Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior • Hacker News Board

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#111

Post by edgyquant » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:21 AM UTC

cmeacham98 wrote: post #97

chjj wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antonio Gramsci asserted that the reason Marx's predictions of late-stage capitalism never came to fruition was due to cultural institutions propping up capitalism. He states very clearly that the (new) objective of marxism should be to establish a counter-hegemony within the existing cultural hegemony, thereby subverting it. This is all present in Gramsci's prison notebooks[1] and is common knowledge to anyone who h…

This still does not provide any proof for the claim. Of course Marxists want to promote their ideology, even culturally. Nobody denies this. The claim made by people using the term "Cultural Marxism", and the reason it is a conspiracy theory, is that said Marxists do so for the purpose of destroying Western culture. Again, to be clear: I am not asking for proof that Marxists promoted Marxism (obviously they did), but…

Proof of what claim dude? That actual Marxist have cultural theories and thus the term “cultural Marxism” is a description of things other than a conspiracy theory? I’m not sure what you’re arguing against at this point.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#112

Post by wheelinsupial » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:42 AM UTC

mch82 wrote: post #110

Curious what people think about the ethics of this study? The researchers describe running an experiment on the public without opt-in consent. They also describe allowing an algorithm to do the editing. That raises questions about the kind of edits the algorithm made, how the edits influenced case outcomes, and if/how the research team will clean up Wikipedia now that they’ve concluded the study. Are there profession…

There is a paragraph on this in the publicly accessible pre-print [1] of the article.

"Approved by the respective ethics boards of MIT and Maynooth University, the experiment amounted to a friendly stress-test of the potential vulnerability of judicial legal reasoning to the limitations of reliance on Wikipedia, notably, its ad hoc topic coverage and unknown author/editorship. The experiment featured Wikipedia entries authored by faculty and by law students under faculty supervision, who each had access, through their university library, to all the relevant primary and secondary legal materials available to judges and their clerks. This assurance of accuracy and of informed analysis in the content of the entries—though short of that offered by a specialist textbook—indicates that judges or lawyers would be unlikely to be misled by what they might read. However, as the authorship of Wikipedia articles is opaque, this fact would not be known to any legal professional when using them. From the users’ perspective, there was no particular reason to imagine that the creators of the relevant entry had any legal expertise—or even that they lacked an ulterior agenda."

I'm curious where I missed the part about the algorithm did the editing? I don't see any matches for "algo" when I control + f the article. "Algo" doesn't appear in the article either. The excerpted paragraph says who wrote the entries and it wasn't an algorithm.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4174200

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#113

Post by kazinator » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:52 AM UTC

Is that necessarily bad?

A best-case-scenario example of influenced judicial behavior is that a judge is about to make a bad decision, but then is informed in some way by an excellent, well-referenced Wikipedia article.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#114

Post by magicalist » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:47 AM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #111

cmeacham98 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still does not provide any proof for the claim. Of course Marxists want to promote their ideology, even culturally. Nobody denies this. The claim made by people using the term "Cultural Marxism", and the reason it is a conspiracy theory, is that said Marxists do so for the purpose of destroying Western culture. Again, to be clear: I am not asking for proof that Marxists promoted Marxism (obviously they did), but…

Proof of what claim dude? That actual Marxist have cultural theories and thus the term “cultural Marxism” is a description of things other than a conspiracy theory? I’m not sure what you’re arguing against at this point.

> That actual Marxist have cultural theories and thus the term “cultural Marxism” is a description of things other than a conspiracy theory

I think you're just looking for the pretty different https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_cultural_analysis with that description.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#115

Post by magicalist » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 2:02 AM UTC

chjj wrote: post #72

cmeacham98 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of a wikipedia page that you think shows bias on the same level as PragerU?

This is one of the most clear examples of bias in favor of leftism that I've seen on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_marxism > The term "Cultural Marxism" refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture. I feel like a lot of actual marxists would disagree with this statement.…

> Also, the last time I looked at the cultural marxism article, it simply said a "far-right conspiracy theory". Now they've somehow managed to roll up antisemitism in there too. Apparently it became antisemitic in just the past year or two!

It's been there as long as the article has (almost two years)[1] and was on the Frankfurt School subsection on the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory for the last 3.5 years[2], so you've off by a while there.

Even before that you can read about how "blacks, students, feminist women, and homosexuals" are the vanguard but its roots are in the anti-semitic criticism of the Frankfurt school, apparently peddled at, for instance, a Holocaust denial conference 20 years ago[3]. I'm not an expert on the subject but doesn't seem recent or much of a stretch to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cultural_Marxism_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frankfurt_School&...

[3] https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#116

Post by edgyquant » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 3:13 AM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #114

edgyquant wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of what claim dude? That actual Marxist have cultural theories and thus the term “cultural Marxism” is a description of things other than a conspiracy theory? I’m not sure what you’re arguing against at this point.

> That actual Marxist have cultural theories and thus the term “cultural Marxism” is a description of things other than a conspiracy theory I think you're just looking for the pretty different https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_cultural_analysis with that description.

Right, the point is that the main article links only to the conspiracy theory and not that article. If it linked to that article people hearing e.g. Jordan Peterson use the term and then googling might be given a history of Marxist theory being applied to culture. Instead they see only that it’s an anti-Semitic right wing conspiracy theory. It’s made worse by the fact that “Marxist cultural analysis” is mentioned in the second paragraph on the “main” conspiracy page but not as a link.

Regardless of belief, and I’m by no means a right winger, do you not see how this will sway the opinion of anyone who googled the term cultural Marxism?

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#117

Post by chjj » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 3:44 AM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #115

chjj wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the most clear examples of bias in favor of leftism that I've seen on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_marxism > The term "Cultural Marxism" refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture. I feel like a lot of actual marxists would disagree with this statement.…

> Also, the last time I looked at the cultural marxism article, it simply said a "far-right conspiracy theory". Now they've somehow managed to roll up antisemitism in there too. Apparently it became antisemitic in just the past year or two! It's been there as long as the article has (almost two years)[1] and was on the Frankfurt School subsection on the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory for the last 3.5 years[2], so…

> It's been there as long as the article has (almost two years)[1]

Yes. This was already pointed out. I was mistaken about the antisemitic part not being there earlier.

> its roots are in the anti-semitic criticism of the Frankfurt school

I would have said its criticism is rooted in the fact that Mao rose to power through cultural subversion and is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions.

> apparently peddled at, for instance, a Holocaust denial conference 20 years ago

Interesting that is brought up. To deny the existence of cultural marxism, IMO, is akin to holocaust denial.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#118

Post by magicalist » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 3:50 AM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #116

magicalist wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That actual Marxist have cultural theories and thus the term “cultural Marxism” is a description of things other than a conspiracy theory I think you're just looking for the pretty different https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_cultural_analysis with that description.

Right, the point is that the main article links only to the conspiracy theory and not that article. If it linked to that article people hearing e.g. Jordan Peterson use the term and then googling might be given a history of Marxist theory being applied to culture. Instead they see only that it’s an anti-Semitic right wing conspiracy theory. It’s made worse by the fact that “Marxist cultural analysis” is mentioned in…

> If it linked to that article people hearing e.g. Jordan Peterson use the term and then googling might be given a history of Marxist theory being applied to culture. Instead they see only that it’s an anti-Semitic right wing conspiracy theory

Capital C, capital M "Cultural Marxism" and "Marxist theory being applied to culture" are two different things.

As a parallel, should https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_agenda actually link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_studies? There are gender studies academics who work to normalize gay and trans people within popular culture (sorry, "establish[ing] a counter-hegemony within the existing cultural hegemony, thereby subverting it"). Saying that any gender theory being applied to culture should be categorized under the gay agenda would still be a category error.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#119

Post by magicalist » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 3:58 AM UTC

chjj wrote: post #117

magicalist wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, the last time I looked at the cultural marxism article, it simply said a "far-right conspiracy theory". Now they've somehow managed to roll up antisemitism in there too. Apparently it became antisemitic in just the past year or two! It's been there as long as the article has (almost two years)[1] and was on the Frankfurt School subsection on the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory for the last 3.5 years[2], so…

> It's been there as long as the article has (almost two years)[1] Yes. This was already pointed out. I was mistaken about the antisemitic part not being there earlier. > its roots are in the anti-semitic criticism of the Frankfurt school I would have said its criticism is rooted in the fact that Mao rose to power through cultural subversion and is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions. > apparently peddled…

>> its roots are in the anti-semitic criticism of the Frankfurt school

> I would have said its criticism is rooted in the fact that Mao rose to power through cultural subversion and is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions.

It seems like maybe you're just hung up on definitions and/or the inclusion of "cultural" here? It sounds a lot like you're just looking for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Marxism and its various offshoots.

The wikipedia article for a specific set of critiques of Marxism from a bunch of racists is not a good base article for a general/systematic critique of Marxism.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#120

Post by edgyquant » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #118

edgyquant wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the point is that the main article links only to the conspiracy theory and not that article. If it linked to that article people hearing e.g. Jordan Peterson use the term and then googling might be given a history of Marxist theory being applied to culture. Instead they see only that it’s an anti-Semitic right wing conspiracy theory. It’s made worse by the fact that “Marxist cultural analysis” is mentioned in…

> If it linked to that article people hearing e.g. Jordan Peterson use the term and then googling might be given a history of Marxist theory being applied to culture. Instead they see only that it’s an anti-Semitic right wing conspiracy theory Capital C, capital M "Cultural Marxism" and "Marxist theory being applied to culture" are two different things. As a parallel, should https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_agenda a…

The real theory page, Marxist cultural analysis, is mentioned by name in the first paragraph of the conspiracy but not linked. I don’t know how wide spread this is on Wikipedia but there are a few of these examples that are very concerning and if our court system is utilizing it as suggested that is a worry.

Yet another issue that mass information has created that solutions haven’t yet come up with.

>As a parallel, should https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_agenda actually link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_studies?

This is not even close to a parallel scenario and borders on bad faith.