Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change • Hacker News Board

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#101

Post by raspberry1337 » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 6:44 AM UTC

imbnwa wrote: post #62

lkrubner wrote: post #43

It's important to remember that this same problem haunted historiography for at least 2 centuries, if not much more. At least from the 1700s, and lasting well into the 1900s, historians considered themselves the historians of events, rather than non-events. As such, they automatically gave too much weight to change. That a different approach was possible was not even considered until modern anthropology got going in…

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?

Enlighten me, what does it mean that truth and knowledge are anonymous automata?

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#102

Post by montebicyclelo » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 6:52 AM UTC

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…

I saw another study on hn [1] that "showed that people found accountants and data analysts boring". However, this was all based on forms filled in by workers on MTurk and another crowd sourcing company...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30764152

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#103

Post by qikInNdOutReply » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 6:59 AM UTC

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…

Sorry, but the public social sciences are dead anyway. If you want to do research on humanity you go were the actual data is. FGN.

Everything else is peanuts.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#104

Post by autoexec » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 7:07 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

Media gets the most blame here I think. Fear gets views/clicks so they exaggerate and promote a victim mentality to the point where people believe there's a "war on Christmas". They also twist the meaning of words. It's easy for people to misunderstand how Americans feel about "immigrants" when that word is often used to mean both legal and illegal immigrants. I'd expect that distinction matters a lot when it comes to how people feel.

> we believe mass shootings are far more common and dangerous than they actually are. A child is ~100x more likely to die from a drug overdose than a mass shooting, and ~10x from a car crash.

I don't think anyone seriously thinks that sending their kid to school is more dangerous than a drug overdose or that school shootings are more common than car crashes. I think there's a greater outrage over kids killed in school shootings than in car accidents because cars have always been dangerous (and understandably so) so we accept those risks but there is no accepting that one risk of sending our children into a school is the possibility that a dozen or more will come out in body bags. It's an outrage every time.

Especially because children aren't supposed to have guns, and schools (who we have basically turned into full time babysitters for our nation's children) are supposed to protect them. It wouldn't matter if lightning strikes were a more common cause of death in children than school shootings, we'd still be more upset at the shootings since there's no expectation that thunderstorms producing lightning are safe, and very few of us feel that Zeus is supposed to be protecting their kids.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#105

Post by incone123 » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 7:10 AM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #97

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

Probably just requires a bigger budget than most academics have. I got paid £50 to spend half an hour giving feedback on a new website, in a 1:1 conversation with a researcher. Granted the funding was from government, but Kantar did the organisation side.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#106

Post by imgabe » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 7:11 AM UTC

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…

I wonder if you could get good survey data by disguising it as a Buzzfeed quiz on Facebook. Just make the title something like "Which Kardashian are you?", then ask whatever questions you want and randomly select a Kardashian at the end.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#107

Post by martijnvds » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 7:14 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #106

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…

I wonder if you could get good survey data by disguising it as a Buzzfeed quiz on Facebook. Just make the title something like "Which Kardashian are you?", then ask whatever questions you want and randomly select a Kardashian at the end.

"You are Gul Dukat."

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#108

Post by exo-pla-net » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 7:15 AM UTC

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…

The need for representative sampling is something understood by first year undergraduates on first exposure to the concept.

What you've written is the reddit equivalent of criticizing a study with "correlation does not imply causation".

Yeah, scientists are familiar with the idea, believe it or not. Scientists in fact go to great lengths to ensure their sampling is representative, and studies published in good journals are carefully scrutinized for non-representative sampling.

If you can't conceive of how a person working at Mechanical Turk is overwhelmingly likely to just be a normal person, and not your weird conception of them, I'd encourage you to read Thinking Fast and Slow.

Contempt for scientists is not a good look.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#109

Post by dTal » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 7:21 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #106

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…

I wonder if you could get good survey data by disguising it as a Buzzfeed quiz on Facebook. Just make the title something like "Which Kardashian are you?", then ask whatever questions you want and randomly select a Kardashian at the end.

I suspect that's exactly what most of those "quizzes" actually are.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#110

Post by ForHackernews » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 7:22 AM UTC

raspberry1337 wrote: post #101

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?

Enlighten me, what does it mean that truth and knowledge are anonymous automata?

It sounds to me like a variant on the idea of a "meme" (in its original sense): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

Consider that ideas (even facts!) might be like mind-viruses: you could imagine they propagate themselves in human minds, but are not actually produced by those minds. What if human minds are just the substrate?