4 ms·
It's useful to understand the biases of an author when reading an article. We all have them, and no media is free from them. It contextualizes a piece, and it's
by Pfhreak 7y ago
It's useful to understand the biases of an author when reading an article. We all have them, and no media is free from them. It contextualizes a piece, and it's information I found useful to my understanding of the piece.
- swimfar 7y agoI agree, but at the same time, it could also introduce a bias and prejudice into your perception of the article. This would be especially true if you already had strong feelings and opinions about the author. Maybe the ideal way would be to read it without any knowledge of the author. And then go back and reread it after knowing who wrote it.
- 0xddd 7y agoAnd what better way to find out who wrote it than to scan the comments after reading the article? In all seriousness, I don't see how wilful ignorance on the first-read through is some ideal analytic strategy.
- 1MachineElf 7y agoNot knowing who the author is is actually a component of an ideal analytic strategy. Same principle behind why double-blind tests have high efficacy.
- Pfhreak 7y agoReading an article is different than a double blind test. Reputation exists because it is critical shorthand when dealing with other humans. It's not always right. It's not always useful. But it shortcuts a lot of preamble. Also, most geopolitical problems aren't simple analytical problems. There isn't a 'right answer' that one can divine by approaching the space with an emotionless evaluation.
- redisman 7y agoEspecially in complex "human" problems like geopolitics where every action has 5 re-actions, some of which are only apparent 5 years later. When there aren't scientifically right answers then deceit can become an important part of the field. See - all politics. Pretending that there is no deceit in political writing and that it's in any way objective seems completely naive.
- akiselev 7y agoDouble blind studies help with biases during data collection, not during analysis. It doesn't matter if you have the perfect double blind clinical trial for diabetes medication if you measure efficacy using body thetans as a proxy when you get the results back. Reading news articles or analyses is in effect a metastudy and doing it double blind is pointless - a metastudy requires an analysis of the provenance of the information in order to weigh the results from multiple sources.
- duxup 7y agoIt might, but a given tidbit is only so much context. A random bit of context with no obvious connection isn't much context. Context is more than a single given fact.
- kmonsen 7y agoAlso adds to it to see where the author have been wrong before. Doesn’t mean they are wrong this time, but a piece of data.