3 ms·

The solution is ethical and moral people. Politicians or not, the greatest modern issue is that we don't value honesty and integrity as a society anymore. This

The solution is ethical and moral people. Politicians or not, the greatest modern issue is that we don't value honesty and integrity as a society anymore. This means, across the board, we have this weird form of nuanced corruption where everyone lies without compunction just because it's accepted practice. This means we can't trust politicians, data analysts, data scientists (anyone who uses data to proclaim "the truth") or anyone who makes any claim whatsoever to "the truth." Until, and unless, we as a people value integrity and honesty more highly, we should hold all "truth" to be suspect, and guilty until proven innocent. I worked at a job where, as data scientists, we were discouraged from revealing what we found in the data, and compelled to produce from the data what our boss thought the answer should be. It was asinine. If you think you already know the answer, why consult the Oracle? Put your understanding into practice and find out yourself if you're right. Or, look at the data first with as little bias as possible, and build testable hypotheses from there. I think the tendency to take a hypothesis to the data is intended to reflect the scientific method, but that only works if you're open to whatever the answer may be. It doesn't work if you just keep pushing to slice the data in ever crazier ways trying to get it to validate your hypothesis.

pas 9y ago
Ethical and moral people fall prey to cognitive biases all the time. It's not about honesty and integrity, if you (or others) don't ask [the right] questions. We are biased, by ideology, world view, experience (and history/genetics/family/friends/aesthetics) by long- and short-term (self-)interests and so on. With money it's very common to spot the conflict of interest, the bias when people give advice, with other things, it's a lot harder. That said, people by default are gullible, susceptible to persuasion and so on. People are by nature social animals and easy to misled, to influence, and so on. We are naive. It takes training to spot the bullshit, even in our own thinking. (And we haven't even mentioned the psychopathologies that can also very seriously undermine our blossoming critical thinking by sheer force of emotions - anxiety/depression/impulsiveness/xenophobia/etnophobia - or via a persistent insistence on fringe patterns - schizoid-type disorders, hallucinations, paranoia.) > compelled to produce from the data what our boss thought the answer should be. That's not asinine, that's misconduct. That's fraud. So, all in all, the situation was never good. The Enlightenment never happened. It started to, but suddenly stopped.

pas 9y ago

Ethical and moral people fall prey to cognitive biases all the time. It's not about honesty and integrity, if you (or others) don't ask [the right] questions. We are biased, by ideology, world view, experience (and history/genetics/family/friends/aesthetics) by long- and short-term (self-)interests and so on. With money it's very common to spot the conflict of interest, the bias when people give advice, with other things, it's a lot harder. That said, people by default are gullible, susceptible to persuasion and so on. People are by nature social animals and easy to misled, to influence, and so on. We are naive. It takes training to spot the bullshit, even in our own thinking. (And we haven't even mentioned the psychopathologies that can also very seriously undermine our blossoming critical thinking by sheer force of emotions - anxiety/depression/impulsiveness/xenophobia/etnophobia - or via a persistent insistence on fringe patterns - schizoid-type disorders, hallucinations, paranoia.) > compelled to produce from the data what our boss thought the answer should be. That's not asinine, that's misconduct. That's fraud. So, all in all, the situation was never good. The Enlightenment never happened. It started to, but suddenly stopped.