6 ms·

For me it comes down to data. I don't mean in how I reason (I mean I try to use data) but in deciding whether a place is an echo chamber. I used to be more lib

For me it comes down to data. I don't mean in how I reason (I mean I try to use data) but in deciding whether a place is an echo chamber. I used to be more libertarian, and I still lean that way. But after reading and posting a fair bit in that kind of forum, I decided most of my libertarian friends weren't actually using data. They'd say intelligent sounding things, but in the end it was all just "common sense" rather than data. "Minimum wage won't work because you'll cut out unproductive people from the labour market", that kind of thing. This is the kind of thing that tends to point towards an unstated theory of markets work, which is both unspecific and unfounded in most debates. I'd hear a lot of these arguments over the years, and there was always a gap between what I'd learned studying economics and what people were saying. Part of this is our culture of discourse. Discussions are overwhelmingly in the format of text and speech, and mostly informal. You never get told what is being assumed, and things always make sense because essentially the arguments are tautological: vague ideas that refers to each other in a circle, heavily dependent on latent definitions of every concept (eg "work" as a thing you do but you don't want to do without motivation). The arguments that actually matter are data. Almost nobody you meet in daily life understands statistics. They'll all tell you, because there's a book by this name (How to Lie with Statistics), that stats are easily manipulated. Very few people care to dig into things like how stats are assembled, what they mean, how noise is dealt with, or what way cause and effect goes (because of that other trope, "Correlation is not causation"). The fact is we can figure out all of these things if we are careful enough.

7952 5y ago
People approach things at different levels of abstraction and argue with people at a different level. You saw this all the time in the pandemic. At one level of abstraction it is about the physics and biology of body fluids. At another level it is about reducing some statistics in a population. And at another level it is about economics. One person is thinking about snot dynamics and another about the economy. That's crazy! All these things have models and data. And when you mix it together you get politics. The underlying data gets lost in that mix of things that would be a false dichotomy in an ideal world. We all have to become more nuanced in our understanding of the world but can't keep up. Instead we battle it out with increasingly strained heuristics.
prox 5y ago
I believe most disinformation problems we face could be eradicated by reading more books. Not because the book might be 100% accurate, but because most social media debates are as a deep as puddle (not HN) and epistemologically lacking, and books prevent that and offer avenues for debates. It’s not a cure-all of course, but it gives it scaffolding for meaningful debates. The best online debates I had were on moderated IRC channels set up for that purpose. I agree with the unskilled use of discourse and the data factor.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  Is it possible that, with your reference to «books», you mean "preliminary to participating to debates, one should have an education (in-depth intellectual training), and a continuous effort towards it"? This should go without saying. The issue is to find the best sources for information and analysis, and the "book" form does not solve the issue.
  - qsort 5y ago
    Certainly an essay being written in book form is not a guarantee of higher quality, but incentives and dispositions towards different types of media do matter at least a bit. The act of reading a book encourages the - let's admit it - painstaking act of actively questioning what's being said, cross-checking when necessary, and eventually reaching your own conclusions in a way that Twitter hot takes don't. The intuition and discipline it takes to apply that kind of rigor takes time to develop, arguably a lifetime.
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      Can you see educated people «reaching [their] own ["]conclusions["] [with] Twitter» - apart from getting elements for judging the speaker (not the matter)? Who would seek knowledge from stubs - and disorganized, "latest without history", and thrown in the unregulated chaos? We have been educated through books since substantially forever, who would call "writings on a daily repainted wall" credible competition? The new ways recently born, and quickly massively misused - for not wanting to see them for what they are, in their limits, and to ride the wave of new games -, seem to have deviated the attention of some to the preexisting context and its already present issues: a large amount of imperfect material (in credible formats) was published. In many Countries critical thinking is (was?) taught with basic education: we have always known that problems are not trivial (centuries of theological debates in front of a Revelation?!). Now: books are what you must have used and continuously use for intellectual preparation; in the current fast dynamics we need more of articles for information and competent analysis. The problem does not change: identifying reliable sources. And the typical solution has always been: identifying the most convincing "authorities", and following them cum grano salis et caveats, judgement always alert, for as long as they will be human.
qsort 5y ago
I definitely agree with the data argument. I used to be more ideological myself (in another direction, but it doesn't matter), and still cringe at my past self when I think about how factually incorrect some of the things I used to believe are. Since we're talking about tropes, paraphrasing another popular one: some models are useful, but all are wrong. Some ideas, while somewhat abstract, can in fact be useful lenses to enhance your understandment of the world, but failing to take into account the data and trying to fit your worldview regardless just reeks of intellectual dishonesty.
pmdulaney 5y ago
"The arguments that actually matter are data." Clearly an argument that purports to be based on data is fatally weakened if the data don't support it. But as Hume posited, "You can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is'". Presumably the data showed that Zyklon-B and napalm were very effective at what they were trying to do. But the data is not the end of the story.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  This is a good point, decisions are not obvious just from understanding how reality works. But you'll certainly get a lot of decisions wrong if you don't.

7952 5y ago

People approach things at different levels of abstraction and argue with people at a different level. You saw this all the time in the pandemic. At one level of abstraction it is about the physics and biology of body fluids. At another level it is about reducing some statistics in a population. And at another level it is about economics. One person is thinking about snot dynamics and another about the economy. That's crazy! All these things have models and data. And when you mix it together you get politics. The underlying data gets lost in that mix of things that would be a false dichotomy in an ideal world. We all have to become more nuanced in our understanding of the world but can't keep up. Instead we battle it out with increasingly strained heuristics.

prox 5y ago

I believe most disinformation problems we face could be eradicated by reading more books. Not because the book might be 100% accurate, but because most social media debates are as a deep as puddle (not HN) and epistemologically lacking, and books prevent that and offer avenues for debates. It’s not a cure-all of course, but it gives it scaffolding for meaningful debates. The best online debates I had were on moderated IRC channels set up for that purpose. I agree with the unskilled use of discourse and the data factor.

mdp2021 5y ago
Is it possible that, with your reference to «books», you mean "preliminary to participating to debates, one should have an education (in-depth intellectual training), and a continuous effort towards it"? This should go without saying. The issue is to find the best sources for information and analysis, and the "book" form does not solve the issue.
- qsort 5y ago
  Certainly an essay being written in book form is not a guarantee of higher quality, but incentives and dispositions towards different types of media do matter at least a bit. The act of reading a book encourages the - let's admit it - painstaking act of actively questioning what's being said, cross-checking when necessary, and eventually reaching your own conclusions in a way that Twitter hot takes don't. The intuition and discipline it takes to apply that kind of rigor takes time to develop, arguably a lifetime.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    Can you see educated people «reaching [their] own ["]conclusions["] [with] Twitter» - apart from getting elements for judging the speaker (not the matter)? Who would seek knowledge from stubs - and disorganized, "latest without history", and thrown in the unregulated chaos? We have been educated through books since substantially forever, who would call "writings on a daily repainted wall" credible competition? The new ways recently born, and quickly massively misused - for not wanting to see them for what they are, in their limits, and to ride the wave of new games -, seem to have deviated the attention of some to the preexisting context and its already present issues: a large amount of imperfect material (in credible formats) was published. In many Countries critical thinking is (was?) taught with basic education: we have always known that problems are not trivial (centuries of theological debates in front of a Revelation?!). Now: books are what you must have used and continuously use for intellectual preparation; in the current fast dynamics we need more of articles for information and competent analysis. The problem does not change: identifying reliable sources. And the typical solution has always been: identifying the most convincing "authorities", and following them cum grano salis et caveats, judgement always alert, for as long as they will be human.

qsort 5y ago

I definitely agree with the data argument. I used to be more ideological myself (in another direction, but it doesn't matter), and still cringe at my past self when I think about how factually incorrect some of the things I used to believe are. Since we're talking about tropes, paraphrasing another popular one: some models are useful, but all are wrong. Some ideas, while somewhat abstract, can in fact be useful lenses to enhance your understandment of the world, but failing to take into account the data and trying to fit your worldview regardless just reeks of intellectual dishonesty.

pmdulaney 5y ago

"The arguments that actually matter are data." Clearly an argument that purports to be based on data is fatally weakened if the data don't support it. But as Hume posited, "You can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is'". Presumably the data showed that Zyklon-B and napalm were very effective at what they were trying to do. But the data is not the end of the story.

lordnacho 5y ago
This is a good point, decisions are not obvious just from understanding how reality works. But you'll certainly get a lot of decisions wrong if you don't.