241–250 of 282 posts
> 2) Source your facts. If you're claiming something to be true, you need to back it up by linking to a qualified and relevant source. There is no "common knowledge" exception, and anecdotal evidence is not allowed.
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There is an additional trick that the media use which is generally referred to as 'the media sourcing itself'. To do so, article A will make a claim, and as evidence will cite article B. Upon inspection of Article B, you find that it is merely making the same claim. Frequently, article B will cite the supporting evidence, but not always. Here's an example: A top-level Ars Technica article claims "the US fossil fuel i…
I didn't read the linked IMF paper but the summary seems to directly support the claim: >The largest subsidizers in 2015 were China ($1.4 trillion), United States ($649 billion), Russia ($551 billion), European Union ($289 billion), and India ($209 billion).
[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=16+%2B+26
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)#The_Hitchhiker's_G...
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> There is a huge asymmetry between the effort to make an outrageous claim and that to refute one. Asking "Got evidence for that?" is sufficient refutation for baseless claims.
Make the opposite of your claim with an alt account. Then challenge it for evidence. Now your position wins by default.
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Why is expressing disbelief less furthering of discussion than citation-free expression of belief?
because in the first instance, all you're saying is "prove it", implying that the prior reasoning was deficient without specifying the insufficiency. that's vague, lazy, and ultimately unproductive/stifling. at least point out the deficiency, thus furthering the discussion. the counter is not a non-furthering "citation-free expression of belief", but rather a rationale, a chain of observations leading to a reasonable…
As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…
For my website ( https://ontherecord.live/ ) I'm relying on user feedback/manual moderation, which currently works but doesn't really scale.
I think bit rot is an even bigger problem (either that or people maliciously quoting their own page/a Wikipedia article, which they can then change). I'm considering using the Wayback Machine ( https://web.archive.org/ ) to preserve a copy of the page being quoted, similar to what Wikipedia is doing, because unlike a published scientific article web pages can and do change over time.
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There's a HTTP status code for pages which were deleted: 410 Gone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#4xx_... This was famously used by Mark Pilgrim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pilgrim#%22Disappearance%...
Has anyone ever seen this in the wild? I didn’t even know it existed. Who knew there were so many different status codes.
> Who knew there were so many different status codes.
As an HTTP nerd, the authoritative listing of the different codes is: https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes
Note: Everything with a reference that's not RFC 7231 is an extension; don't use that status code unless you actually implement that extension. For example, don't use 401 (Unauthorized) instead of 403 (Forbidden) unless you actually implement the RFC 7235 Authentication extension.
As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…
I remember at a certain point I realized that the citations on cracked.com were often abused or flat out debunked the very thing the author claimed they did. I hadn't given up on the site yet, so I would post in the comments what the citations actually said. I'm still baffled by the generally negative reactions to doing so, but I do remember people saying things like "why should I trust you, some random dude in the c…
The common game my family will play is "I've done my research and it's XYZ" When asked "Oh, what resources did you use to land on XYZ?" It's very frequently met with silence.
The problem, as I see it, is that they'll read something on a facebook post which agrees with their existing biases. Over time they'll see the same thing reposted but with a slightly different twist and.. viola.. They've "researched" it.
A good example of this is when anti-vaccination comes up. If you've done your research, you know that vaccines are safe[0], effective[1], don't cause autism[2] and pretty much a good thing for most everyone (excluding immunocompromised and the very VERY few people that react to vaccines). Yet, still, I'll run into family on facebook that have "done their research" on the matter and generally can only link back to some anti-vaxx blog post for evidence (if that, often nothing).
What's worse, they'll completely dismiss any evidence to the contrary as being "shills", "biased", "payed off" or whatever other conspiracy theory they like. They've made the position their identity and refuting it makes them feel attacked.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html [1] https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/graph-us... [2] https://vaccines.org.il/images/4/4e/Vaccines-are-not-associa...
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There's a HTTP status code for pages which were deleted: 410 Gone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#4xx_... This was famously used by Mark Pilgrim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pilgrim#%22Disappearance%...
Has anyone ever seen this in the wild? I didn’t even know it existed. Who knew there were so many different status codes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an additional trick that the media use which is generally referred to as 'the media sourcing itself'. To do so, article A will make a claim, and as evidence will cite article B. Upon inspection of Article B, you find that it is merely making the same claim. Frequently, article B will cite the supporting evidence, but not always. Here's an example: A top-level Ars Technica article claims "the US fossil fuel i…
I didn't read the linked IMF paper but the summary seems to directly support the claim: >The largest subsidizers in 2015 were China ($1.4 trillion), United States ($649 billion), Russia ($551 billion), European Union ($289 billion), and India ($209 billion).