32 ms·

I mean, this tracks with the experience of anyone who has gone citation/source tracking ... soooo much stuff is just not substantiated, and it's honestly really

by maegul 4y ago

I mean, this tracks with the experience of anyone who has gone citation/source tracking ... soooo much stuff is just not substantiated, and it's honestly really bad because it turns the mere existence of a citation into some sort appeal to authority fallacy. A formative experience for me as a student was working (voluntarily) for an academic journal where the job was to check that a) all cited sources actually supported the supported claim, and, b) that all factual assertions had a source. It's funny how most people don't quite get how wrong it really is to not care about sources and truth/facts this much. Sometimes you have to see the fallacies transpire yourself to truly appreciate how much it enables outright lying.

themitigating 4y ago
Lying, sloppy research, or trust it's it all depends on the author of this article.For example if I cite a NYtimes article that has their own research I'm not going to check into their sources (depending on my later point). I also wouldn't fault someone for doing this because it's a generally reliable paper in my opinion. Of course does it matter for something like this? The importance of the information should dictate the thoroughness of research. Whether or not a film was banned in the USSR because it showed citizens had cars doesn't really matter except in discussions like this. Meaning, what's the loss if it's not true? Not much. What's the value of deception here? The USSR is gone. So I don't agree with your last statement.
- eduction 4y ago
  > Meaning, what's the loss if it's not true? The loss is the truth. And in this context the truth about our prosperity relative to another nation. If this anecdote is false then the effect is simply to tell ourselves something flattering - that even the poorest of the poor Americans in the Great Depression were prosperous compared to people in the USSR. Delusional thinking is not healthy. The effects tend to compound. As people who lived under monarchies knew, which is how we ended up with a Constitution that tends to encourage adversarial confrontation and an open frank exchange of views. The USSR may be dead but correctly understanding why it failed is an ongoing and very much living project with relevance to the future ways in which we choose to reshape the prevailing capitalist order (particularly w/r/t industrial investment and planning and benefit schemes that might be compared to socialism like minimum basic income, universal health care, government provided housing etc)
  - themitigating 4y ago
    "If this anecdote is false then the effect is simply to tell ourselves something flattering - that even the poorest of the poor Americans in the Great Depression were prosperous compared to people in the USSR. Delusional thinking is not healthy." You're assuming that after someone hears that anecdote they form or change a view. I also pointed out it matters what you do with the view. People in the US being better off compared to the USSR is subjective and could be true even if this information isn't true. So it may not matter. ", you absolutely should not take the NYT at its word." It's not "trust or not trust", it's a probability combined with what the information is being used for. If I see that it's going to be 75f outside I'm not going to double check that because the probability they are wrong is extremely low and the negative effects are minimal. Since every person, business, whatever has lied at least once using that as a bar makes no sense.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      What kind of reasoning is this? It's OK to include outright falsehoods in your writing because the conclusions they support might be true?
      - themitigating 4y ago
        Where did I say that? I'm talking about whether you should double check it.
        kreetx 4y ago
        If one takes your view to the extreme then that seems to be what you are saying. I.e if all the rest you read is factually true then one lie probably won't make much of a difference, but if a lot of them are actually wrong then one's world view shifts into being more fictional.
        themitigating 4y ago
        Yes, that's true. I didn't say it can't happen however your arguement uses hypothetical additional false information.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  > Whether or not a film was banned in the USSR because it showed citizens had cars doesn't really matter except in discussions like this. Meaning, what's the loss if it's not true? Not much. What's the value of deception here? The USSR is gone. Well, a cartoonish and inaccurate depiction of it could lead people to erroneous conclusions about things in the contemporary world too. I see a lot of analysis of world affairs that seems to start from the assumption that the leaders of many states are sadists or lunatics with no goal beyond doing evil for the sake of it, which I think leads to silly conclusions most of the time.
ta8645 4y ago
> Sometimes you have to see the fallacies transpire yourself to truly appreciate how much it enables outright lying. This is a contentious issue, so it's understandable if you don't respond, but could you share your opinion on how science was used to justify the Covid pandemic response? Do you feel that most public policies were well-founded with credible scientific citations, or did the problem you describe, plague this event as well?
emodendroket 4y ago
I have participated in so many online debates where someone attempted to show overwhelming support for their position by citing multiple articles writing up the same dubious study, or, worse, citing sources that don't even address or outright directly contradict their claims.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  Why?
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    Probably because they didn’t want to spend much time reading potential citations they were trying to find to bolster their argument and assumed I wouldn’t either.
- msrenee 4y ago
  Love it when someone just throws up the first study with their keyword in it. I get a potentially relevant study to parse through, which I feel is good for my brain probably. Then I get to cite chunks of their own reference right back at them to explain exactly how wrong they are.

by maegul 4y ago

themitigating 4y ago

Lying, sloppy research, or trust it's it all depends on the author of this article.For example if I cite a NYtimes article that has their own research I'm not going to check into their sources (depending on my later point). I also wouldn't fault someone for doing this because it's a generally reliable paper in my opinion. Of course does it matter for something like this? The importance of the information should dictate the thoroughness of research. Whether or not a film was banned in the USSR because it showed citizens had cars doesn't really matter except in discussions like this. Meaning, what's the loss if it's not true? Not much. What's the value of deception here? The USSR is gone. So I don't agree with your last statement.

eduction 4y ago
> Meaning, what's the loss if it's not true? The loss is the truth. And in this context the truth about our prosperity relative to another nation. If this anecdote is false then the effect is simply to tell ourselves something flattering - that even the poorest of the poor Americans in the Great Depression were prosperous compared to people in the USSR. Delusional thinking is not healthy. The effects tend to compound. As people who lived under monarchies knew, which is how we ended up with a Constitution that tends to encourage adversarial confrontation and an open frank exchange of views. The USSR may be dead but correctly understanding why it failed is an ongoing and very much living project with relevance to the future ways in which we choose to reshape the prevailing capitalist order (particularly w/r/t industrial investment and planning and benefit schemes that might be compared to socialism like minimum basic income, universal health care, government provided housing etc)
- themitigating 4y ago
  "If this anecdote is false then the effect is simply to tell ourselves something flattering - that even the poorest of the poor Americans in the Great Depression were prosperous compared to people in the USSR. Delusional thinking is not healthy." You're assuming that after someone hears that anecdote they form or change a view. I also pointed out it matters what you do with the view. People in the US being better off compared to the USSR is subjective and could be true even if this information isn't true. So it may not matter. ", you absolutely should not take the NYT at its word." It's not "trust or not trust", it's a probability combined with what the information is being used for. If I see that it's going to be 75f outside I'm not going to double check that because the probability they are wrong is extremely low and the negative effects are minimal. Since every person, business, whatever has lied at least once using that as a bar makes no sense.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    What kind of reasoning is this? It's OK to include outright falsehoods in your writing because the conclusions they support might be true?
    - themitigating 4y ago
      Where did I say that? I'm talking about whether you should double check it.
      - kreetx 4y ago
        If one takes your view to the extreme then that seems to be what you are saying. I.e if all the rest you read is factually true then one lie probably won't make much of a difference, but if a lot of them are actually wrong then one's world view shifts into being more fictional.
        themitigating 4y ago
        Yes, that's true. I didn't say it can't happen however your arguement uses hypothetical additional false information.
emodendroket 4y ago
> Whether or not a film was banned in the USSR because it showed citizens had cars doesn't really matter except in discussions like this. Meaning, what's the loss if it's not true? Not much. What's the value of deception here? The USSR is gone. Well, a cartoonish and inaccurate depiction of it could lead people to erroneous conclusions about things in the contemporary world too. I see a lot of analysis of world affairs that seems to start from the assumption that the leaders of many states are sadists or lunatics with no goal beyond doing evil for the sake of it, which I think leads to silly conclusions most of the time.

ta8645 4y ago

> Sometimes you have to see the fallacies transpire yourself to truly appreciate how much it enables outright lying. This is a contentious issue, so it's understandable if you don't respond, but could you share your opinion on how science was used to justify the Covid pandemic response? Do you feel that most public policies were well-founded with credible scientific citations, or did the problem you describe, plague this event as well?

emodendroket 4y ago

I have participated in so many online debates where someone attempted to show overwhelming support for their position by citing multiple articles writing up the same dubious study, or, worse, citing sources that don't even address or outright directly contradict their claims.

dotancohen 4y ago
Why?
- emodendroket 4y ago
  Probably because they didn’t want to spend much time reading potential citations they were trying to find to bolster their argument and assumed I wouldn’t either.
msrenee 4y ago
Love it when someone just throws up the first study with their keyword in it. I get a potentially relevant study to parse through, which I feel is good for my brain probably. Then I get to cite chunks of their own reference right back at them to explain exactly how wrong they are.