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It is literally a fallacy [1] in that it's invalid logical reasoning. There are many types of argumentation that are useful for drawing practical conclusions a

It is literally a fallacy [1] in that it's invalid logical reasoning. There are many types of argumentation that are useful for drawing practical conclusions about the world but are not, strictly speaking, valid logic. For example, "correlation doesn't equal causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively" [2]. If you know nothing about the truth or falsity of a statement, knowing who's saying it can provide some information that might tilt your opinion one way or another. But the person saying something does not make the argument true or false, otherwise I could make myself as detestable as possible to some group of people and then kill them off by giving them common-sense advice like "go to the doctor" or "eat healthy". (Come to think of it, this is exactly what happened to Republicans during COVID, where somehow wearing masks & getting vaccines became politicized.) Bringing it back to the topic at hand - I found the digression about who Emil O Kierkegard is to be momentarily interesting, but I'd still like to know if he's right or not. The idea that this article might be due to Simpson's Paradox is plausible, and it invalidates the central conclusion of the study if it is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies [2] https://xkcd.com/552/ https://xkcd.com/552/

rahimnathwani 4y ago
Someone has now pointed to some data in the study that isn't stratified by education level: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35518556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35518556 If I'm reading table S11 correctly, ICAR scores were 0.016 standard deviations lower on 2018 than in 2011. I don't know whether the researchers chose those years for some specific reason, or if those years were the only ones available. It would be interesting to know whether the intervening years show a steady decline, or something more like a random walk.
Dylan16807 4y ago
> If you know nothing about the truth or falsity of a statement, knowing who's saying it can provide some information that might tilt your opinion one way or another. But the person saying something does not make the argument true or false So... it's not a fallacy. It gives you a reasonable amount of information.
ramblenode 4y ago
Something can be a logical fallacy while still being epistemologically justified. That's because logic is not an a priori description of reality; it's just a system for making inferences that happen to often be useful models of reality. But if I change my system of logic (e.g. move from accepting to rejecting the law of the excluded middle) then one set of fallacies disappears and another appears.

rahimnathwani 4y ago

Someone has now pointed to some data in the study that isn't stratified by education level: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35518556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35518556 If I'm reading table S11 correctly, ICAR scores were 0.016 standard deviations lower on 2018 than in 2011. I don't know whether the researchers chose those years for some specific reason, or if those years were the only ones available. It would be interesting to know whether the intervening years show a steady decline, or something more like a random walk.

Dylan16807 4y ago

> If you know nothing about the truth or falsity of a statement, knowing who's saying it can provide some information that might tilt your opinion one way or another. But the person saying something does not make the argument true or false So... it's not a fallacy. It gives you a reasonable amount of information.

ramblenode 4y ago

Something can be a logical fallacy while still being epistemologically justified. That's because logic is not an a priori description of reality; it's just a system for making inferences that happen to often be useful models of reality. But if I change my system of logic (e.g. move from accepting to rejecting the law of the excluded middle) then one set of fallacies disappears and another appears.