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We may be inundated with too much data, and more information may not improve our situation, but appointing any person or institution to limit our information in

We may be inundated with too much data, and more information may not improve our situation, but appointing any person or institution to limit our information inflow will certainly worsen things. I fully stand with thezvi's points over at https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2023/02/20/on-investigating-conspiracy-theories/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2023/02/20/on-investigating-con... ; especially 1 to 3: 1. Think for yourself, shmuck! 2. When it seems worthwhile, do your own research. 3. The ones telling you not to ‘do your own research’ are probably the baddies.

jl6 4y ago
Doing your own research is a great idea and more people should do it! Reading the existing literature and keeping up to date with new publications; studying the general subject area for, say, 3 years to get to at least an undergraduate level of understanding; studying statistics and experimental design; planning experiments and analysis and obtaining critical feedback from peers to mitigate the chance of errors; attempting to reproduce the results of others working in this area…
- mihaic 4y ago
  Ditto, all this is exactly what I do when I want to try some new type of chocolate bar from the supermarket, and want to understand the nutritional, economic and moral implications of what I'm doing.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- chrisco255 4y ago
  Come now, there are certainly heuristics with which you move about and make decisions in the world every day without investing 3 years a piece on. And even when you desire to seek the advice of some trusted expert, you rely on heuristics and biases to inform your decision on which one to trust.
  - jl6 4y ago
    Sure, but I don’t call it research.
    - hutzlibu 4y ago
      Yes, but in the common language this is what it is called. And researching the existing literature is proper scientific research btw. so you can do scientific research, without going all in, like you seemed to imply.
    - rafabulsing 4y ago
      "Do your own meta-analysis"
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  See, the problem is, you get people who have studied for a lot more than three years, and then you get the replication crisis. Do you think that could be avoided by requiring more education? And I see people correctly calling out problems with papers that have done a lot less than three years of effort: sometimes the issues are a lot more basic than that. As usual, verification is cheaper than computation; studying gives you (hopefully!) a better chance to get things right but it doesn't immunize you from getting things wrong. And peer review didn't stop blatant photoshopping [1]; though the person who found them is a scientist, one cannot imagine that her coursework included "spotting rotated or mirrored pictures in a paper". So no, it doesn't even take an undergraduate level of understanding to contribute, and you don't need a degree to beat the experts (sometimes). I think you're envisioning a world where science is "mostly okay" and at any rate mostly inexploitable: chess computers may make mistakes, but you certainly can't catch them in one. Whereas I think people have been espousing this view of science for so long, and marginalizing citizen science for so long, that there are now many opportunities for personally invested individuals to spot things that people with degrees missed. So sure, some people will fall for conspiracy theories. Some people will fall for fraud. Some people will simply believe wrong things. But "science" as an institution (ie. excepting the sense that any such study is science) does not deserve any sort of monopoly on finding out true things, and claiming otherwise does both the scientific community and the populace at large a disservice. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/science-fraud-image-manipulation-photoshop.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/scien...
  - geysersam 4y ago
    You make a very important point! But I interpreted the comment you answered to as saying that doing your own research is time consuming/costly. And requiring people to "do their own research" is often infeasible.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    I think this is a big part of the problem. It also means trusting the experts difficult, as it's really hard as a layman to know who is an expert. Most conspiracy theories in fact have their own experts they call upon. I keep seeing discussions that go like preprint/abstract pokemon battles where everyone's just throwing out papers they don't understand that seem to corroborate their point as though that was enough. If you can't read the papers, and don't understand their context in the field, then you really shouldn't be drawing conclusions from them. In science, you always start with "I don't know". If you see evidence that you don't understand, then you still don't know.
WJW 4y ago
Maybe this is my personal bubble, but the group of people who most loudly tells other people to "do your own research" seems to consist mostly of conspiracy theorists and scam artists. Not seldom their own research is of the "go outside and you can see for yourself that the earth is flat" type, too.
- msla 4y ago
  That isn't just your bubble, certainly: "Do your own research" is a pretty reliable marker for people with unreliable information.
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    [dead]
  - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
    What were the steps that got you to this conclusion?
    - ruszki 4y ago
      Random searches for this phrase on Twitter seems to back this up somewhat. From the first about 100 which I was made, about 2/3rd was about some obvious misinformation, and a deeper analysis would probably take it higher. However, there is definitely a bias here, because I’ve only encountered with this phrase before from people “backing” obvious COVID, vaccine or Trump misinformation.
      - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
        Sounds like you just did your own research, no? And you sort of cited your source. Now someone can look at what you said and decide how confident they are with what you claim. From my perspective, I can take what you wrote as someone's honest opinion based on stuff that comes across their social feeds. I wouldn't treat it as ground truth, but I can feel confident that at least one person in the world has had that experience. If someone makes a claim and points to a few studies that I can cross check, even if I'm not qualified to evaluate the studies, I can have some confidence that some domain experts have given evidence for the claim. I can also look for studies that contradict the claim, and in their absence, I can know that some experts believe xyz and I can't find any experts that disagree. That's about the best I can do as a layman, and I think it's a lot better than nothing.
lapcat 4y ago
I wish that people thought for themselves and did their own research. In that case, we'd get countless different, nuanced opinions. Instead, we mostly get a tiny number of stereotypical opinions that people passively acquire from their favored forms of media. As if listening to Joe Rogan for example were "doing research".
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
The "do you own research" line is often abused to dismiss experts or send you on a wild goose chase.
UncleOxidant 4y ago
> do your own research Sure, yes do that, but that doesn't address the issues brought up in the article ( "3. We are all conspiracy theorists now." and "4. Actually, we’re all cultists now.") how to ensure you're not just being sucked into an info-cult, an echo-chamber? The answer in the article seems to be more "analog" friendship - I'm assuming he means actual in-person interaction. And while that's important, I also like _why the lucky stiff's recommendation: "when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.” Make stuff. In addition, given the firehose of information we face daily, doing your own research easily could become a full time job.

jl6 4y ago

Doing your own research is a great idea and more people should do it! Reading the existing literature and keeping up to date with new publications; studying the general subject area for, say, 3 years to get to at least an undergraduate level of understanding; studying statistics and experimental design; planning experiments and analysis and obtaining critical feedback from peers to mitigate the chance of errors; attempting to reproduce the results of others working in this area…

mihaic 4y ago
Ditto, all this is exactly what I do when I want to try some new type of chocolate bar from the supermarket, and want to understand the nutritional, economic and moral implications of what I'm doing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
chrisco255 4y ago
Come now, there are certainly heuristics with which you move about and make decisions in the world every day without investing 3 years a piece on. And even when you desire to seek the advice of some trusted expert, you rely on heuristics and biases to inform your decision on which one to trust.
- jl6 4y ago
  Sure, but I don’t call it research.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    Yes, but in the common language this is what it is called. And researching the existing literature is proper scientific research btw. so you can do scientific research, without going all in, like you seemed to imply.
  - rafabulsing 4y ago
    "Do your own meta-analysis"
FeepingCreature 4y ago
See, the problem is, you get people who have studied for a lot more than three years, and then you get the replication crisis. Do you think that could be avoided by requiring more education? And I see people correctly calling out problems with papers that have done a lot less than three years of effort: sometimes the issues are a lot more basic than that. As usual, verification is cheaper than computation; studying gives you (hopefully!) a better chance to get things right but it doesn't immunize you from getting things wrong. And peer review didn't stop blatant photoshopping [1]; though the person who found them is a scientist, one cannot imagine that her coursework included "spotting rotated or mirrored pictures in a paper". So no, it doesn't even take an undergraduate level of understanding to contribute, and you don't need a degree to beat the experts (sometimes). I think you're envisioning a world where science is "mostly okay" and at any rate mostly inexploitable: chess computers may make mistakes, but you certainly can't catch them in one. Whereas I think people have been espousing this view of science for so long, and marginalizing citizen science for so long, that there are now many opportunities for personally invested individuals to spot things that people with degrees missed. So sure, some people will fall for conspiracy theories. Some people will fall for fraud. Some people will simply believe wrong things. But "science" as an institution (ie. excepting the sense that any such study is science) does not deserve any sort of monopoly on finding out true things, and claiming otherwise does both the scientific community and the populace at large a disservice. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/science-fraud-image-manipulation-photoshop.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/scien...
- geysersam 4y ago
  You make a very important point! But I interpreted the comment you answered to as saying that doing your own research is time consuming/costly. And requiring people to "do their own research" is often infeasible.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  I think this is a big part of the problem. It also means trusting the experts difficult, as it's really hard as a layman to know who is an expert. Most conspiracy theories in fact have their own experts they call upon. I keep seeing discussions that go like preprint/abstract pokemon battles where everyone's just throwing out papers they don't understand that seem to corroborate their point as though that was enough. If you can't read the papers, and don't understand their context in the field, then you really shouldn't be drawing conclusions from them. In science, you always start with "I don't know". If you see evidence that you don't understand, then you still don't know.

WJW 4y ago

Maybe this is my personal bubble, but the group of people who most loudly tells other people to "do your own research" seems to consist mostly of conspiracy theorists and scam artists. Not seldom their own research is of the "go outside and you can see for yourself that the earth is flat" type, too.

msla 4y ago
That isn't just your bubble, certainly: "Do your own research" is a pretty reliable marker for people with unreliable information.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  [dead]
- ifyoubuildit 4y ago
  What were the steps that got you to this conclusion?
  - ruszki 4y ago
    Random searches for this phrase on Twitter seems to back this up somewhat. From the first about 100 which I was made, about 2/3rd was about some obvious misinformation, and a deeper analysis would probably take it higher. However, there is definitely a bias here, because I’ve only encountered with this phrase before from people “backing” obvious COVID, vaccine or Trump misinformation.
    - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
      Sounds like you just did your own research, no? And you sort of cited your source. Now someone can look at what you said and decide how confident they are with what you claim. From my perspective, I can take what you wrote as someone's honest opinion based on stuff that comes across their social feeds. I wouldn't treat it as ground truth, but I can feel confident that at least one person in the world has had that experience. If someone makes a claim and points to a few studies that I can cross check, even if I'm not qualified to evaluate the studies, I can have some confidence that some domain experts have given evidence for the claim. I can also look for studies that contradict the claim, and in their absence, I can know that some experts believe xyz and I can't find any experts that disagree. That's about the best I can do as a layman, and I think it's a lot better than nothing.

lapcat 4y ago

I wish that people thought for themselves and did their own research. In that case, we'd get countless different, nuanced opinions. Instead, we mostly get a tiny number of stereotypical opinions that people passively acquire from their favored forms of media. As if listening to Joe Rogan for example were "doing research".

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

The "do you own research" line is often abused to dismiss experts or send you on a wild goose chase.

UncleOxidant 4y ago

> do your own research Sure, yes do that, but that doesn't address the issues brought up in the article ( "3. We are all conspiracy theorists now." and "4. Actually, we’re all cultists now.") how to ensure you're not just being sucked into an info-cult, an echo-chamber? The answer in the article seems to be more "analog" friendship - I'm assuming he means actual in-person interaction. And while that's important, I also like _why the lucky stiff's recommendation: "when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.” Make stuff. In addition, given the firehose of information we face daily, doing your own research easily could become a full time job.