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Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

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Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#121

Post by [deleted] »

kristopolous wrote: post #118
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge part of the problem is that people think one system is better than the other when it's really a spectrum where both extremes are absurd. Suppose you want to have some roads, how do you do it? a) Pure Communism. The state builds the roads. The state needs road workers and workers need food so the state grows food. The workers need steamrollers so the state manufactures steamrollers. The workers need asphalt so…

C can be a problem. It's how the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about is structured. "C" is what leads to things like corporate bail outs. Parenti talked about this with Conrail in the 80s. It was a train system that was put in public trust because it couldn't make money in the 70s. Then after the public made it profitable, under Reagan, it was reprivatized - not because it didn't work, but bec…

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Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#122

Post by kristopolous »

lacampbell wrote: post #109
Brakenshire wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster above was discussing attitudes towards government in Canada, it seems a bit of a non-sequitur to bring up East Germany, North Korea, and Maoist China. This is one of the very strange dichotomies which seems to exist in the US, as if when considering economics or government there are only two sides of the coin, and anything even vaguely centre left is on the same side as Communism. What didibus said applies…

Here's the crux of it - most developed countries in the world are poorer than the US. I'm in NZ, often held up as some kind of social democratic Utopia by progressive Americans. Salaries are lower, housing is unaffordable in places that are in no way comparable to San Francisco or New York, and goods are extremely expensive due to sky high import and sales taxes.

Well sure, but changing the economic system won't modify the fact that it's an island of 4 million people that's so far out on the periphery that it isn't even included on some world maps (https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/). The same economic realities can be said about Hawaii.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#123

Post by Brakenshire »

lacampbell wrote: post #109
Brakenshire wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster above was discussing attitudes towards government in Canada, it seems a bit of a non-sequitur to bring up East Germany, North Korea, and Maoist China. This is one of the very strange dichotomies which seems to exist in the US, as if when considering economics or government there are only two sides of the coin, and anything even vaguely centre left is on the same side as Communism. What didibus said applies…

Here's the crux of it - most developed countries in the world are poorer than the US. I'm in NZ, often held up as some kind of social democratic Utopia by progressive Americans. Salaries are lower, housing is unaffordable in places that are in no way comparable to San Francisco or New York, and goods are extremely expensive due to sky high import and sales taxes.

Most of the US's extra growth relative to those countries is down to increasing population. You can look back 50 years and you won't find much difference in terms of growth if you control for number of people:

http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&ser...

By the end of that time period the US had become a much more powerful country, but the average person was not significantly more wealthy compared to those in other developed countries than they were at the start. Which would lead me to think the difference is mostly down to other factors - for instance natural resources, mining, timber, agriculture etc and also cheap plentiful land for house-building, the only industrial nation left standing after WWII, etc.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#124

Post by ksenzee »

didibus wrote: post #76
DougN7 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nailed it on the head! Everyone wants someone else to pay for services. Nobody is saying "Raise my taxes - I appreciate these services". We're all complicit.

Very true. Coming from Quebec, Canada, I actually say that. It's more ingrained in our culture that what we are taxed for is services that benefit us all and that makes our societal environment more enjoyable. Now in the US, I can't seem to find anyone who think this. My biggest issue is that I can't even find anyone who thinks that the government is the people. Everyone seems to think of the government as this black…

I would submit that the difference you describe is partly because the US is so much bigger that each person has proportionally less control, and partly because Quebec is more socially cohesive than the US. The state of Oregon has a similar pro-government, pro-social welfare mentality. In their case, it's for kind of a dark reason; Oregon's historical racism makes for a more socially cohesive polity[1]. But in Quebec's case I think it's just a sense that other Québécois are family, and so services that only benefit other people still benefit everyone.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/welfare-...

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#125

Post by azernik »

dnautics wrote: post #54

"For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the deficit rose during the Clinton administration; Democrats are more likely to say that inflation rose under Reagan." These are both really tricky questions, because the questions described are derivatives of derivatives! The deficit is the time derivative of the debt; so it's possible that someone is hearing "did the debt rise during clinton" (wh…

In principle they're 2nd derivatives, but in practice the public is only ever informed of the first derivative, rather than the plain value; news programs report inflation, not the value of the consumer price index, the deficit and not the debt, and GDP growth rather than the GDP. (To the extent that sometimes I've heard journalists and news anchors say that "GDP fell to 1% this year" - when actually it's "GDP grew at only 1% this year".)

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#126

Post by azernik »

davidw wrote: post #58
usefulcat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not. The reason they payments appear to work to increase accuracy is because the possibility of a payment motivates critical thinking abilities--what Daniel Kahneman, author of _Thinking Fast and Slow_ would refer to as "system 2". As described in the book, system 1 is effortless and automatic; it produces the first thought to come to mind when attempting to answer a question. It is good at pattern matching…

This is kind of tangential, but is Michael Lewis' new book about Kahneman worth reading if you've already read "Thinking Fast And Slow"? I'd certainly recommend the latter - it's a very interesting book.

I listened to an interview he had with Nate Silver, and my impression was that he focused a lot on the (rather fascinating) personal relationship between Kahnemann and Amos Tversky. So, as a character study, maybe very interesting; not sure about its merit as an educational non-fiction piece.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#127

Post by lacampbell »

kristopolous wrote: post #122
lacampbell wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the crux of it - most developed countries in the world are poorer than the US. I'm in NZ, often held up as some kind of social democratic Utopia by progressive Americans. Salaries are lower, housing is unaffordable in places that are in no way comparable to San Francisco or New York, and goods are extremely expensive due to sky high import and sales taxes.

Well sure, but changing the economic system won't modify the fact that it's an island of 4 million people that's so far out on the periphery that it isn't even included on some world maps ( https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/ ). The same economic realities can be said about Hawaii.

It's two major islands, closer to 5 million people, and we have a sales tax ("goods and services" or GST) of 15% that applies to everything, even groceries or imported electronics. This of course largely hits the working class. The rich don't rely on getting income from generating real value here - income tax is far too high. The key to becoming wealthy is to invest in property and rent it out at exorbitant prices to working class people.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#129

Post by brownbat »

Some issues dismissed as partisan anti-factualism actually mask layers of nuance.* Political discussion is almost entirely about stressing different layers of nuance and dismissing or eliding the nuance of your opponents as irrelevant.

So if you were to ask someone in a survey for their opinion, they might respond according to their preferred level of nuance on the politically charged topic, throwing a monkey wrench if the underlying presumption of the question is overly simplistic. They might provide a contrarian response because they see the question as loaded, as in "Did you stop beating your wife?"

An incentive though turns the game into a Keynesian beauty contest, and makes people fall back on the perceived popular answer, even if they don't think it's right.

* All the examples of this are incredibly fraught and risk sidetracking the entire discussion. Kindly only read these if you can charitably look for the meta-rhetorical point. But imagine:

Did Trump support the war in Iraq? Depends on whether a half-hearted 'yes' on Howard Stern really counts.

Did Bill Clinton lower the deficit? Depends on how much you believe the Republican House forced his hand and was the real actor.

Did Reagan end the cold war? Depends on how much you want to credit internal political factors or the role of Gorbachev.

Were WMDs found in Iraq? Depends on whether you count sarin-tipped warheads found in 2005, seed material found at Tuwaitha, or if you're referring exclusively to the Hans Blix UN investigations or assembled nuclear munitions.

The study designers tried to use careful phrasing to avoid some of these problems. Even so, there are some questionable ones. "Did inflation rise under Reagan?" Of course it did! At least once every year! Just not overall...

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#130

Post by k_lander »

arikrak wrote: post #128

It would be interesting if people had to put their money where their mouth was more often. E.g. if a politician makes a claim about the past or the future, there should be a way to hold them accountable to it.

This is the basis for prediction markets like Gnosis and Augur. Would be interesting to see how they play out in practice.
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