71–80 of 297 posts
The problem is policy. Imagine two friends, Alice and Bob. Alice thinks COVID is not a problem. Doesn't mask, hasn't had a single shot, all the rest. Bob is terrified of COVID. Masks up at home, space bubble helmet outside, all the rest. The only outcome that works is Alice and Bob agreeing that they have different risk preferences. That they each should live their lives in accordance, but that they have no right to…
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> Teachers and nannies aren't paid a whole lot because they're easily replaceable I don't know any nannies, but it's not true that teachers are easily replaceable. Not good ones, anyway. Good teachers need to show these skills: * Classroom management (possibly in classes with disturbed kids) * Curriculum knowledge (requires regular training) * Social work skills * Child psychology * Understanding of various learning…
Unfortunately we don't hire only good teachers.
The problem is policy. Imagine two friends, Alice and Bob. Alice thinks COVID is not a problem. Doesn't mask, hasn't had a single shot, all the rest. Bob is terrified of COVID. Masks up at home, space bubble helmet outside, all the rest. The only outcome that works is Alice and Bob agreeing that they have different risk preferences. That they each should live their lives in accordance, but that they have no right to…
Tinkerbell School of Progress. Clap louder and surely Tinkerbell will fly. Like the evergreen advice to teach critical thinking. Certain to work. Next time. There's no profit in pursuing "truth" in the face of tenacious anti-truth. Truthiness is an outgrowth of identity. And identity is impervious to logic, reason, facts. The best we can do is help ourselves navigate the chaos. It's a real simple checklist: - Share y…
The problem is that journalism stokes the formation of camps by a) conflating ideas and identities, b) bothsidesing everything, and so creating artificial identities to be perceived as neutral, and c) knowingly exploiting that "fear sells" and targeting the identities they manufacture.
Which then becomes ripe pickings for any sociopath out for their own interests.
The only way I'm aware of that can overcome this at scale is forming a larger group identity that's more inclusive. But that only seems to work if there's a large outgroup you can unite against, as far as I can tell.
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One example: people who simply state “women make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes” to imply the advantage of being a man vs a woman. The reality of how this number is calculated (eg averages across professions, even though men and women tend to work different professions, part time vs full time is not taken into account) suggests the conclusions that come from this 82 cents number is more nuanced than the initia…
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 evolution did this decision for us. Woman stays with children, while man risk their lives, because those, which did the opposite, lose evolutionary competition.
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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 al…
Yes, and despite this, snopes is still one of the better ones. Their articles are well sourced and easy to verify. I'm sure they've made some mistakes, and there've been a few cases where I disagreed with their conclusion or approach, but overall they do a good job.
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…
In usual communication, we focus on fact-checking things in the context in which they're most valid, with the presumption that any contextual ambiguity'd be understood/resolved. In such scenarios, it can make sense to fact-check something literally, in the context in which it's claimed, then handle the contextual-migrations appropriately in discussing inter-related points.
But Twitter-like platforms destroy this -- short blurbs in a relatively context-free space make it difficult to be honest even for folks who'd want to be, and seems to be a playground for folks who'd want to lie under pretense of factuality.
The appropriate reaction to claims removed from context would seem to be to deny them. Not to say that the claim is false (at least, not in a context in which it'd be true), but to note that the claim isn't relevant to the current-context (at least, not without a basis for connecting it to the current-context).
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To note it, a problem with allowing folks to declare claims as being out-of-context (if they're not required to support it) is that it gives everyone a free-pass to weasel out of acknowledging anything that they dislike. So, it's unsuitable for adversarial contexts or otherwise unreliable exchanges.
Which is what I think makes debates, politics, etc. on platforms like Twitter basically garbage: it's too easy to lie if context isn't observed, and it's too easy to dodge stuff if it is.
So while Twitter-like platforms might workable for non-adversarial exchanges (like sharing pictures, announcements, etc.), adversarial exchanges on such platforms would seem structurally predisposed toward undesirable behavior.
The New York Times mastered all this long ago. It is not necessary to lie. All you need is to be selective about what truths you tell, and where. Some goes on the front page, some on page 13, other bits nowhere at all. Hans Blix's UN reports, before the invasion, about Iraq's entire lack of any WMD whatsoever were too important to completely ignore, but were easy enough to bury in a back page. The entire lack of any…
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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).
You're 100% right. An unbiased perspective would call the arms, pharma, media, agricultural and oil industries out far more. The bias is so widespread many people don't see it, like fish not realizing they're wet. Whole shelves of books get written about the illegal wars media cheerleads; and about the unconscionable and unimaginable atrocities regularly committed by big agriculture and fossil fuel. Yet we drown in p…
Have you ever been friends with someone who includes too many details in their story and they lose track of what they were saying? That's what happens when someone tries to be "unbiased". They include too much and it starts to lose purpose. You won't read a book written this way. Perspective and narrative structures are what engage our attention and help us understand the purpose of the story.
This article is desperately in need of some examples. I can't believe there isn't one.
One example: people who simply state “women make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes” to imply the advantage of being a man vs a woman. The reality of how this number is calculated (eg averages across professions, even though men and women tend to work different professions, part time vs full time is not taken into account) suggests the conclusions that come from this 82 cents number is more nuanced than the initia…