an essential component of human existence.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This sounds like presumption of innocence in criminal
| court, but being biased isn't a guilt (and certainly
| shouldn't carry any penalty), it is, at least in my view,
| similar to being a left-handed or a right-handed person.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Nobody's unbiased.
|
| The best you can hope for is a source that wears its
| biases on its sleeve. Then you can judge how those biases
| might have influenced information from that source.
|
| The least-reliable sources tend to proclaim their
| "neutrality", i.e. they deliberately conceal their
| biases.
| xdennis wrote:
| Example:
|
| Rittenhouse carried a gun. Left wing sources said it was
| illegal and he was charged with it. Right wing sources
| (e.g. Viva & Barnes) said it was actually legal because of
| how the law was written and predicted it would be dismissed
| by the judge.
|
| Politifact factchecked the claim that it was legal as
| false.
|
| The judge dismissed the charge.
|
| Politifact updated their page, not to admit they were
| wrong, but to double down that they were in fact right, not
| the judge. [1]
|
| In many cases, fact checking websites strawman the claims
| to dismiss everything. In this case instead of factchecking
| "Rittenhouse was legally carrying" they fact checked
| "Rittenhouse was PERFECTLY legally carrying" so that when
| it turns out it was legal they can say "Yes, but not
| PERFECTLY legal".
|
| [1]: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/28/face
| book-p...
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| A judge dismissing a charge doesn't mean that the gun was
| legal, though: There are a lot of different reasons to
| dismiss. Technicalities and not having enough strong
| evidence for _that particular charge_ are two that come
| to mind.
| civilized wrote:
| The judge dismissed because the statute is unclear, and a
| general legal principle says that unclear rules must be
| read to favor whoever they're being applied against. This
| principle is a basic protection against tyranny by
| arbitrary application of muddled rules.
|
| In other words, the legislature may have tried to make
| what Rittenhouse did illegal, but they failed to do so
| clearly enough, and that means it is legal.
|
| Even if we allow for a gray area of "legal but not
| _perfectly_ legal ", it's not the legitimate province of
| media fact-checkers to arbitrate the boundaries of that
| -- for the same reason it's not legitimate for the state
| to arbitrate the boundaries of its own vague laws. Media
| fact checks are, in part, a tool for the media to
| discredit and damage the reputations of people it doesn't
| like. So the media doesn't get to write the rules of what
| is a fact, and gray areas should be construed in favor of
| the person being criticized.
| taf2 wrote:
| My current biases lead me to agree with your perspective.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| Answered like a typical "fact checker". I guess you solidly
| "debunked" my claims.
|
| And yes, I only stated my opinion. If I would do a more
| thorough analysis, maybe I wouldn't waste it on HN, but try
| to sell it to some major newspaper for $$$.
|
| You are welcome to completely dismiss my opinion.
| darawk wrote:
| I don't entirely disagree. I suppose I should have said "less
| biased". Imagine how biased "context checking" sites would
| be. Facts at least _sort of_ have an appeal to an objective
| reality outside of politics.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Fact checking has poisoned discourse because it has an
| underlying assumption that preferences of one sort or another
| can be proven true, when in fact they cannot because they are
| by definition preferences.
|
| People would hope to just recognize that they have different
| preferences about how others should behave, some of those
| preferences get condensed into laws and some are argued about
| indefinitely.
| medstrom wrote:
| I would ask you to please identify the ones to which you
| apply this criticism, for epistemic hygiene.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| I mostly encounter the ones in Germany, so I doubt it would
| be much use to you. For example correctiv.org or even
| https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/ which is from the
| public TV network (government funding). I remember trying
| to verify the claims about "Trump lied x zillion times" at
| some US fact checking portal (I think from some major
| newspaper, maybe NYT or Washington Post), and all the
| supposed "lies" were also bullshit, like taken out of
| context, misinterpreted in extreme ways and so on in
| typical "fact checker" fashion.
|
| Really it doesn't matter what sites I list, because they
| are all shit. The very act of calling themselves "fact
| checkers" should give it away. Just pick any of them and
| read their "checks" with a critical mind. Anybody can call
| themselves a "fact checker", it is a fake claim to
| authority.
|
| Isn't Snopes also a renowned "fact checker"? I think some
| scandals regarding their founders came to light recently,
| but I don't remember the details.
| jsight wrote:
| > Isn't Snopes also a renowned "fact checker"? I think
| some scandals regarding their founders came to light
| recently, but I don't remember the details.
|
| Yes, and despite this, snopes is still one of the better
| ones. Their articles are well sourced and easy to verify.
| I'm sure they've made some mistakes, and there've been a
| few cases where I disagreed with their conclusion or
| approach, but overall they do a good job.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Not OP, but Snopes used to be very trustworthy but has
| since become nearly completely useless.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| How so; do you have any concrete examples of the lack of
| use? Bias, omissions, lying, lack of context, deliberate
| miseading, etc?
|
| I see some shade thrown at Snopes from time to time, but
| it's usually of the of "But they're LIBERAL!" variety
| which is not of much value.
| mandmandam wrote:
| You're 100% right. An unbiased perspective would call the
| arms, pharma, media, agricultural and oil industries out far
| more.
|
| The bias is so widespread many people don't see it, like fish
| not realizing they're wet.
|
| Whole shelves of books get written about the illegal wars
| media cheerleads; and about the unconscionable and
| unimaginable atrocities regularly committed by big
| agriculture and fossil fuel.
|
| Yet we drown in pure distraction; "debating" whatever clown
| shit Ben Shapiro or Trump or Biden just said, or tilting at
| such windmills as trying to cancel Joe Rogan for having
| conversations with people.
|
| "We live in a time when all elites, whether on the left or
| the right, believe in rigid rules that say there is no
| alternative to the present political and economic system." -
| Adam Curtis
| prometheus76 wrote:
| There's no such thing as an unbiased perspective. That's
| what perspective means. It's a report from a certain point
| of view. If you tried to be an "unbiased perspective" you'd
| have to include all details of every part of everything,
| because the mere act of choosing what to include and what
| not to include is a result of a perspective, and a
| perspective is the result of telos. Action towards a
| purpose.
|
| Have you ever been friends with someone who includes too
| many details in their story and they lose track of what
| they were saying? That's what happens when someone tries to
| be "unbiased". They include too much and it starts to lose
| purpose. You won't read a book written this way.
| Perspective and narrative structures are what engage our
| attention and help us understand the purpose of the story.
| mandmandam wrote:
| You may benefit from looking up the term "enlightened
| centrism". Or "pedant".
|
| If you think pro-war corporate media's constant military
| cheer-leading is as valid a perspective as independent
| media, I have nothing polite to say to you.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| I was intentionally drawing attention to phrases that we,
| as a society, use frequently, but are taken for granted
| as being valuable, or even attainable. This "detached
| perspective" of being disembodied and floating somewhere
| above everything and "including everything" is a myth of
| modernism and a myth of "scientific objectivity".
|
| I have no problem with trying to be balanced or nuanced,
| but that's very different than feigned "objectivity" that
| basically just tries to use handwaving and gaslighting to
| distract you from considering that every perspective
| comes from a structure of presuppositions.
|
| If you want to call me a "pedant" for making a
| distinction between implied, but impossible "objectivity"
| and balance/nuance, I'm fine with that label, because
| it's still a point worth making.
| zerop wrote:
| The PR teams create perceptions and narratives by misleading with
| facts on social media, in ways mentioned in this article. But I
| think people get it after a while and it can't be used for long
| term perceptions and narratives.
| jnurmine wrote:
| That was an interesting article, I don't want to steal it's
| thunder or anything, but damn, I love the layout. It is gorgeous.
|
| Looks like a magazine, elegant, no cruft.
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