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Debunking Princeton

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Re: Debunking Princeton

#111

Post by ballard »

coliveira wrote: post #92
dsugarman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well not necessarily die by 2018, just the fact that social media is mostly moving fads. everyone wants to be the social network that high school and college girls post their vacation photos to, if you are that then you will likely be somewhat relevant for the lifetime of these girls.

Or maybe it's the opposite: if a teenager has an account with lots of pictures, he/she will probably want to kill that account as soon as they get to adult life to avoid awkward moments. I think this explains why many young kids are leaving FB.

The bigger issue is kids don't want to use the uncool social networks their parents use. Secondarily, that might come into play later as an afterthought.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#112

Post by ballard »

smoyer wrote: post #7

Hmmmm ... I think I believe both articles! Higher education and social media are both in decline. Who needs critical thinking and the ability to gossip 24/7? I'm going to go rewatch Idiocracy ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ ).

For anyone that hasn't seen it, Idiocracy goes after the present by exaggerating the future.

It's a sad but true trend that people are too busy playing World of Warcraft to understand much less resist what is going on around them: automating of warfare[0], climate change[1], police militarization[2], sources of terrorism (including JSOC ("American Taliban") killing American citizens without a trial in countries without a declared war)[3] and peak oil [4]. That's a lot of heavy shit that that isn't being addressed, which defers consequences to be much more painful sooner or later. With commodities, often the consequences are spread out gradually (epic rise in cost of gasoline) whereas others are not so gradual.

That seems far more important than whether some pre-press study is important or not.

References:

[0] http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_sho...

[1] California is having the worst drought in five decades. North Texas is having the worst drought in over a century. http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

[2] https://www.aclu.org/militarization

[3] http://dirtywars.org/

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/peak-oil

Re: Debunking Princeton

#113

Post by charleswalter »

The fact that Facebook even responded reeks of fear.

If the original article had been completely ridiculous, Facebook could've laughed it off and wouldn't have had to respond at all.

It's like if someone tells me I'm fat. Because I'm in good shape, I wouldn't react and just think the person is weird for telling me that. But if I was anywhere close to overweight, you'd see a strong reaction of some kind from me.

What the reaction is doesn't matter so much as the fact that there is a reaction.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#114

Post by emiliobumachar »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #104
hooande wrote: post #13

I hope this becomes a bigger story than the original. I can't tell you how many times someone has thrown a junk science article in my face, thinking that the issue in question was now settled. A survey with a small sample size, outsized extrapolations and numbers that don't match the accompanying conjecture. There should be consequences for the people who publish these things. People have a tendency to believe anythi…

> There should be consequences for the people who publish these things. Lab coats are there to bounde ideas off each other and sometimes write stupid things that will get corrected by other lab coats. Consequences should be there for the people who find such articles and take them for a media spin. It's not the paper that is doing the damage, it's the news articles, like the Guardian story. It is the responsibility o…

That would be even more dangerous. The power to impose consequences on irresponsible journalists gets abused every time.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#115

Post by protez »

What is causation exactly? There's no way to prove any instance of causations at all, if we delve deep into the problem of causation. Even though all data, or correlations, support F=ma, a single exceptional case can disapprove the "correlation," therefore we cannot assert force causes accelerations, and so on, since no amount of correlations is ever enough to prove causation.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#116

Post by seanhandley »

augustocallejas wrote: post #4

One of the top comments on that page is that they loved the tone of article. Personally I hate sarcastic responses (no matter how correct you are), which sound very unprofessional. I hope to see less of these types of responses in the future.

You hate sarcasm? That's terrible!

Re: Debunking Princeton

#118

Post by XorNot »

hooande wrote: post #13

I hope this becomes a bigger story than the original. I can't tell you how many times someone has thrown a junk science article in my face, thinking that the issue in question was now settled. A survey with a small sample size, outsized extrapolations and numbers that don't match the accompanying conjecture. There should be consequences for the people who publish these things. People have a tendency to believe anythi…

Science article?

So what's been thrown in your face, the published paper or the out-of-breath news article with the click-bait headline?

Re: Debunking Princeton

#119

Post by richardwhiuk »

hatred wrote: post #6
tokenadult wrote: post #2

A suitably joking response for a "study" that didn't need to be taken too seriously (and wasn't taken very seriously by most media outlets, including the one that led a story with it). As we discussed yesterday here on Hacker News[1], the study methodology was not sufficiently validated to convince most people that Facebook will massively lose users, even if all the data were correct. More likely, the study's model w…

Some people on the Wall Street did take it up a bit seriously perhaps going by the price movement today.

In the short term, stocks on Wall Street are essentially a random walk.

Re: Debunking Princeton

#120

Post by amirmc »

ballard wrote: post #110
CGamesPlay wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The students also published it online before it was peer-reviewed. I think the grandparent is more referring to the typical corporate cop-out of "the actions of a few employees", even though the damage is done regardless of who did it--and the employees (or students) did it under the name of the organization.

The bottom line is any paper made public will be examined and possibly turned into a story, so evidence and conclusions better be up to snuff or risk damaging one's and the institution's reputations.

The problem is with the media and the way things were spun. Correcting that should not involve stifling the workflows scientists use. The GitHub analogy is a good one as what you're suggesting is the equivalent of only pushing perfect code.
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