This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Ah yes, because those are the people who get criticized the most when people attack "the experts". Actually this is pretty illustrative, because this is exactly the mechanism being deployed to demand trust - Look, we used calculus! Just like physicists! You trust physicists, don't you? Well, then you have to trust us!
If memory serves that's because there was no data the mask mandates was based on, and the idea that vaccines prevented transmission was an outright lie. That's worse!
Yes, the example I had in mind is the one that was debated here recently - economic statistics. We don't have access to the raw data, and we don't have access to the algorithm that produces the output. There was a similar story during COVID with a simulation used to argue for lockdowns, that no one got to see until after the lockdowns were in effect, end which ended up being a buggy clusterfuck, and even though they published the code, I think they never published the input data.
I mean, you all were criticizing the CPI (published by the BLS) and more broadly the economy, which clearly falls into the public portion of the financial system?
This a very confusing sentence. There was overwhelming data that n95 masks significantly reduced exposure to viral particles, and that cloth masks reduced exposure a bit. There was substantial data that n95 masks could prevent transmission of other viruses. There were plenty of existing studies about this, and while most of those studies didn't publish their data, the data wouldn't have helped you interpret the studies better, the flaws are in interpretation, methodology, etc, not private data. Mandating cloth masks was straightforwardly stupid. Mandating n95 masks or better masks might've worked, if rapid trials were run initially to make sure they actually reduced transmission, idk. That vaccines prevented transmission wasn't an outright lie, I believe the initial studies did show a reduction in transmission. I think people were genuinely incorrect and had poor processes for coming to the correct conclusion - which is still damnable if you're in power, because it's your duty to be correct, but it's not an outright lie. It's also arguable that transmission rates increased as the virus mutated. Also, the cochrane review that claimed masks don't prevent transmission ever was wrong, I think. https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3486610/v1
We do have access to most of the algorithm that produces the output - the BLS publishes their methodology for the CPI with a lot of detail on their website. I think mostly the reason we don't have access to the raw data is bureaucratic slowness.
I think you're very confused about the relevance of publishing the input data to the broader issues with experts being wrong. Yes, that study was terrible. The terribleness was in the code they published and the wy they interpreted it, not the input data.
Pardon, I glossed over some of the sentence. No the financial system is absolute garbage too.
On a population wide scale? Could you give some links to it?
The proper way to do this thing is to publish all the steps necessary to reproduce the results, with input data so that anyone can actually attempt it themselves.
So we have raw data for 10 years ago, or something?
No, I'm not. Most of academia relies on trust, rather than verification. We trust researchers to not pull dishonest tricks to get their papers published (either for it's own sake because of "publish or perish", or because they're pushing an agenda), and we trust the reviewers to ask hard questions about the research. At this point it is basically proven they do neither. Publishing input data would allow external verification, but it is purposely not done.
The code is the algorithm, which I explicitly brought up as well. But input data is also important, it's literally the first thing you get asked for by any developer trying to fix a bug.
... no, individual evidence from n95 wearers tested under controlled conditions, which is why it was phrased like that.
I agree that is much better, and think it should be ~ mandatory for all publicly funded research. I just strongly disagree that this is related to why people distrust experts, or even why some subfields of experts are constantly catastrophically wrong.
Specifically, slowness in adapting to modern conditions. Publishing all your data wasn't feasible before the internet, and government and sometimes academic research norms are still stuck in the 20th century.
Materials scientists and chemists don't publish their raw data either! But those fields are, to a significant extent, more trustworthy than social science. And plenty of shoddy econ research is done on public data, but is worthless because what they do with it sucks.
You can still just fake your data? Faking your data well in experimental fields isn't actually hard.
I think it's definitely one of the factors for why they are catastrophically wrong. Another is the very act of expert-trusting, we'd have a lot less problems if there was a lot more distrust.
They don't need to, their work is constantly being verified with data from mines, foundries, factories, and refineries.
There's ways to detect that, and it will come out during replication. Experimental fields aren't such a big deal anyway, since they are, in fact experimental - the field itself tells you not to take the results very seriously.
And a lot more problems? What should a 95Iq person do when their doctor says they have cancer and need to take pills that'll make them feel terrible?
Right, but there are a lot of teachers and social workers and (bad) economists who think they're verifying the work of other academics, but aren't, they're just very confused. Public data wouldn't change that.
That didn't happen in psychology though, because everyone was faking and publication biasing etc.
Anything can be taken to an extreme, sure.
The difference is that industry is creating a functioning product, social workers aren't. If they think they're verifying the work of other academics, it's not in the same way, it's because they think they see the problems that have the causes outlined in academic theories, not because they can actually provide solutions. You also don't seem to know that many social workers, there's a lot of ideological lefties there, but half of them get mugged by reality within a few years.
It did happen in psychology, this is where the name "replication crisis" comes from.
A lot of important decisions are made on the basis of expert claims!
No I agree social workers r mostly bad, I'm just saying that they're an example of why more public data won't fix anything.
I mean, there were decades of terribly done pseudoreplications until the replication crisis.
And most of the trust in them is misplaced. You gave a particularly extreme example, where I would agree with you mistrust would be unwise, but it only worked because what the expert suggested was verified on a large scale, and the person he was giving advice to was particularly unable to make judgments on his own.
My point was that this is a bad example. Yes data would fix things if it existed. The kind of data I was talking about simply does not exist in case of social work, and sociological theories.
I was under the impression people didn't really try replicating these studies because they assumed they were done correctly? Also that most of them weren't bad because the data was literally made up (it's true of some cases but not a lot), and in the case it was made up it wasn't publically available.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In fact the existing data/studies indicated that masks were ineffective and a placebo at best
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link