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How to Mislead with Facts

consilienceproject.org

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Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#81

Post by _Nat_ »

Looks like a wonderful project! Society'd seem to do well to focus on how we can have real, honest dialogs. Current forums for stuff like political debates have malicious, deceptive strategies that may work better than honest ones, which just seems like a bad thing for society as a whole.

The solution'd seem to be to have cultural dialogs, e.g. on politics, occur on platforms where optimal strategies are constructive. This is, where deceptive strategies would lose out to honest ones.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#82

Post by LocalH »

croon wrote: post #47
LocalH wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's closely related if it's not your actual point. Some people actively try to minimize their bias, some lean into it. Also, not all bias is harmful. At some level, it's also an essential component of human existence.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#83

Post by Jensson »

coliveira wrote: post #72
nec4b wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately we don't hire only good teachers.

Companies don't hire only good software engineers either, they hire plenty of ineffective ones. I don't see this changing their salaries.

Companies also fire a lot of bad software engineer and have technical interviews so there is pressure to perform. You never see teachers fired for being bad at teaching. They only get fired when they do something illegal like harass their students or when they refuse to go to work. If companies hired every person with a CS degree from any school to work as a software engineer and never fired anyone for bad performance you'd see software engineering salaries sink like a rock as well.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#84

Post by mandmandam »

prometheus76 wrote: post #79
mandmandam wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's no such thing as an unbiased perspective. That's what perspective means. It's a report from a certain point of view. If you tried to be an "unbiased perspective" you'd have to include all details of every part of everything, because the mere act of choosing what to include and what not to include is a result of a perspective, and a perspective is the result of telos. Action towards a purpose. Have you ever be…

You may benefit from looking up the term "enlightened centrism". Or "pedant".

If you think pro-war corporate media's constant military cheer-leading is as valid a perspective as independent media, I have nothing polite to say to you.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#85

Post by Jensson »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #64
nec4b wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately we don't hire only good teachers.

Even bad teachers have to meet the standards, which are usually set by law. A preschool teacher, who often gets paid just over minimum wage, usually requires a 2 year degree (for head start-like programs). A teacher? 4 year degree, with a preference for a masters and in many places, absolutely no pay during the summer months. It isn't like any other industry hires only "good" people, though, so calling out teaching f…

But those standards doesn't mean anything if they are still bad teachers. Would you hire a software engineer with a 4 year degree who can't code? No, of course not. But would you hire a teacher with a 4 year degree who can't teach? Of course you would! You just need them to tick a box, their skill as a teacher isn't relevant, if they have a piece of paper they meet the bar and are hired.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#86

Post by prometheus76 »

mandmandam wrote: post #84
prometheus76 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as an unbiased perspective. That's what perspective means. It's a report from a certain point of view. If you tried to be an "unbiased perspective" you'd have to include all details of every part of everything, because the mere act of choosing what to include and what not to include is a result of a perspective, and a perspective is the result of telos. Action towards a purpose. Have you ever be…

You may benefit from looking up the term "enlightened centrism". Or "pedant". If you think pro-war corporate media's constant military cheer-leading is as valid a perspective as independent media, I have nothing polite to say to you.

I was intentionally drawing attention to phrases that we, as a society, use frequently, but are taken for granted as being valuable, or even attainable. This "detached perspective" of being disembodied and floating somewhere above everything and "including everything" is a myth of modernism and a myth of "scientific objectivity".

I have no problem with trying to be balanced or nuanced, but that's very different than feigned "objectivity" that basically just tries to use handwaving and gaslighting to distract you from considering that every perspective comes from a structure of presuppositions.

If you want to call me a "pedant" for making a distinction between implied, but impossible "objectivity" and balance/nuance, I'm fine with that label, because it's still a point worth making.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#87

Post by kareemm »

the-alt-one wrote: post #61
kareemm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm not sure teachers and nannies are good examples. Public school teachers are largely unionized which would eliminate differences in pay between men and women. And many nannies are effectively small business p…

>Public school teachers are largely unionized which would eliminate differences in pay between men and women. No, it wouldn't. Why would it?

Maybe I misunderstand how unions work but my understanding is that unionized pay is based on experience levels and not gender.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#88

Post by clairity »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #53
ncmncm wrote: post #31

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…

Misrepresenting facts in this way is still a form of lying. Speaking technical truths doesn't change that. Most lies aren't complete fabrications, honestly, even when they do contain a few.

i was told growing up that this was the difference between being honest and being truthful: honesty is about telling allcomers everything you know (or believe, with appropriate caveats) to be true, whereas being truthful is simply not advancing as truth things you know (or believe) to be false.

in any case, i've watched npr and nyt, two of my mostly former news sources, wrench from simply being biased to being outright hysterically partisan and dishonest. covid (over-)coverage being the most blatant, but it's been a long disintegration of truth and trust.

this is just a little part of the overall movement toward captured capital and centralized power, sweeping up news media along the way (note that these are editorial decisions, with editors seeking favor from the powerful). we're in for a rocky ride.

p.s. - a little tremor hit LA while writing this...

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#89

Post by ComradePhil »

Slightly different perspective: facts are completely unimportant, because:

- what seems like a fact may not be a "fact" at all, it may be a misunderstanding

- knowing all the known facts may give you a false sense of understanding of the truth; one more fact can change your entire outlook... and yet one more can change that... you don't know the facts you don't know

If certain truths are probable, the facts known today (or perceived as knowable today) should not get in the way of exploring them.

Do not let any fact or a collection of facts get in the way of your exploration of the truth.

If one is extremely conservative, it may seem like a good idea to only stick to what is already known (i.e. the "facts") but even then, because of the fact that you can never be sure that everything there is to know is known at this time, one should still keep an open mind.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#90

Post by mindslight »

donw wrote: post #2

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…

Thank you for your example of how to mislead with non-factual strawmen. This example might be connected to reality if:

1. There actually was a law requiring individuals "wear masks all the time".

2. There actually was a law requiring individuals to get an "endless stream of boosters".

3. Alice respected the boundaries of private businesses that made wearing respiratory protection or vaccination a requirement of associating with them.

4. Alice respected personal preferences of people wearing respiratory protection, rather than violating their personal space or perhaps even assaulting them.

5. Alice paid the costs of her own healthcare, and/or her "insurance" company were efficient enough to charge for her expected increased costs.

6. Healthcare providers were able to freely disassociate with Alice as to not have an undue burden on their resources due to the results of Alice's choices.

7. Alice displayed rational recognition of the scientific and legal realities she was dealing with, rather that irrational rejection of such.

8. Alice displayed some understanding of historical precedents, as pandemics are infrequent events that only appear novel.

I'm a libertarian, so if you want to discuss practical ways of making it so that different value judgements can coexist, I'm all for it. It starts with acknowledging the existing non-independence like the points I listed, and will generally be about nuanced corrections to the medical consensus rather than wholesale rejection. But really, it's fallacious to frame the larger situation as being about individual freedom when the overriding characteristic is political herd behavior. What has really happened is an abrupt change in prevailing conditions, combined with professional political machines preaching simplistic easy answers that play to peoples' biases.

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