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Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact

news.harvard.edu

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Re: Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact

#31

Post by Ididntdothis »

bytedude wrote: post #27
Ididntdothis wrote: post #12

From what I can see the real problem is that most people don’t care about facts anymore. They just want to hear what they think anyway and the political parties are too happy to feed that. When you talk to left wingers and right wingers about the economy of the last ten years the left guys will tell you it was paradise until 2016 and then everything went to hell. The right wingers will tell you it was misery until 20…

Looks like the stock market was flat-lining by the end of Obama's term. https://www.macrotrends.net/1358/dow-jones-industrial-averag... You may not care about facts, but don't generalize too quickly.

When I look at this chart I see ups and downs but overall a pretty steady upward trend. I don’t see eights years of Obama misery and then triumph under Trump. That was my point.

Re: Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact

#32

Post by klyrs »

luckylion wrote: post #18
sdenton4 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big human problems in social science is that people are VERY happy to make explanatory narratives instantaneously on hearing a result... Which makes most results seem 'obvious' once reported. One trick to circumvent this is to report the OPPOSITE conclusion first, and then say, 'actually, it was the opposite' after the listener says 'well, duh.' In our own reading, it can be helpful to invert the conclusio…

> One trick to circumvent this is to report the OPPOSITE conclusion first, and then say, 'actually, it was the opposite' after the listener says 'well, duh.' Study finds political bias improves perception of verifiable facts. I don't think I heard a lot of "well, duh". > In reality, we don't know until we test... We have a lot of stories and biases that we carry all over the place, some are useful, most are shorthand…

> Study finds political bias improves perception of verifiable facts.

This is one way of flipping it.

What if we go with

Study finds conservative bias improves perception of verifiable facts.

and

Study finds liberal bias improves perception of verifiable facts.

showing each to people who respectively identify with those labels? Then, I think we would see a lot of people going "well duh"

Re: Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact

#33

Post by dependenttypes »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #30
xkapastel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breathing affecting health in that way was absolutely news to me. I'm very skeptical that you really could have predicted the results of that study before reading it. In fact, your post on that story was: > Did you all know that humans need oxygen to survive? And that the ways we consume oxygen can affect our health? It doesn't seem like you really understood what they were saying. It's much more complicated than thi…

Human cells use oxygen for fuel. Breathing is the primary mechanism by which oxygen enters the cells. My teacher told me this stuff when I was a baby in elementary school.

What is up with people just ignoring the content of the message that they are replying to and either repeating what they said before or reply to something that was never said? This seems to be more and more common in HN these days.

Re: Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact

#34

Post by dagnabbit »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #30
xkapastel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breathing affecting health in that way was absolutely news to me. I'm very skeptical that you really could have predicted the results of that study before reading it. In fact, your post on that story was: > Did you all know that humans need oxygen to survive? And that the ways we consume oxygen can affect our health? It doesn't seem like you really understood what they were saying. It's much more complicated than thi…

Human cells use oxygen for fuel. Breathing is the primary mechanism by which oxygen enters the cells. My teacher told me this stuff when I was a baby in elementary school.

Thank you for confirming that you did not read the research; and also that you are a snarky fucking asshole.

Don't worry though, dang won't do anything to you because dang does not moderate white male assholes. Dang prefers silencing minorities.

Re: Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact

#35

Post by Reedx »

rayiner wrote: post #21

The problem is that “verifiable fact” is actually very complicated in any context where you’re talking about politics. Two of the questions on the first graphic are about income mobility for people born in the bottom quantile. The graphic is correct, as far as it goes, but overlooks huge differences by race. While the average American born in the bottom 20% has a 7.8% chance of reaching the top 20%, that number is ac…

Which is in part why the political tribes have largely abandoned facts.

It's very difficult to actually get to ground truth, especially with the rate at which social media and the news cycle moves. It's a constant onslaught of (mis)information and we don't have reliable institutions to make sense of it. Worse, it turns out facts don't really matter as far as this game is concerned. Each side is able to live in their own reality, able to look at the same thing yet come to opposite conclusions. It's highly predictable. Whatever Team A is for, Team B easily finds a way to be against. And vice versa. Sometimes the teams even switch positions in unison, since consistency doesn't matter either.

It's full on Kayfabe: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783

Re: Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact

#36

Post by tomp »

Clickbait title.

Better title: political bias skews guesstimates that COULD be verified.

Are we really surprised that people don't know by heart the percentages of income mobility statistics? Also, although the questions, as posed, are technically verifiable, that's not what people really care about - do I care about a statistic of income mobility that includes my parents (soon to be pensioners)? Not really; I care about future projections - the income mobility of myself, and my future kids. That's what policy bickering is about.

Edit: the actual (not HN) title of the article is even more clickbait-y: When we can’t even agree on what is real

Re: Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact

#37

Post by awb »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #4

What's with all these articles stating obvious stuff everyone already knows? I remember a month ago there was an article about how breathing can affect health, like that was news or something. It was on the front page.

> obvious stuff everyone already knows

Only about 40-60% of the US population votes, and I doubt a majority follow politics closely.

Plus, kids grow up and need to learn things that seem obvious to older folks.

Glad you knew this already, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's interesting to many others.

Re: Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact

#38

Post by riskable »

autokad wrote: post #14
Leary wrote: post #8

What share of US immigrants receive unemployment? Democrats: 25.6% Republicans: 27.1% Reality: 5.5% It seems the bigger bias comes from the general media than any particular party political bias.

I can't believe they thought it was that high. I mean general unemployment is no where near 27% and you'd suspect that with threat of losing visa status, immigrants are more likelier to take a job they dont exactly grok.

When arguing about immigrants and unemployment I always wondered why people get so upset over it. If the immigrant is even able to collect unemployment that means they paid for it.

So they're literally just getting the money back that they paid into it. Probably considerably less, even!

So why should anyone care that they're collecting a benefit that they paid for? I don't get it.

Re: Study finds political bias skews perceptions of verifiable fact

#39

Post by phkahler »

Leary wrote: post #8

What share of US immigrants receive unemployment? Democrats: 25.6% Republicans: 27.1% Reality: 5.5% It seems the bigger bias comes from the general media than any particular party political bias.

>> It seems the bigger bias comes from the general media than any particular party political bias.

From TFA: >> First and foremost, Republicans and Democrats tend to seek out very different news sources so they often get very different information.

It should raise red flags for everyone that news sources vary so much on reporting the same thing. We should be selecting news sources based on the types of things they report rather than the spin. Of course a lot of people taking in politically biased news are only aware of bias in news slanted the other way, and their own.

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