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At the same time, billions of people don’t kill the randos they chance upon most days. How we annotate reality with numbers matters. I feel like your trying to

At the same time, billions of people don’t kill the randos they chance upon most days. How we annotate reality with numbers matters. I feel like your trying to find too specific a claim about reality, not the researchers You’re isolating these headlines to make them useless. There’s also tons of rhetoric others, outside your filter bubble, encounter about the end is nigh, send in the troops! Not every piece of information that we like to share has to be in service of you, 1 in 7 billion The study itself is more novel and creates more discourse than your comment. Which is a bigger waste of resources? People trying to learn data driven research and habit? Or your being pedantic about the value as if to dissuade others from such mechanics unless they’re chasing a result you agree with Yet we seem to spend little time calling for HN to disable comments to avoid the descent into entitled whining about others not achieving what you want, dad

bonoboTP 6y ago
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I'll try to be better in the future. I wanted to point out how "scientific research proves people are good after all" type headlines and the foundational problems of psychology as a discipline (including the replication crisis, the shobby practices and huge leaps of conclusion) and the societal need for a calming authority interact. 50 years ago it was all about seeing how we all carry evil within and need to overcome it (Zimbardo, Milgram), today we want to hear "we are fundamentally good". Of course this research is about one specific thing but people don't read it for that reason, just like people don't read many special niche articles usually. This is about us and we seek it out and nod along to these pop sci articles just like people nodded along to a beautiful preach ("of how true were the words of the Father Smith this Sunday"). And I'm not saying science is just another religion, obviously not. But we as a society want it to take on that role. The issue is best analyzed from the side of why there is so much demand. The question of how the researchers conducted the study is secondary. It's way beyond pedantism on the methodology or trying to say people are bad. I guess if the above sounds really foreign to you it may take some amount of reading to get a grip on these ideas, which won't fit in this comment. I'm not saying I'm definitely right, but it's at least useful to look at it from this angle.

bonoboTP 6y ago

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I'll try to be better in the future. I wanted to point out how "scientific research proves people are good after all" type headlines and the foundational problems of psychology as a discipline (including the replication crisis, the shobby practices and huge leaps of conclusion) and the societal need for a calming authority interact. 50 years ago it was all about seeing how we all carry evil within and need to overcome it (Zimbardo, Milgram), today we want to hear "we are fundamentally good". Of course this research is about one specific thing but people don't read it for that reason, just like people don't read many special niche articles usually. This is about us and we seek it out and nod along to these pop sci articles just like people nodded along to a beautiful preach ("of how true were the words of the Father Smith this Sunday"). And I'm not saying science is just another religion, obviously not. But we as a society want it to take on that role. The issue is best analyzed from the side of why there is so much demand. The question of how the researchers conducted the study is secondary. It's way beyond pedantism on the methodology or trying to say people are bad. I guess if the above sounds really foreign to you it may take some amount of reading to get a grip on these ideas, which won't fit in this comment. I'm not saying I'm definitely right, but it's at least useful to look at it from this angle.