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Eh. It's not like the internet has a shortage of people happy to read a study's editorialized conclusion on Twitter, take it as truth, and go on with their day.

Eh. It's not like the internet has a shortage of people happy to read a study's editorialized conclusion on Twitter, take it as truth, and go on with their day. A little critical thinking --- and this means going beyond "I don't like this, so I'll say correlation does not imply causation and move on to something else" --- seems fine if you're trying to do it honestly and carefully?

snayan 6y ago
I 100% agree, but I was curious so I went through a few pages of hacker news posts, looking for some other scientific studies to see the general sentiment in the comments. Here's one I found on an antidepressants impact on covid hospitalizations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25701446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25701446 Far from scientific, but there seems to be a general acceptance of the study in the comments of that article. I cannot say the same of this one. Now obviously the sample size and statistics of the studies are not identical, but it seems to me we're seeing significantly more 'critical thinking' in this thread than that one. I would love to drill into this further and see if this trend holds in further comment threads, but I'm late for a hike.
- belorn 6y ago
  Studies that blame a large demographic of malicious behavior is likely to be received with less acceptance than one that does not. If there were a covid study that said that Americans was more likely to become sick because they don't care enough about they fellow beings to follow recommendation, even with great sample size and statistics, most would look at such conclusion with skepticism.
uniqueid 6y ago
Oh, I wouldn't want to see no comments casting doubt. When I posted, every comment here was skeptical. Most likely, the people who took the least time writing their posts were the least... open to the possibility of bias.
watwut 6y ago
But like, whenever there is positive study about computer games, HN is not critical at all. Instead, it is completely non critical, extrapolates findings, even if the n is like 5 and study weak. My point is, some studies are knee jerkly believed and others are knee jerkly doubted.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  The set of studies accepted or rejected out-of-hand varies depending upon the individual or group. A fact of life, since individuals come to a proposition with different life experiences, both educational and directly experiential. If you are saying that HN as a community has commonality in beliefs about what is “generally accepted as true” and “generally accepted as false”, you are basically saying the HN community has shared experiences somewhat unique to that community. You are probably right. If the community is challenging more findings on bias, they probably have life experiences that suggest such findings are incorrect or that too many such studies themselves have, in the past, been of low-quality, self-serving and/or misleading. Putting the quote marks around social “science” in general. There is also the natural bias for people to want to ignore problems outside of their scope or vision...24 hours in a day and so forth. If HN is infested with IT professionals who have worked in environments where everyone is a minority of one sort or another and observed or managed the dynamics, their lived experience in ethnic/gender dynamics and opportunities may differ from other groups. If HN skews older, then they also have had the lived experience of both the many successes and many failures of the Civil Rights movement on which to base opinions. On the specific issue of computer games, there is a dramatic difference in societal and economic impact between Fortnite and the direct personal welfare of tens of millions of people. The latter warrants more due care and attention. There have been a few posts on the psychological harm from gaming, so some balance there.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Yes, just like any other group, HN tends to have commonalities in opinions. And common biases. Those are not just result of experience, but also result of "what you really really want to be true" and "what you really prefer to be false".

snayan 6y ago

I 100% agree, but I was curious so I went through a few pages of hacker news posts, looking for some other scientific studies to see the general sentiment in the comments. Here's one I found on an antidepressants impact on covid hospitalizations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25701446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25701446 Far from scientific, but there seems to be a general acceptance of the study in the comments of that article. I cannot say the same of this one. Now obviously the sample size and statistics of the studies are not identical, but it seems to me we're seeing significantly more 'critical thinking' in this thread than that one. I would love to drill into this further and see if this trend holds in further comment threads, but I'm late for a hike.

belorn 6y ago
Studies that blame a large demographic of malicious behavior is likely to be received with less acceptance than one that does not. If there were a covid study that said that Americans was more likely to become sick because they don't care enough about they fellow beings to follow recommendation, even with great sample size and statistics, most would look at such conclusion with skepticism.

uniqueid 6y ago

Oh, I wouldn't want to see no comments casting doubt. When I posted, every comment here was skeptical. Most likely, the people who took the least time writing their posts were the least... open to the possibility of bias.

watwut 6y ago

But like, whenever there is positive study about computer games, HN is not critical at all. Instead, it is completely non critical, extrapolates findings, even if the n is like 5 and study weak. My point is, some studies are knee jerkly believed and others are knee jerkly doubted.

onecommentman 6y ago
The set of studies accepted or rejected out-of-hand varies depending upon the individual or group. A fact of life, since individuals come to a proposition with different life experiences, both educational and directly experiential. If you are saying that HN as a community has commonality in beliefs about what is “generally accepted as true” and “generally accepted as false”, you are basically saying the HN community has shared experiences somewhat unique to that community. You are probably right. If the community is challenging more findings on bias, they probably have life experiences that suggest such findings are incorrect or that too many such studies themselves have, in the past, been of low-quality, self-serving and/or misleading. Putting the quote marks around social “science” in general. There is also the natural bias for people to want to ignore problems outside of their scope or vision...24 hours in a day and so forth. If HN is infested with IT professionals who have worked in environments where everyone is a minority of one sort or another and observed or managed the dynamics, their lived experience in ethnic/gender dynamics and opportunities may differ from other groups. If HN skews older, then they also have had the lived experience of both the many successes and many failures of the Civil Rights movement on which to base opinions. On the specific issue of computer games, there is a dramatic difference in societal and economic impact between Fortnite and the direct personal welfare of tens of millions of people. The latter warrants more due care and attention. There have been a few posts on the psychological harm from gaming, so some balance there.
- watwut 6y ago
  Yes, just like any other group, HN tends to have commonalities in opinions. And common biases. Those are not just result of experience, but also result of "what you really really want to be true" and "what you really prefer to be false".