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The obvious issue being that, on the internet, it's impossible to differentiate genuine anecdotes from agendapushing. On a reddit city subreddit that had bubbl
by 15457345234 3y ago
The obvious issue being that, on the internet, it's impossible to differentiate genuine anecdotes from agendapushing.
On a reddit city subreddit that had bubbled up to the frontpage this morning I noticed three or four people claiming that a certain bus route had basically become a mobile homeless shelter constantly full of migrants playing music and being obnoxious. About two or three other people were chiming in saying 'I commute on this line daily and I've literally never seen that, the buses are clean and usually empty'
The 'regular commuter' comments stand at -15 or something making them invisible, the instigatory comments are heavily upvoted.
Bezos' statement is a bit circular in a way - yes, genuine anecdotes may well be right, but to determine that you have to gather enough of them in a random pattern to avoid anomalies. When you've completed that process of randomly sampling genuine anecdotes you now have data.
- psychlops 3y agoHow would you know it's a "genuine anecdote" on the internet? Seems like it's only garbage in.
- 15457345234 3y agoThat's literally restating the point I made in the very first line of my comment... If you want to gather genuine anecdotes you've basically ruled out the internet as a source of data. You also can't do a townhall or call an assembly as you'll have people being bussed in (I remember a video of a Florida school board meeting in which literally every speaker had a different regional accent) You basically have to canvass the streets and buttonhole people, and that's automatically excluding people who WFH etc.
- psychlops 3y agoSorry, didn't mean to misinterpret. Your last sentence seemed to go the other direction.
- nailer 3y ago> it's impossible to differentiate genuine anecdotes from agendapushing. You're right. I had a friend from Malmo, Sweden who talked about the weirdness of the city being used as a talking point both left and right wing Americans. Her feeling was the left were saying everything was fine, the right were saying it's a dystopian nightmare, and neither were accurate. It's a city with unique problems.
- 15457345234 3y agoYeah that's one of those places that seems to pop up in the news unusually frequently for the size and shape of the place. Reddit seems convinced ethnic cleansing is about to take place there, not sure entirely how true that is. Definitely something odd happening over there.