Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious • Hacker News Board

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#161

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

dqpb wrote: post #147

koheripbal wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What might be better would be some sort of reputation system. Something where I can see that other people that have looked into the person's citations confirm they actually say what they claim they say, on average (regardless of agreeing with their conclusions). Reputation is everything, and it's so incredibly scarce today. We could have different dimensions of Reputation (citation validity, logical argument validity…

Do you think reputation can be manipulated?

It's funny how we circle back to reputation - or, in other words, authority. People like to point out "appeals to authority" as fallacious (particularly when they don't like what's being said), but reputation is still one of the best heuristics for rapid evaluation of information that we have.

But then there's the issue whether the quoted authority actually said what's being quoted. Reputation is transitive, so you could technically chain it (a "web of trust" :)), but then again, looking at most regular people I know in real life, this doesn't work - it's hard to trust second-hand information even from a friend or family member, unless you know they're way above average in being pedantic about information provenance in their speech.

Unfortunately, most people I know will say "X is Y", where the correct thing to say would be "I remember reading 2 years ago in Foo that they claimed Bar said X is Y". This makes reports from such people pretty much entirely noise, as it's impossible to evaluate provenance.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#162

Post by tomayac » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

btrettel wrote: post #47

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

The extension’s author here. Just wanted to let you know that—apart from Chrome—it’s also available for Edge, and a beta version based on a (still unfinished) polyfill for Firefox. The same code also works on Safari 14, we hope to release it there, too. Install links: https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/link-to-text-fragment#in...

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#163

Post by Aerroon » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

zentiggr wrote: post #80

082349872349872 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Page 58 of "The Art of Conversing With Men" (an 1805 translation of a 1788 work by Knigge) shows that trolls were a thing in the eighteenth century: > "There are people who pretend to know every thing better than others, contradict every one, frequently against their own conviction, merely for the sake of disputing. There are others who are fond of speaking in parodoxes , and accustomed to maintain assertions which n…

It is a bit of an art to separate those who are discussing a point for sake of clarity or persuasion, from these bastards whose only goal is to get a rise out of you or consume your time with their own amusement. Disengaging from those conversations is easier though. Don't answer, walk away, just stop playing their game. Although there is a part of me that wants to shout them down and ridicule them, that plays right…

You could (sometimes) view it as a benefit though. Somebody trying to poke holes into your position, even if they are not being fair, is still practice for defending your position. If you're not well-versed in defending it, then you might end up discovering better evidence or it could make you vary of problems with your position.

Obviously you can't do this every time. It's not at all wrong to blow off those that are simply trying to get a rise out of you. However, in the rare cases that you do engage them, you can rest knowing that you didn't entirely waste your time.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#164

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #159

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations can give data , though. If your ideas are based on more than just your own experience, you need external data.

but then you run into the old saw about damn lies and statistics. the argument needs to stand on its own and be taken in good faith, otherwise discussion is futile. (edit: that's not to say provide no links, just that it won't make the argument, per my other comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899088 , ironically, a citation.)

If your argument is based on some fact (e.g. some number being above some threshold), then you absolutely need to back up that number to make the argument resolve into "it's most likely true". If you don't back the number up, then the argument resolves only to "if the data is indeed as argued, then it's most likely true".

Keeping beliefs with free variables in them is fine, IMO, as long as you're careful about not accidentally collapsing them into an outcome without having first checked the dependencies.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#165

Post by ardy42 » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

> Treat any claim without a URl as suspicious.

This assumes that the web is the only information source you should be using as a reference. You definitely should cite your sources if you can, but saying they have to be web soruces is a pretty limiting requirement.

The tumblr page that gave the print citation did just fine.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#166

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #149

btrettel wrote: post #47

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. I've seen that here on HN, too. Person 1 claims X. Person 2 asks for evidence. Person 1 posts a URL, as if it's evidence for X. But when you read the contents carefully, you realize that it doesn't actually provide any evidence for X. It provides evidence for something that's somewhere in the same general topic as X, but that's not what P…

[deleted]

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#167

Post by hn_check » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #149

btrettel wrote: post #47

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. I've seen that here on HN, too. Person 1 claims X. Person 2 asks for evidence. Person 1 posts a URL, as if it's evidence for X. But when you read the contents carefully, you realize that it doesn't actually provide any evidence for X. It provides evidence for something that's somewhere in the same general topic as X, but that's not what P…

Just as often person 1 says something, providing no citations (but living in a world where we know that anyone can support/debunk with their own searches). Person 2 comes along and posts a retort with a number of citations, properly linked in the footer of their post.

HN upvotes person 2. Downvotes person 1 to the nether. Clearly they were debunked.

Only person 2's citations were noise [1]. They were just marginally connected nonsense [2] to add gravity to whatever else they were claiming as a credibility multiplier. They were playing the crowd [3], knowing that extraordinarily few will ever bother reading anything, and just want to browse past and give passing judgments.

This plays out on HN daily, and is spectacularly effective.

----CITATIONS-----

[1] - https://processing.org/reference/noise_.html

[2] - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-t...

[3] - https://medium.com/skeptikai/the-real-story-behind-the-quote...

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#168

Post by ardy42 » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

soared wrote: post #60

raxxorrax wrote: post #10

Judge me all you want, but I would have clicked on "dirty hippy vibes"... Honestly, I don't really believe in ubiquitous misinformation being as a large problem as it is made out to be. Everyone arguing for more content regulation had their own motivations or was in some kind of panic. There will always be people misinformed on the net. Doesn't mean I want a babysitter cleaning everything up, even if I thought they w…

The majority of “misinformation” I’ve seen (entirely on reddit) isn’t straight up lies. It’s more like reposting an old article on a current topic or leaving out information. When Harvard announced remote class plans, Reddit had a front page article on r/all about it - but it was an article that was a month old about their old plan. It would be so easy for people to read that title (old info), have their friend ask i…

> The majority of “misinformation” I’ve seen (entirely on reddit) isn’t straight up lies. It’s more like reposting an old article on a current topic or leaving out information.

IIRC, that's a key tactic for spreading disinformation. It's most disruptive when it contains 1% truth and 99% lies than when it's 100% lies.

Take PizzaGate for instance: the pizza parlor in question exists, has a lot of connections to various politicians, and was directly talked about in the leaked Podesta emails. Those facts add a little bit of believability that makes it easier to suck people into the big lie.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#169

Post by brlewis » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

tomayac wrote: post #162

btrettel wrote: post #47

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

The extension’s author here. Just wanted to let you know that—apart from Chrome—it’s also available for Edge, and a beta version based on a (still unfinished) polyfill for Firefox. The same code also works on Safari 14, we hope to release it there, too. Install links: https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/link-to-text-fragment#in...

How is it different from this bookmarklet?

https://twitter.com/austegard/status/1228150401427529728

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#170

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

johngalt wrote: post #115

duxup wrote: post #59

I hate URL fights. I give little extra value to people providing links with their clams. I largely given up providing links to information when called out as well. It's not worth the time. Discussion on the internet is broken in most places (HN is less broken than most). I find little value providing URLs. Much of the time I provide them, few folks seem to read it, fewer actually want to read it in an intellectually…

The challenge with the link fights is often about the difference between data and conclusions . For example, if I claim that "marriage has a positive impact on men" then cite a bunch of data showing that married men live longer and make more money on average etc... Have I truly proven my conclusion that marriage benefits men? Or does the same data show that healthy men with jobs are more likely to get married? Yet, I…

> 9/10 times the disagreement isn't data/citations but conclusions or criteria.

Or assumptions behind the cited data, and effect size.

What I've seen very often (particularly around sketchy nutrition discussions about "natural" things and "evil chemicals") is that quoted research seems to support a given conclusion, but under assumptions that do not apply to the argument at all, or significance is so low as to make the result useless.

Some study showing that a bunch of mice got cancer after getting injected with more artificial sweetener than you'd drink in a year does not show that artificial sweetener causes cancer in men. A study that says you get 0.003% greater chance of cancer from eating red meat every day has an effect size so small it's probably bullshit, but even if, 0.003% increase is not something worth caring about at all.