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Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

pnas.org

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Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#91

Post by galaxyLogic »

godelski wrote: post #18

The actual title is > Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change Not "Study: Americans consistently overestimate how much culture has changed." And from the abstract > Participants overestimated the amount of change on 29 attitudes (57%), underestimated change on 10 attitudes (20%), estimated change in the wrong direction on 10 attitudes (20%), and estimated change correctly on only two attitudes (4%). (o…

I think the point is that people form their opinions based on what they think other people think.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#92

Post by arkis22 »

rnd0 wrote: post #80
arkis22 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only minority worth protecting beyond reproach of politics are those afflicted with poverty. I have found both parties incompetent in this regard. 800k shacks with outlets in LA for the homeless. The complete dismissal of the responsibility we have as a society to rehabilitate people in the prison system. the absolute abandonment of native americans that ultimately lead to an institution of sexual abuse. Unions r…

>The only minority worth protecting beyond reproach of politics are those afflicted with poverty. >complete dismissal of the responsibility we have as a society to rehabilitate people in the prison system >absolute abandonment of native americans >Unions run the schools I am NOT AT ALL dismissing the problems of poverty, native americans, prisoners nor unions but that is some janky, janky phrasing. Am I the only one…

No post body was provided.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#93

Post by jjcon »

mb7733 wrote: post #83
lettergram wrote: post #47

I think this is a product of mass social media and mass media. Effectively, we amplify propaganda one way or another. It leads to false impressions and we are unable to make decisions based off real information. This survey (which imo is not very robust) simply highlights the fact we are uninformed as a population. This is a failure primarily of our news media (the big 5) and education. Easy example, we believe mass…

>A child is ~100x more likely to die from a drug overdose than a mass shooting, and ~10x from a car crash. Yet our perception is skewed because of what we see in the news / shared. Wait, I have the opposite reaction to the car crash comparison. Is that accurate? It blows my mind that the odds of a child in the US dying in a mass shooting is only a single order of magnitude less than the chance they die in a car crash…

Couldn’t find good stats for shootings and children but it looks like 1000 kids die each year in the US from car accidents so all it would take is 10 kids dying a year in shootings which doesn’t seem like many at all (just consider kids in street gangs etc).

‘Mass shooting’ has different definitions depending on country/agency. In the US I think it just means a shooting (not necessarily a death) involving more than 2 people.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#94

Post by jesuscript »

barrysteve wrote: post #77
imbnwa wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chronically misunderstood, early Michel Foucault goes one step forward than this and asks "Why not just remove the human as catalyst of truth entirely? What if humans are just the canvas for knowledges rather than the other way around?" Another way to look at his hypothesis: what if truth and knowledge are no differently anonymous automata than the processes of biological evolution with respect to individuals?

The ancient greeks did not have this relationship to (written) knowledge. Greeks had to have a human vouch for the validity of the written document. Tying truth to written history is noble but also flawed.

It would hurt historians feelings to know that they are essentially just, what we call today, “hot takes” on history. It’s often well written and credentialed (appeal to authority), but ultimately it’s just one dude’s hot take on events.

For example, many people in America have a hot-take about what life is like in China. How? We heard it from somewhere, never lived a day there.

Can’t be that simple right? You say you heard it from a scholar?

Welp, hate to break it to ya, but unless you were there yourself, it’s just not 100% the truth.

It’s the main reason you’ll eventually see a book that says “we got Abraham Lincoln all wrong, let me tell you my hot take”. You’d have to read 30 of these hot takes before you can even mix the black and white into a gray truth (which the truth is, always gray).

Anyway, word on the street is the Queen is a saint. Give it a year, we’ll get the other hot take. Then another one.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#95

Post by asveikau »

latchkey wrote: post #82
asveikau wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I was pointing out, friend. HN is one of those internet communities where people reply with what I read as an aggressive tone, but they agree with me, and it's as if they are angrily correcting me but they didn't realize I was saying their same thing. Is that just my perception?

I wasn't being aggressive, I was filing in the blanks for others that might be interested. Your comment encouraged me do the research myself (I didn't remember who else was lifetime from my high school classes in the late 80's) and I figured I'd share that, as well as, give another link that explains a bit more context to what I felt you left out.

Ok, thank you. The internet is funny. Neutral tones can come across as aggressive. Aggression, generally, though, can totally be all in the head of the perceiver.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#96

Post by imbnwa »

barrysteve wrote: post #77
imbnwa wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chronically misunderstood, early Michel Foucault goes one step forward than this and asks "Why not just remove the human as catalyst of truth entirely? What if humans are just the canvas for knowledges rather than the other way around?" Another way to look at his hypothesis: what if truth and knowledge are no differently anonymous automata than the processes of biological evolution with respect to individuals?

The ancient greeks did not have this relationship to (written) knowledge. Greeks had to have a human vouch for the validity of the written document. Tying truth to written history is noble but also flawed.

Written history is just the most convenient artifact to elaborate his hypothesis upon, its not necessary, oral tradition isn't meaningfully distinct in his hypothesis, its just that its easier to parse change over time with written history.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#97

Post by bowsamic »

somenameforme wrote: post #84

There is a severe demographic problem with this study (among others). A current trend in the social sciences is using Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific to run surveys. These sites are based around paying people pennies to compete menial tasks (like complete surveys), and populated with large numbers of "professional" menial task executers. This study offered the big bucks of $1.50 - $2.25. There are two major probl…

It always amazes me how such studies are simply left up to the academics, because clearly taking representative samples of the population will need some kind of help from the government to organise it

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#98

Post by kmonsen »

jesuscript wrote: post #94
barrysteve wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ancient greeks did not have this relationship to (written) knowledge. Greeks had to have a human vouch for the validity of the written document. Tying truth to written history is noble but also flawed.

It would hurt historians feelings to know that they are essentially just, what we call today, “hot takes” on history. It’s often well written and credentialed (appeal to authority), but ultimately it’s just one dude’s hot take on events. For example, many people in America have a hot-take about what life is like in China. How? We heard it from somewhere, never lived a day there. Can’t be that simple right? You say yo…

Hate to break it to ya, but if you were there yourself that is just an anecdote or a single data point and doesn’t tell you a lot about the general population.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#99

Post by [deleted] »

jesuscript wrote: post #94
barrysteve wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ancient greeks did not have this relationship to (written) knowledge. Greeks had to have a human vouch for the validity of the written document. Tying truth to written history is noble but also flawed.

It would hurt historians feelings to know that they are essentially just, what we call today, “hot takes” on history. It’s often well written and credentialed (appeal to authority), but ultimately it’s just one dude’s hot take on events. For example, many people in America have a hot-take about what life is like in China. How? We heard it from somewhere, never lived a day there. Can’t be that simple right? You say yo…

[deleted]

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#100

Post by Jensson »

plorkyeran wrote: post #71
dnissley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed there is a tendency among folks on the left (and for all I know it's also true of folks on the right) where people who do as you say are cast out and labeled "centrists", creating a dynamic where internal criticism is silenced. I speak as someone who self-identified as on the left for many years, but no longer feels comfortable doing so because of how incurious and closed off to criticism the left has be…

"Internal criticism is silenced" is an... interesting view of the left. A more common view is that endless leftist infighting is one of the things that makes leftists ineffectual.

There would be no need to silence internal criticism if it wasn't there.
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