6 ms·

Which is scary, given that the survey was about factual information. Welcome to the post-truth world I guess. "I think want me to say the unemployment rate is

Which is scary, given that the survey was about factual information. Welcome to the post-truth world I guess. "I think want me to say the unemployment rate is X, so I'll select that, but I believe the unemployment rate is actually Y"

tomjen3 10y ago
When you write it that way it sounds crazy, but if you believe the unemployment rate should be the U6, then we will have real disagreements over that fact. When the media is just the media, no longer the mainstream media, but just the media with just another (biased) agenda and world-view that is no better than any others, they end up acting like spoiled children. I hope HNners are smart enough to realize that all medias are biased in some ways (some more than others) and that fake news/post truth are just another political term (unless you are talking about the spam that floated on Facebook with completely fake headlines, not justified by the content).
- Yen 10y ago
  Whether the unemployment rate discussed and optimized for should be U-6, or any other particular measure, is a disagreement about opinion, not about fact. Claims that the U-1 is falsified/manipulated for political purposes, or that the "real unemployment rate" is actually much higher than even the U-6, are much more clearly false.
sharemywin 10y ago
If your paying me to give you the answer than I'm going to go with what I think you want me to say. If fox news approached me and offered to pay for whether I thought climate change was a hoax it would be a different answer than if the question was from Nasa.
- bduerst 10y ago
  That's why the survey is blinded - the respondents have no idea who is giving it and are forced to assume the responses are supposed to be whatever is true. It's like a random organization asking you if Climate Change is a hoax, for which you know nothing about their bias.
sharemywin 10y ago
Here's another problem. apparently there are 6 different numbers... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/07/unemployment-rate-shows-at-5-but-more-realistic-rate-is-higher.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/07/unemployment-rate-shows-at-5-... So, when they ask which one are they talking about?
- bduerst 10y ago
  Doesn't matter. It's a red herring because the question itself was a rate of change over time, for which the answer is given in a 1.0% range. Irregardless of whether you focus on U-5 (the reported statistic) or U-6 (the denier's statistic), it's still only about a -0.2% and +0.1% change, respectively. Even if you did the math on U-5, you would still get the answer right for every of the 6 numbers.
  - sharemywin 10y ago
    the denier's statistic is closer to use U-5 for a starting point then switch to U-6 as an end point.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      Wherein lay the bias that they're trying to capture. Of course, for this question even that nuance isn't caught.
  - sharemywin 10y ago
    sorry missed the rate of change over time.
Semiapies 10y ago
"Welcome to" implies it hasn't been that way for longer than any of us here have been alive.

tomjen3 10y ago

When you write it that way it sounds crazy, but if you believe the unemployment rate should be the U6, then we will have real disagreements over that fact. When the media is just the media, no longer the mainstream media, but just the media with just another (biased) agenda and world-view that is no better than any others, they end up acting like spoiled children. I hope HNners are smart enough to realize that all medias are biased in some ways (some more than others) and that fake news/post truth are just another political term (unless you are talking about the spam that floated on Facebook with completely fake headlines, not justified by the content).

Yen 10y ago
Whether the unemployment rate discussed and optimized for should be U-6, or any other particular measure, is a disagreement about opinion, not about fact. Claims that the U-1 is falsified/manipulated for political purposes, or that the "real unemployment rate" is actually much higher than even the U-6, are much more clearly false.

sharemywin 10y ago

If your paying me to give you the answer than I'm going to go with what I think you want me to say. If fox news approached me and offered to pay for whether I thought climate change was a hoax it would be a different answer than if the question was from Nasa.

bduerst 10y ago
That's why the survey is blinded - the respondents have no idea who is giving it and are forced to assume the responses are supposed to be whatever is true. It's like a random organization asking you if Climate Change is a hoax, for which you know nothing about their bias.

sharemywin 10y ago

Here's another problem. apparently there are 6 different numbers... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/07/unemployment-rate-shows-at-5-but-more-realistic-rate-is-higher.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/07/unemployment-rate-shows-at-5-... So, when they ask which one are they talking about?

bduerst 10y ago
Doesn't matter. It's a red herring because the question itself was a rate of change over time, for which the answer is given in a 1.0% range. Irregardless of whether you focus on U-5 (the reported statistic) or U-6 (the denier's statistic), it's still only about a -0.2% and +0.1% change, respectively. Even if you did the math on U-5, you would still get the answer right for every of the 6 numbers.
- sharemywin 10y ago
  the denier's statistic is closer to use U-5 for a starting point then switch to U-6 as an end point.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Wherein lay the bias that they're trying to capture. Of course, for this question even that nuance isn't caught.
- sharemywin 10y ago
  sorry missed the rate of change over time.

Semiapies 10y ago

"Welcome to" implies it hasn't been that way for longer than any of us here have been alive.