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Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

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Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#31

Post by orzig »

weaksauce wrote: post #13
umvi wrote: post #5

The problem with "objective facts" is that they are often carefully selected or pulled out of context to bolster the arguer's position. I'm sure everyone can think of objective facts related to covid that both make the disease seem more deadly, and also objective facts that make it seem less deadly. Appeals to emotion with subjective experiences have the same problem. You can use them to bolster support for the argue…

> [0] For example (and this is just one example), I remember last year stories about how covid-19 victims were going into mass graves in New York City. And while that was a true and an objective fact, important context was left out. The context that was missing was that they were being buried on Hart Island, which is literally a mass grave site designated for unidentifiable persons dying of any cause, not just covid.…

And, while I don't debate the premise of the OP's article, the big redeeming virtue of objective facts is that we can dig into them - exactly like we're doing here.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#32

Post by iguy »

yters wrote: post #29
UncleOxidant wrote: post #8

Key point: "The problem is that facts—at least today—are themselves subject to doubt, especially when they conflict with our political beliefs (21). In the past decades, America has seen a decentralization of news and information (22) that has allowed people to gather their “own facts” (i.e., alternative facts; ref. 23). Most recently, claims of “fake news” allow people to distrust any information that fails to align…

Including the NYT communist shilling with Walter Durante? That doesn't seem so middle of the road.

Different era. "Up until about the late 70s" makes it sound like this was the eternal state of affairs, but it wasn't. It was a few postwar decades.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#33

Post by MegaButts »

thereisnospork wrote: post #28
oblio wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about these "wars". What's happening?

There's a bunch of ads promoting making vaping illegal, on terrestrial radio/tv fear mongering about heavy metals aimed at the 'Karen' crowd. As far as I can tell they are based on a few people who died after consuming grey market THC cartridges and some studies where the scientists intentionally cranked up the wattage above spec to get metal release. Glycophosphate (Round-Up) allegedly caused cancer in a few workers…

> This is of course despite both an excellent safety record and lack of safer alternatives, asserted by many studies and meta studies from the FDA and the European equivalent.

Leaded gasoline had an extraordinary safety record for decades before suddenly being recognized as dangerous. The story is actually fascinating. But my point is this is actually not as strong of an argument as you might think, especially since glyphosate is a patented chemical effectively sold by one company.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-sc...

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#34

Post by orzig »

jariel wrote: post #11
UncleOxidant wrote: post #8

Key point: "The problem is that facts—at least today—are themselves subject to doubt, especially when they conflict with our political beliefs (21). In the past decades, America has seen a decentralization of news and information (22) that has allowed people to gather their “own facts” (i.e., alternative facts; ref. 23). Most recently, claims of “fake news” allow people to distrust any information that fails to align…

In 1980 newspapers were where >50% of advertising dollars were spent, now it's going to nothing - and - they have to fight for every little click using click bait. You can see the natural progression towards hyper bifurcated viewpoints.

As long as we're talking about objective facts, I'll add that "Going to nothing" means going from $25B/y down to $5B/y, which is a huge drop - but also $5B/y.

It's continuing to trend downward, so "going to nothing" is not a clearly false summary, but we might as well be specific

Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/20244/estimated-print-adverti...

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#35

Post by gnarbarian »

thereisnospork wrote: post #20
umvi wrote: post #5

The problem with "objective facts" is that they are often carefully selected or pulled out of context to bolster the arguer's position. I'm sure everyone can think of objective facts related to covid that both make the disease seem more deadly, and also objective facts that make it seem less deadly. Appeals to emotion with subjective experiences have the same problem. You can use them to bolster support for the argue…

Or as the late great Mark Twain put it: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." A good example of FUD spreading using 'facts' is the current war on vaping. More contentiously, there is also the war against glycophosphate.

Reminds me of the apocryphal but excellent quote:

"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed." Mark Twain

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#36

Post by lamename »

umvi wrote: post #5

The problem with "objective facts" is that they are often carefully selected or pulled out of context to bolster the arguer's position. I'm sure everyone can think of objective facts related to covid that both make the disease seem more deadly, and also objective facts that make it seem less deadly. Appeals to emotion with subjective experiences have the same problem. You can use them to bolster support for the argue…

You're right. This is how people with an agenda misuse facts. But just because specific facts can be misused does not mean we abandon using facts at all. Many facts are biased. All personal experiences are biased. Being less wrong is the goal.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#37

Post by mmsimanga »

umvi wrote: post #5

The problem with "objective facts" is that they are often carefully selected or pulled out of context to bolster the arguer's position. I'm sure everyone can think of objective facts related to covid that both make the disease seem more deadly, and also objective facts that make it seem less deadly. Appeals to emotion with subjective experiences have the same problem. You can use them to bolster support for the argue…

This was the biggest lesson I learnt when doing my PhD. One of the sections I had to look at what factors led to successful software projects within companies. This could be anything, from going with Open Source, buying the right software from the right vendor, management involvement, 10X developer in the company or even something as simple as user training. You can practically pick whatever factor suits your bias and you will find the data that supports your argument.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#38

Post by andrewjl »

offtop5 wrote: post #23

Actually when it comes to personal experiences, and human to human offline interaction I've just noticed I don't need to agree with everyone. I have liberal friends, conservative friends. I've dated liberals and I've dated conservatives. Well I still vote, I'm not nearly as political as I used to be. I don't use social media ( including online dating) , if only because I found people to be insanely mean. I don't want…

> And I'm at the point where I think social media needs to be heavily regulated to stop society from imploding. It's just too powerful, too harmful of a tool as is.

Heavy regulation would seem like a good solution, except it does nothing to shift incentives. Those remain unaddressed.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#39

Post by dantheman »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #8

Key point: "The problem is that facts—at least today—are themselves subject to doubt, especially when they conflict with our political beliefs (21). In the past decades, America has seen a decentralization of news and information (22) that has allowed people to gather their “own facts” (i.e., alternative facts; ref. 23). Most recently, claims of “fake news” allow people to distrust any information that fails to align…

Don't forget the media lied throughout that time too; let us not forget the craziness of satanic ritual abuse, or the lies that led to the vietnam war, etc...

The media and the government routinely mislead the public, look at in 2019 the intentional confusion of blackmarket thc vapes and tobacco vaping. Or more recently, the use of human trafficking.

To claim there was sometime in the past where the news was good and reliable would require overlooking a huge amount of actual historic malfeasance.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#40

Post by chalst »

thereisnospork wrote: post #28
oblio wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about these "wars". What's happening?

There's a bunch of ads promoting making vaping illegal, on terrestrial radio/tv fear mongering about heavy metals aimed at the 'Karen' crowd. As far as I can tell they are based on a few people who died after consuming grey market THC cartridges and some studies where the scientists intentionally cranked up the wattage above spec to get metal release. Glycophosphate (Round-Up) allegedly caused cancer in a few workers…

Roundup deserves its bad press, regardless of which exact scandal caused it to penetrate popular consciousness. Monsanto's highest margin R-Up product range is ultra-high dosage pesticides together with crops designed to tolerate the pesticide. It kills all rival plants, as advertised, and through its effect on funghi and bacteria it has plenty of knock-on effects on local ecologies. It's real "Silent Spring" material.

The decision by the EU Parliament to ensure that decisions about permissibility of pesticides are based on open science, rather than the proprietary study model that dominated before, has led to a lot of good research. Cf. e.g.,

https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article/176/2/253/5835885?ca...

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