Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#61

Post by usefulcat » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 7:36 PM UTC

SixSigma wrote: post #59

usefulcat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not. The reason they payments appear to work to increase accuracy is because the possibility of a payment motivates critical thinking abilities--what Daniel Kahneman, author of _Thinking Fast and Slow_ would refer to as "system 2". As described in the book, system 1 is effortless and automatic; it produces the first thought to come to mind when attempting to answer a question. It is good at pattern matching…

I think one could draw the inference that the possibility of cash rewards invokes System 2, not the complicated nature of the rewards system.

Yes, that was my (intended) point

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#62

Post by Yen » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #26

madenine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is scary, given that the survey was about factual information. Welcome to the post-truth world I guess. "I think want me to say the unemployment rate is X, so I'll select that, but I believe the unemployment rate is actually Y"

When you write it that way it sounds crazy, but if you believe the unemployment rate should be the U6, then we will have real disagreements over that fact. When the media is just the media, no longer the mainstream media, but just the media with just another (biased) agenda and world-view that is no better than any others, they end up acting like spoiled children. I hope HNners are smart enough to realize that all me…

Whether the unemployment rate discussed and optimized for should be U-6, or any other particular measure, is a disagreement about opinion, not about fact.

Claims that the U-1 is falsified/manipulated for political purposes, or that the "real unemployment rate" is actually much higher than even the U-6, are much more clearly false.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#63

Post by bduerst » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #46

madenine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is scary, given that the survey was about factual information. Welcome to the post-truth world I guess. "I think want me to say the unemployment rate is X, so I'll select that, but I believe the unemployment rate is actually Y"

Here's another problem. apparently there are 6 different numbers... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/07/unemployment-rate-shows-at-5-... So, when they ask which one are they talking about?

Doesn't matter.

It's a red herring because the question itself was a rate of change over time, for which the answer is given in a 1.0% range. Irregardless of whether you focus on U-5 (the reported statistic) or U-6 (the denier's statistic), it's still only about a -0.2% and +0.1% change, respectively.

Even if you did the math on U-5, you would still get the answer right for every of the 6 numbers.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#64

Post by hx87 » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 7:44 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #2

wonder if there's a way to tease out what I believe versus what I think you want to hear.

Use a variety of research groups with different political leanings & reputations?

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#65

Post by bduerst » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 7:49 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #41

madenine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is scary, given that the survey was about factual information. Welcome to the post-truth world I guess. "I think want me to say the unemployment rate is X, so I'll select that, but I believe the unemployment rate is actually Y"

If your paying me to give you the answer than I'm going to go with what I think you want me to say. If fox news approached me and offered to pay for whether I thought climate change was a hoax it would be a different answer than if the question was from Nasa.

That's why the survey is blinded - the respondents have no idea who is giving it and are forced to assume the responses are supposed to be whatever is true.

It's like a random organization asking you if Climate Change is a hoax, for which you know nothing about their bias.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#66

Post by Swizec » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

gist wrote: post #52

Swizec wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody takes even pennies and throws them in the trashcan. And yet they should. https://what-if.xkcd.com/22/ If you spend more than 3.6 seconds actively thinking about a penny, you value your time at less than $10/h. This comment is unfortunately self-referrential. Oops

Well not to dispute some of your points but let me introduce another concept here. That is the act of 'forced savings'. And example of this is when you build equity in something that doesn't appear to be a good idea in the long run financially when compared to another alternative. Ok here is an example. Let's say that your home that you are paying a mortgage on offers a 5% increase in value per year (totally made tha…

I completely agree.

And I don't think it works with pennies. Pennies are heavy and not worth much. You need a 100 of them to get $1. That's a lot of coins. For $100 you'd need 10,000 coins and that's going to start taking significant space.[1]

There's a reason people don't use pennies a lot.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJcyRMVufM

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#67

Post by bduerst » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 7:58 PM UTC

twoquestions wrote: post #27

jstanley wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your ideology is at odds with factual correctness... maybe you should rethink your ideology?

Hardly! Professing belief in something blatantly untrue is a wonderful social signal, it says you're willing to stick with the in-group no matter what! Example: Someone close to me thinks the Detroit Lions are the best football team.

Which seems like harmless, lightheared tribalism, sure, but there are many forms of tribalism that have quantifiable negative impact.

Even for Midwest football: http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/03/21/qje.q...

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#68

Post by usefulcat » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #58

usefulcat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not. The reason they payments appear to work to increase accuracy is because the possibility of a payment motivates critical thinking abilities--what Daniel Kahneman, author of _Thinking Fast and Slow_ would refer to as "system 2". As described in the book, system 1 is effortless and automatic; it produces the first thought to come to mind when attempting to answer a question. It is good at pattern matching…

This is kind of tangential, but is Michael Lewis' new book about Kahneman worth reading if you've already read "Thinking Fast And Slow"? I'd certainly recommend the latter - it's a very interesting book.

I actually hadn't heard about the Lewis book. Having read most of TFAS myself, I now have the same question :) Though I suspect that for me the answer will be "no".

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#69

Post by convolvatron » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #56

dnautics wrote: post #54

"For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the deficit rose during the Clinton administration; Democrats are more likely to say that inflation rose under Reagan." These are both really tricky questions, because the questions described are derivatives of derivatives! The deficit is the time derivative of the debt; so it's possible that someone is hearing "did the debt rise during clinton" (wh…

The question itself is not important. The basis of the research is that one's political affiliations affect how you answer the question.

I think it is* somewhat important as some of these political questions are very complicated and potentially very subjective. I think it makes a clearer case if they involved resistance to arguably objective facts.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#70

Post by smallnamespace » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 8:12 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #60

dnautics wrote: post #54

"For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the deficit rose during the Clinton administration; Democrats are more likely to say that inflation rose under Reagan." These are both really tricky questions, because the questions described are derivatives of derivatives! The deficit is the time derivative of the debt; so it's possible that someone is hearing "did the debt rise during clinton" (wh…

The point is that people tend to answer the question in a way that favors their party and disfavors the other party if you just ask them, but they're more likely to get it right if you offer an incentive to do so. This can't be explained just by "The questions are tricky," though that might be contributing factor that helps people fool themselves when they want to.

I'd offer that one issue with representative democracy is that the direct external payoff for voting well (by 'well', I mean taking the time to do honest research and keeping an open mind) is pretty much zero.

That leads to a contradiction -- we expect our elected politicians to do whatever the public wants, but we also want our politicians to be wise, forward thinking, selfless, and moral leaders. Those two desires can only be fully reconciled if the public itself has those qualities, but the public doesn't have much direct, quick feedback as to whether it's making good choices.

We also don't want to pay our politicians very much (politicians make orders of magnitude less than, say, business leaders) and still expect them to be fully independent, unbribeable, and only beholden to the public. You get what you pay for.