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How to Mislead with Facts

consilienceproject.org

41–50 of 297 posts

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#41
post #38
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you can take another step and ask why professions dominated by women in general are less well paid than similar ones dominated by men, and why it is mostly women who reduce their work hours while the kids are small and why not more men do the same.

Because the jobs are less valuable, not due to who's doing them but due to the market (i.e. all of us) seeing them as less valuable. Teachers and nannies aren't paid a whole lot because they're easily replaceable, not because they're jobs dominated by women. Doctors used to be exclusively men. Have salaries gone down now that women make up a significant percent of the number of doctors?

> Because the jobs are less valuable, not due to who's doing them but due to the market (i.e. all of us) seeing them as less valuable.

It is a rather sad and naive view of the value of work if you think that it is decided by market value. My work as a developer has a high market value because what I do is generating revenue for my employer. The work of the teacher who shapes the future of our children or the work of nurse that take care of our dying parents don't generate any revenue, and thus has a lower market value, but I, and I think we as a society should, value it much more.

Good teachers and good nannies aren't easier to replace than good carpenters or construction workers. But since many men who are in charge of setting salaries don't understand that they aren't as well paid.

> Have salaries gone down now that women make up a significant percent of the number of doctors?

Yes. I don't have the time to dig up the sources right now, and I don't remember seeing it specifically about doctors, but in many lines of work the relative salaries have gone down when traditionally male professions have been taken over more and more by women.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the "fact checking" sites I am aware of are heavily biased. It seems very unlikely that they actually try to be unbiased in their checking. It already starts with selecting the facts they check (cherry picking).

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are these scare quotes or sarcastic quotes ?

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the "fact checking" sites I am aware of are heavily biased. It seems very unlikely that they actually try to be unbiased in their checking. It already starts with selecting the facts they check (cherry picking).

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Answered like a typical "fact checker". I guess you solidly "debunked" my claims.

And yes, I only stated my opinion. If I would do a more thorough analysis, maybe I wouldn't waste it on HN, but try to sell it to some major newspaper for $$$.

You are welcome to completely dismiss my opinion.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The very fact of being unbiased, or claiming to be, is quite a big claim and the burden of proof of being unbiased should lie on the side that claims being so . Because the normal, expected state of things is that humans and the organizations that humans create are biased like hell.

> The very fact of being unbiased, or claiming to be, is quite a big claim and the burden of proof of being unbiased should lie on the side that claims being so.

This is a ridiculous claim. You can't prove a negative. If they are being biased, it's on the person making that claim to provide examples/proof.

Analogue: "Prove you're not hitting your wife", etc.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the "fact checking" sites I am aware of are heavily biased. It seems very unlikely that they actually try to be unbiased in their checking. It already starts with selecting the facts they check (cherry picking).

I would ask you to please identify the ones to which you apply this criticism, for epistemic hygiene.

I mostly encounter the ones in Germany, so I doubt it would be much use to you. For example correctiv.org or even https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/ which is from the public TV network (government funding). I remember trying to verify the claims about "Trump lied x zillion times" at some US fact checking portal (I think from some major newspaper, maybe NYT or Washington Post), and all the supposed "lies" were also bullshit, like taken out of context, misinterpreted in extreme ways and so on in typical "fact checker" fashion.

Really it doesn't matter what sites I list, because they are all shit. The very act of calling themselves "fact checkers" should give it away. Just pick any of them and read their "checks" with a critical mind. Anybody can call themselves a "fact checker", it is a fake claim to authority.

Isn't Snopes also a renowned "fact checker"? I think some scandals regarding their founders came to light recently, but I don't remember the details.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#46
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very fact of being unbiased, or claiming to be, is quite a big claim and the burden of proof of being unbiased should lie on the side that claims being so . Because the normal, expected state of things is that humans and the organizations that humans create are biased like hell.

> The very fact of being unbiased, or claiming to be, is quite a big claim and the burden of proof of being unbiased should lie on the side that claims being so. This is a ridiculous claim. You can't prove a negative. If they are being biased, it's on the person making that claim to provide examples/proof. Analogue: "Prove you're not hitting your wife", etc.

Your point is very poignant. Perhaps people should drop the pretense of unbias and wear their bias on their sleeves? It’s not like that’s too far from the current meta. Everyone is biased to all hell while saying on the tin “fair”, “unbiased”, “balanced”, or other weasel words

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#47
post #46
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The very fact of being unbiased, or claiming to be, is quite a big claim and the burden of proof of being unbiased should lie on the side that claims being so. This is a ridiculous claim. You can't prove a negative. If they are being biased, it's on the person making that claim to provide examples/proof. Analogue: "Prove you're not hitting your wife", etc.

Your point is very poignant. Perhaps people should drop the pretense of unbias and wear their bias on their sleeves? It’s not like that’s too far from the current meta. Everyone is biased to all hell while saying on the tin “fair”, “unbiased”, “balanced”, or other weasel words

That's not my point. Everyone is unbiased until pointed out where/how they are biased. Maybe that is every action of every person on the planet, but in my biased opinion some are clearly less biased than others, and it's not that hard to compare.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#48
post #14

I love the idea of this article, but it doesn't address the reason things are the way they are. Facts get checked for literal accuracy because that's what's easy to actually do in a reasonably unbiased way. We stop there not because that's all we want, but because everything after that is too messy to even come close to systematizing. If they've got a well thought out framework for systematizing high quality contextu…

All the "fact checking" sites I am aware of are heavily biased. It seems very unlikely that they actually try to be unbiased in their checking. It already starts with selecting the facts they check (cherry picking).

Fact checking has poisoned discourse because it has an underlying assumption that preferences of one sort or another can be proven true, when in fact they cannot because they are by definition preferences.

People would hope to just recognize that they have different preferences about how others should behave, some of those preferences get condensed into laws and some are argued about indefinitely.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#49
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very fact of being unbiased, or claiming to be, is quite a big claim and the burden of proof of being unbiased should lie on the side that claims being so . Because the normal, expected state of things is that humans and the organizations that humans create are biased like hell.

> The very fact of being unbiased, or claiming to be, is quite a big claim and the burden of proof of being unbiased should lie on the side that claims being so. This is a ridiculous claim. You can't prove a negative. If they are being biased, it's on the person making that claim to provide examples/proof. Analogue: "Prove you're not hitting your wife", etc.

Nobody's unbiased.

The best you can hope for is a source that wears its biases on its sleeve. Then you can judge how those biases might have influenced information from that source.

The least-reliable sources tend to proclaim their "neutrality", i.e. they deliberately conceal their biases.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#50
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Example: Rittenhouse carried a gun. Left wing sources said it was illegal and he was charged with it. Right wing sources (e.g. Viva & Barnes) said it was actually legal because of how the law was written and predicted it would be dismissed by the judge. Politifact factchecked the claim that it was legal as false. The judge dismissed the charge. Politifact updated their page, not to admit they were wrong, but to doubl…

A judge dismissing a charge doesn't mean that the gun was legal, though: There are a lot of different reasons to dismiss. Technicalities and not having enough strong evidence for that particular charge are two that come to mind.
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