5 ms·

I observe something like this in the way people react to what's going on in the news. Example: compared to most people, I am "better" positioned to understand

I observe something like this in the way people react to what's going on in the news. Example: compared to most people, I am "better" positioned to understand what's going on in Ukraine - my dad and both inlaws are from there and speak the language. I grew up in former USSR and speak fluent Russian so I can also watch and read things closer to the source. And yet, I don't claim to understand anything that's going on in Ukraine because ~none~ of the information I see can be considered unbiased. So I can chose to believe one set but not the other set of data or I can say "I am not equipped to understand this." Meanwhile, tons of people who are objectively less equipped to suss out the situation, don't feel this hesitation to have an opinion. Intellectually, if you ask them 'does propaganda exist, and is it amped up in a war situation' they will say 'of course, every time' and then they'll go and believe what they read (be in in a Western or Russian source, doesn't matter.) This is not a complaint, it's actually something quite empowering to understand.

ag315 4y ago
This is a really excellent point, both in general and vis a vis the conflict in Ukraine. Something I see happening often is that some people are quick to confuse expertise-as-credential with expertise-as-substance, or to assume that anyone who has above average knowledge of some relevant subject area that relates to some aspect of the war is immune to emotionally biased interpretations.
kulahan 4y ago
This was recently on display with the Ghost of Kyiv killing over 850,000 enemy platoons with a single bullet. I'm sure it was born out of some interesting story - maybe a rookie had a good dogfight or something, but BOY did that story grow and grow. My only question is: how much propaganda came from states, vs. people taking an idea and running with it because it's a narrative they want to hear?
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
  Or the rumors of mobile cremation chambers to incinerate corpses of crimes against humanity victims which circulated in the first few weeks, including copious photos, which all turned out to be some random heavy equipment.
  - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
    Apparently there's even a wikipedia article on this, TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_usage_of_mobile_crematoriums_in_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_usage_of_mobile_cremat...
im3w1l 4y ago
In the end there is an imperative to act*. Even if we don't understand as well as we'd like, we don't get to just shrug and say "I dunno". We have to go with our best guess (perhaps hedging a bit against other possibilities) and hope for the best. Yes we might be misled by propaganda. Still we must act. * I'm defining act broadly here as any kind of policy choice. Sending humanitarian aid, or not sending it. Sending military aid or not sending it. Voicing our support, or not voicing our support. Encouraging surrender, or not encouraging surrender.
pharrington 4y ago
Are you saying that the information about Russia's war is unduly biased? I ask because all communication is biased, obviously to very different degrees, and for very different reasons. I try to be as open and honest as possible about my biases, and constantly reexamine my current and past beliefs.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  What do you mean by unduly biased. Bias, at least for me, means erroneous or misleading. I think all people are biased and imperfect, but that doesn't mean that all communication is biased. Unbiased communication takes a lot more work, but isn't impossible.
  - pharrington 4y ago
    Our definitions of bias in this context seem, mine aligns with the first Merriam Webster definition - 1 a : an inclination of temperament or outlook especially : a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment : prejudice b : an instance of such prejudice I consider undue bias to basically be deliberate deception about the information itself or the biases of the source. This is important because, as another commenter in this thread said, we always have an imperative to act amid imperfect information. edit: Obviously you can choose to not act, but inaction seems like the opposite of empowerment to me.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      When you talk about bias as an adjective, you can have a biased person or biased communication . Humans are vastly complex so you can't have unbiased humans without omniscience. Language and data however are different. You can have unbiased communication and data. The statement 2 + 2 = 4 in the base 10 number system is unbiased. To say unbiased language does not exist is saying that truth does not exist.
      - pharrington 4y ago
        I'll clarify myself - all communication of imperfect knowledge is biased. I'm afraid we're falling into a overly pedantic semantic quibble though. The context we're talking about is how much we can understand about a war. I understand that Russia invaded Ukraine, and that nothing Ukraine's done even begins justifies a full on, bloody invasion.
marsten 4y ago
You only realize how uninformed the media is when it covers something you know very well. I experienced this in grad school when Newsweek magazine profiled some work my lab was doing (physics), and they made a lot of simple mistakes we could've easily corrected.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- oofnik 4y ago
  This is called the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
FrontierPsych 4y ago
"Truth is the first casualty of war" goes the saying.
asdff 4y ago
At the end of the day, people like a black and white narrative that they can keep all in their head. Even if you had all the facts at hand for a given situation, there are too many factors interacting with each other in different ways for any one person to actually understand what is happening. You only ever gleam bits and pieces of the actual interaction network between these nodes, and your brain looks to build out the paths as best as it can guess if they are unknown, like a Rorschach test where your brain sees an elephant in spilled ink. Given all of this, its probably best not to focus so much of ones thoughts and efforts on these things you will never fully understand, things that really don't make a difference in your day to day life, systemic things you can't even change even if they did, when there is just too much to focus on that's much more pressing in life where you can make some actionable changes, like the events that take place right in your neighborhood or in your very home. News is fine for entertainment, but people should see it as such, not the absolute source of truth (if there even is such a thing given all the latent variables for anything at all). Of course, there's no money in convincing people to go work out, clean up their house, read some books to improve their skills, to tinker on some personal project. There is plenty of money in convincing people to put all of that aside, however, and be locked into the content you drip out thats coated in advertisement, so that's where the incentives lie. Not in self help or betterment, but in maximizing the return these organizations get from offering you as a product for their customers whose business exists to milk you of your wages.
d0mine 4y ago
btw, "ignore facts, you can't understand it" may be just a world view pushed by propaganda. Some things are so huge, they become obvious if you just try to think & consider some numbers.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  What do you mean? How do you distinguish between what's obvious because it's obvious vs it's obvious because you've been shown the dots to connect? Things you have first hand experience with, I can agree you can decide is obvious.. anything where your main source of information is the news/internet? Not a chance

ag315 4y ago

This is a really excellent point, both in general and vis a vis the conflict in Ukraine. Something I see happening often is that some people are quick to confuse expertise-as-credential with expertise-as-substance, or to assume that anyone who has above average knowledge of some relevant subject area that relates to some aspect of the war is immune to emotionally biased interpretations.

kulahan 4y ago

This was recently on display with the Ghost of Kyiv killing over 850,000 enemy platoons with a single bullet. I'm sure it was born out of some interesting story - maybe a rookie had a good dogfight or something, but BOY did that story grow and grow. My only question is: how much propaganda came from states, vs. people taking an idea and running with it because it's a narrative they want to hear?

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
Or the rumors of mobile cremation chambers to incinerate corpses of crimes against humanity victims which circulated in the first few weeks, including copious photos, which all turned out to be some random heavy equipment.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
  Apparently there's even a wikipedia article on this, TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_usage_of_mobile_crematoriums_in_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_usage_of_mobile_cremat...

im3w1l 4y ago

In the end there is an imperative to act*. Even if we don't understand as well as we'd like, we don't get to just shrug and say "I dunno". We have to go with our best guess (perhaps hedging a bit against other possibilities) and hope for the best. Yes we might be misled by propaganda. Still we must act. * I'm defining act broadly here as any kind of policy choice. Sending humanitarian aid, or not sending it. Sending military aid or not sending it. Voicing our support, or not voicing our support. Encouraging surrender, or not encouraging surrender.

pharrington 4y ago

Are you saying that the information about Russia's war is unduly biased? I ask because all communication is biased, obviously to very different degrees, and for very different reasons. I try to be as open and honest as possible about my biases, and constantly reexamine my current and past beliefs.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
What do you mean by unduly biased. Bias, at least for me, means erroneous or misleading. I think all people are biased and imperfect, but that doesn't mean that all communication is biased. Unbiased communication takes a lot more work, but isn't impossible.
- pharrington 4y ago
  Our definitions of bias in this context seem, mine aligns with the first Merriam Webster definition - 1 a : an inclination of temperament or outlook especially : a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment : prejudice b : an instance of such prejudice I consider undue bias to basically be deliberate deception about the information itself or the biases of the source. This is important because, as another commenter in this thread said, we always have an imperative to act amid imperfect information. edit: Obviously you can choose to not act, but inaction seems like the opposite of empowerment to me.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    When you talk about bias as an adjective, you can have a biased person or biased communication . Humans are vastly complex so you can't have unbiased humans without omniscience. Language and data however are different. You can have unbiased communication and data. The statement 2 + 2 = 4 in the base 10 number system is unbiased. To say unbiased language does not exist is saying that truth does not exist.
    - pharrington 4y ago
      I'll clarify myself - all communication of imperfect knowledge is biased. I'm afraid we're falling into a overly pedantic semantic quibble though. The context we're talking about is how much we can understand about a war. I understand that Russia invaded Ukraine, and that nothing Ukraine's done even begins justifies a full on, bloody invasion.

marsten 4y ago

You only realize how uninformed the media is when it covers something you know very well. I experienced this in grad school when Newsweek magazine profiled some work my lab was doing (physics), and they made a lot of simple mistakes we could've easily corrected.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
oofnik 4y ago
This is called the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

FrontierPsych 4y ago

"Truth is the first casualty of war" goes the saying.

asdff 4y ago

At the end of the day, people like a black and white narrative that they can keep all in their head. Even if you had all the facts at hand for a given situation, there are too many factors interacting with each other in different ways for any one person to actually understand what is happening. You only ever gleam bits and pieces of the actual interaction network between these nodes, and your brain looks to build out the paths as best as it can guess if they are unknown, like a Rorschach test where your brain sees an elephant in spilled ink. Given all of this, its probably best not to focus so much of ones thoughts and efforts on these things you will never fully understand, things that really don't make a difference in your day to day life, systemic things you can't even change even if they did, when there is just too much to focus on that's much more pressing in life where you can make some actionable changes, like the events that take place right in your neighborhood or in your very home. News is fine for entertainment, but people should see it as such, not the absolute source of truth (if there even is such a thing given all the latent variables for anything at all). Of course, there's no money in convincing people to go work out, clean up their house, read some books to improve their skills, to tinker on some personal project. There is plenty of money in convincing people to put all of that aside, however, and be locked into the content you drip out thats coated in advertisement, so that's where the incentives lie. Not in self help or betterment, but in maximizing the return these organizations get from offering you as a product for their customers whose business exists to milk you of your wages.

d0mine 4y ago

btw, "ignore facts, you can't understand it" may be just a world view pushed by propaganda. Some things are so huge, they become obvious if you just try to think & consider some numbers.

xyzelement 4y ago
What do you mean? How do you distinguish between what's obvious because it's obvious vs it's obvious because you've been shown the dots to connect? Things you have first hand experience with, I can agree you can decide is obvious.. anything where your main source of information is the news/internet? Not a chance