4 ms·

An honest analysis would weight its concerns by importance. This was not an honest analysis.

haswell 4y ago
I don't think you or I can issue judgements about honesty without understanding the author and their motivations. We can conclude that the analysis is poor, or misses key factors, or is only useful when answering a narrow set of questions, or requires additional disclaimers / context. But concluding that the author is dishonest takes us in a direction that is no longer focused on how the analysis can improve, and instead seeks to question motives directly, instead of expanding our shared understanding of the subject. I do think the glaring issue with the piece is that we (the royal we) have not agreed on the list of factors that should be measured when examining living standards, nor the weights of those factors. The post doesn't really attempt to justify its chosen measures either, and would carry more weight if based on earlier scholarly attempts to quantify quality of life.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  We can judge the title, the thesis, and how it focuses attention away from the problems.
  - haswell 4y ago
    > We can judge the title, the thesis That is essentially what I said above. There are plenty of ways to pick this apart, and I have plenty of questions/issues with the content. I'm just saying we don't have to use ad hominem attacks to do so. > and how it focuses attention away from the problems An article titled "24 charts that show we’re (mostly) living better than our parents" is probably going to skew towards the things that are going well - that's kind of the point. That doesn't automatically imply everything is awesome, and you might take issue with such an examination and argue it does not give enough airtime to other systemic issues, and indeed this is where I'd focus. But that is a different kind of conversation than one that disagrees with the conclusions about each of those 24 things. Speaking of which, what are those primary problems from your perspective?

I don't think you or I can issue judgements about honesty without understanding the author and their motivations. We can conclude that the analysis is poor, or misses key factors, or is only useful when answering a narrow set of questions, or requires additional disclaimers / context. But concluding that the author is dishonest takes us in a direction that is no longer focused on how the analysis can improve, and instead seeks to question motives directly, instead of expanding our shared understanding of the subject. I do think the glaring issue with the piece is that we (the royal we) have not agreed on the list of factors that should be measured when examining living standards, nor the weights of those factors. The post doesn't really attempt to justify its chosen measures either, and would carry more weight if based on earlier scholarly attempts to quantify quality of life.

jjoonathan 4y ago
We can judge the title, the thesis, and how it focuses attention away from the problems.
- haswell 4y ago
  > We can judge the title, the thesis That is essentially what I said above. There are plenty of ways to pick this apart, and I have plenty of questions/issues with the content. I'm just saying we don't have to use ad hominem attacks to do so. > and how it focuses attention away from the problems An article titled "24 charts that show we’re (mostly) living better than our parents" is probably going to skew towards the things that are going well - that's kind of the point. That doesn't automatically imply everything is awesome, and you might take issue with such an examination and argue it does not give enough airtime to other systemic issues, and indeed this is where I'd focus. But that is a different kind of conversation than one that disagrees with the conclusions about each of those 24 things. Speaking of which, what are those primary problems from your perspective?