The problem is that “verifiable fact” is actually very complicated in any context where you’re talking about politics. Two of the questions on the first graphic are about income mobility for people born in the bottom quantile. The graphic is correct, as far as it goes, but overlooks huge differences by race. While the average American born in the bottom 20% has a 7.8% chance of reaching the top 20%, that number is actually 25% for Asians.
Or, take the fact that the US lags Denmark in inter generational income mobility. Which is true, but it’s also true that the difference is due mainly to taxes and transfers flattening the whole distribution instead of fundamental structural differences that enable more movement: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/09.... Put differently, it’s not that the welfare system allows the son of a gardener to become an engineer, but that massive income redistribution reduces the disparity between gardeners and engineers. (For many Americans, that distinction could be dispositive in whether you support an expanded welfare system.)
So take these facts the next step. The authors studied these things in the context of support for reducing income inequality. Isn’t there a very plausible argument here that the experience of poor Asians shows that there isn’t a systemic structural problem keeping people in the bottom 20%? Or, isn’t it plausible that the generous welfare state doesn’t really fundamentally change people’s’ trajectories, but just reduces the divergence between those trajectories? And if you teach people the first set of statistics but not the second, are you educating them to make up their own minds, or feeding them facts to support a preconceived notion?
Stepping back: experts should certainly understand these facts. But what do we expect ordinary people to take away from them? Consider the work done by Piketty and Saez on income inequality: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/10/16850050/i.... Defining "income equality" actually is quite a quagmire. For example, in their 2003 work, P&S excluded the effect of tax transfers (such as the earned income tax credit) which significantly overstated the degree of inequality. Or, they mention that marginal tax rates were higher in the 1960s, but exclude the fact that the tax bases were narrower, such that the actual average tax rate on the top 1% hasn't changed dramatically over the decades: https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high. And there are so many other confounding variables to account for. The immigrant population today is almost triple what it was in 1960. Because immigrants often start at the bottom of the ladder, an increasing immigrant share could make incomes seem stagnant even though they’re growing within each different demographic. You also need to account for household sizes, major differences in marriage rates, etc. There are an enormous number of variables.
I'm not trying to take a side on this issue, I'm just using it as an example. These are issues of vast complexity. The facts are things experts can fight over. But do we really expect people to make political choices based on this information? Invocation of "facts" and "experts" have an intuitive appeal, but the "fact" is that for almost any disputed political issue, the facts are far from clear. So people use heuristics: ideologies, knee-jerk reactions, general principles, values. It's not clear to me that's wrong.
The reality is that most of the things we argue about are complex. That's why we argue about them.
For most of these topics, if you think the solution is simple, you almost certainly don't understand the problem. The worst part is that most people have no interest in increasing their understanding, they just care whether they're scoring points for their team. And of course they do, because they've made their membership on this team a huge part of their identity.
I have had far too many acrimonious arguments with people I love because one or both of us have only been interested in strengthening our position. It is a tough habit to break - believe me. At this point, if somebody is not interested in exploring the possibility that either of us could be way off base, then I have no interest in talking with them.
> While the average American born in the bottom 20% has a 7.8% chance of reaching the top 20%, that number is actually 25% for Asians.
Exactly. Amy Chau wrote a great book called The Triple Package that points this out and the fact that its not just Asians (which broadly lumps Indians and all other Asian cultures together): Nigerian immigrants, Cuban exiles, Lebonese, Mormons, Iranians, Jews, all see roughly the same phenomena of surpassing average American household income. Its considered taboo to point out that income inequality is largely cultural.
> Its considered taboo to point out that income inequality is largely cultural.
I wouldn't say "cultural" because that's pretty loaded. My point is more that if there were something structural about the economy that kept people in their class (big banks, bad public education, etc.) you wouldn't see high mobility in certain sub-groups. There has to be other factors in play--who knows what they are. But I wouldn't assume they're necessarily "cultural."
> I wouldn't say "cultural" because that's pretty loaded.
It may be loaded, but our cultural differences need to be considered. On average Asian and Indian cultures place a stronger emphasis on grades. This plays a large role in why they have been very successful by some metrics. If certain questions are taboo, then we might overlook factors that are setting them back. That doesn't mean that external factors aren't relevant, but we need to consider everything.
We need to ask uncomfortable questions. That's not bigoted in itself. Look at the gay community. A lot of gay men engage in very risky behaviour that can lead to the spread of STIs. As an LGBT person myself, I can tell you that it is still quite common. We need to be able to ask if they are doing self harm. In fact, we have asked these questions, which has led to measurable progress (STI prevention strategies have helped significantly).
If you can't point to exact laws and exact policy in 2020 that is the cause for the "structural" then I feel like we are just ghost hunting rather than admitting to the uncomfortable conclusion that others have already reached multiple times. We may need to shift the discussion to damage to a culture done in the past rather than blame some specter that doesn't actually exist in the now in any of the statistical data. Structural implies universal application, which it clearly is not.
Which is in part why the political tribes have largely abandoned facts.
It's very difficult to actually get to ground truth, especially with the rate at which social media and the news cycle moves. It's a constant onslaught of (mis)information and we don't have reliable institutions to make sense of it. Worse, it turns out facts don't really matter as far as this game is concerned. Each side is able to live in their own reality, able to look at the same thing yet come to opposite conclusions. It's highly predictable. Whatever Team A is for, Team B easily finds a way to be against. And vice versa. Sometimes the teams even switch positions in unison, since consistency doesn't matter either.
>> It seems the bigger bias comes from the general media than any particular party political bias.
From TFA:
>> First and foremost, Republicans and Democrats tend to seek out very different news sources so they often get very different information.
It should raise red flags for everyone that news sources vary so much on reporting the same thing. We should be selecting news sources based on the types of things they report rather than the spin. Of course a lot of people taking in politically biased news are only aware of bias in news slanted the other way, and their own.
> We should be selecting news sources based on the types of things they report rather than the spin.
You can report nothing but verifiable facts and still add plenty of spin just by selecting the types of things you report. E.g. "here are the details of police deaths and injuries during the riots" versus "here are the details of protester deaths and injuries caused by the police".
I can't believe they thought it was that high. I mean general unemployment is no where near 27% and you'd suspect that with threat of losing visa status, immigrants are more likelier to take a job they dont exactly grok.
The question is a bit ambiguous though. I could see people thinking "I'm sure a quarter of them have been on it at some point" rather than hearing the question as "what percentage of immigrants are on unemployment at the present time?"
The "umemployment" part of the question can also be heard incorrectly. Unemployment properly refers to a specific benefit paid out after loss of a job. But I'd bet many respondents mentally generalized from that to many other types of public assistance and welfare.
That is a rather impoverished explanation of a complicated word. A closer description would be "to understand something on such a deep and personal level that the lines of identity between it and you blur."
Here's a passage from the book that coined the term (as a word from an alien language)
> Grok means "to understand," of course, but Dr. Mahmoud, who might be termed the leading Terran expert on Martians, explains that it also means, "to drink" and "a hundred other English words, words which we think of as antithetical concepts. 'Grok' means all of these. It means 'fear,' it means 'love,' it means 'hate'—proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you cannot hate anything unless you grok it, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you—then you can hate it. By hating yourself. But this implies that you love it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate—and (I think) Martian hate is an emotion so black that the nearest human equivalent could only be called mild distaste.
The complexities of the word have been lost as the English language continues to evolve, until the colloquial understanding supplants the literal origins.
We exist at a particular moment in time, and language is a tool that is used to be understood. If one wishes to use arcane and literal etymologically-derived definitions of words, it is necessary to say so.
When arguing about immigrants and unemployment I always wondered why people get so upset over it. If the immigrant is even able to collect unemployment that means they paid for it.
So they're literally just getting the money back that they paid into it. Probably considerably less, even!
So why should anyone care that they're collecting a benefit that they paid for? I don't get it.
Unemployment doesn't work like that. As long as you've paid something in, you can get paid out the same as anyone else. So you could have a situation where non-immigrants are paying into the system more than they get out, while immigrants are getting paid more than they paid in.
Do people get upset over legal immigrants? (Such as through marriage or relative) As far as I am aware it’s mainly about illegal immigration. However, if you are on a work visa, I believe the law states the visa is revoked if you lose your job with the employer.
Unfortunately all media is biased, with most primarily taking a far left stance. This is likely just due to $$$ as we live in a capitalist society. If I owned a news station the questions I would ask is “what demographic is the most profitable to us?” and “what content brings in the most money?”
Are you referring to local news stations or national networks? I've also suspected CNN and MSNBC have a bias toward the "far left". What would you, caseyohara, accept as proof of left-leaning bias from CNN or MSNBC?
Typically, a source with a bias towards the "far left" might be inclined to agitate for Marxist revolution or anarcho-syndicalism and consider European social democrats to be right wing sellouts because they haven't shown any inclination to abolish private property or even punitively tax the rich. Do you have any evidence of this bias in their news coverage?
Just to clarify, I was referring to nationwide/major stations. I don’t have any comment on local. I would imagine the bias (or non) would be based upon that social demographic area ( southern Calif is more left compared to South Dakota which is more right)
You are right on this point. However, everything is so politicized that you aren’t allowed to be leaning in any direction. You are force to choose..which is ridiculous. To give an example, why is it unacceptable to many on HN to like policies from both Obama and Trump? Having been on here for a while, you will get applauded for 1 and spit at for the other.
It might be a problem when people from opposite side of the political spectrum strongly disagree on things; it's an even bigger problem when they agree on the wrong perception, sadly people who suffer from those unanimous but wrong perceptions tend not to have a voice, like immigrants and people living in foreign countries.
When asking "What percentage of US immigrants are Muslim", they saw 21% (D) and 25% (R). Not close to the actual number, but surprisingly close to the 24.1% of the world population who are Muslims. I guess both parties would be approximately correct if immigration was uniform across the entire world population!
(I don't mean to imply anything meaningful by this, just that the answers for that question tickled a memory of world demographics)
I think that the results of these types of surveys can be misleading, as they don't always ask if the respondent is unsure. Wouldn't it be better to ask them how knowledgeable they believe they are on a given topic before asking them about the exact numbers? Similarly, wouldn't it be better to ask them first about their support for a given policy change?
Many of these answers will simply be guesses. I think it would be far more informing if these answers were broken down by people who believe they are knowledgeable or who support certain policies.
What's with all these articles stating obvious stuff everyone already knows? I remember a month ago there was an article about how breathing can affect health, like that was news or something. It was on the front page.
One of the big human problems in social science is that people are VERY happy to make explanatory narratives instantaneously on hearing a result... Which makes most results seem 'obvious' once reported.
One trick to circumvent this is to report the OPPOSITE conclusion first, and then say, 'actually, it was the opposite' after the listener says 'well, duh.'
In our own reading, it can be helpful to invert the conclusion and ask how surprising that would seem...
In reality, we don't know until we test... We have a lot of stories and biases that we carry all over the place, some are useful, most are shorthand, and many will lead us to wrong conclusions.
> One trick to circumvent this is to report the OPPOSITE conclusion first, and then say, 'actually, it was the opposite' after the listener says 'well, duh.'
Study finds political bias improves perception of verifiable facts.
I don't think I heard a lot of "well, duh".
> In reality, we don't know until we test... We have a lot of stories and biases that we carry all over the place, some are useful, most are shorthand, and many will lead us to wrong conclusions.
And even when we test, we don't really know, because we don't know whether we're talking about the same thing. What does "immigrant" mean? Are you still an immigrant after having lived in the US for 30 years? Is a naturalized citizen still an immigrant, or does he cease to be an immigrant when he becomes a citizen? Do you consider the children of an immigrant to be an immigrant? If so, for how many generations? Are you absolutely sure that everybody you talk to answers these questions the same way you do?
I'm often surprised how vague these political surveys are and how loose they play with language. And I'm even more surprised when they then use the data to make strong calls.
I'm pretty sure if you define the words, you get different results, e.g. ask about "immigrants in the last 10 years", or say "immigrants who have not become citizens that immigrated in the last 80 years". When you only use vague terms, you're not really asking what people believe the numbers to be, you're asking what people understand the term to mean AND what they believe the numbers to be for that understanding.
A current example is asking about racism, where it's no longer just academia where you might encounter something like "systemic effects disadvantaging local minority populations" as the working definition, while the average person might understand it closer to "discrimination based on race". You'll get very different responses based on what definition the person is working with, even when you ask about the same metric, e.g. "how often do you witness racism in your work place?"
Sure, but that's just giving people compliments or confirming their world view, isn't it? I did understand the comment to mean that we find things obvious after we hear about them presented as the result of a study. I don't believe that at all, but I'm very much with you that it's correct with a modification: we find them obvious after hearing about them if they agree with our world view.
I don't think that "ideology lessens your ability to perceive reality" falls under worldview, though, and I cannot imagine that anybody was surprised by the result itself. That doesn't make the study useless, it's interesting and important to know how strong the effect is, whether it changes over time or can be negated etc. But other than that? Study finds that people shot with guns die more often than control group. I don't think you need to be an anti-gun-activist to say "well, duh".
More importantly: how did independents and apolitical people guess? Were they closer to the "real" numbers?
Red sky at night, shepherds' delight. Red sky at morning, shepherds take warning.
That's true, but there are different kinds of facts, and the argument isn't meant for all of them. "Is water wet? Study finds overwhelming bipartisan agreement!" Finally some common ground.
Breathing affecting health in that way was absolutely news to me. I'm very skeptical that you really could have predicted the results of that study before reading it.
In fact, your post on that story was:
> Did you all know that humans need oxygen to survive? And that the ways we consume oxygen can affect our health?
It doesn't seem like you really understood what they were saying. It's much more complicated than this and doesn't warrant that sort of shallow dismissal.
Human cells use oxygen for fuel. Breathing is the primary mechanism by which oxygen enters the cells. My teacher told me this stuff when I was a baby in elementary school.
What is up with people just ignoring the content of the message that they are replying to and either repeating what they said before or reply to something that was never said? This seems to be more and more common in HN these days.
Wow, those scientists went to the wrong elementary school. You sound smart, they usually don't even let toddlers into elementary school, much less babies.
That's a very obtuse take of what I think is a more nuanced development. It's not as simple as "If you don't breathe, you die. Duh!"
Regulating your breath can be used to regulate your body and mind. There are lots of different techniques that can regulate different things. Heck, let's totally avoid the "hippy dippy" stuff... Valsalva maneuver for example which is used to diagnose Dysautonomia by slowing your heartrate. Or how about the Navy SEALs box breathing to control cortisol levels? Boy am I glad we "waste our time" researching this stuff!
The extreme _regional_ wrongness about economic mobility is particularly interesting; people in places with higher mobility tend to somewhat downplay it; those in places with lower mobility tend to massively upplay it.
Better title: political bias skews guesstimates that COULD be verified.
Are we really surprised that people don't know by heart the percentages of income mobility statistics? Also, although the questions, as posed, are technically verifiable, that's not what people really care about - do I care about a statistic of income mobility that includes my parents (soon to be pensioners)? Not really; I care about future projections - the income mobility of myself, and my future kids. That's what policy bickering is about.
Edit: the actual (not HN) title of the article is even more clickbait-y: When we can’t even agree on what is real
> One experiment showed that even when given an opportunity to learn the facts about immigrants in the U.S. for a nominal sum, those holding the most negative and most inaccurate perceptions were the least willing to pay.
So much for the wisdom of the crowds. Danes look like they have more accurate perceptions about immigration, but I'm not sure if that's actually an improvement for society.
From what I can see the real problem is that most people don’t care about facts anymore. They just want to hear what they think anyway and the political parties are too happy to feed that.
When you talk to left wingers and right wingers about the economy of the last ten years the left guys will tell you it was paradise until 2016 and then everything went to hell. The right wingers will tell you it was misery until 2016 and then the boom started. When you look at stock indices, unemployment or other charts you will see a steady rise over ten years. You won’t even see that the president has changed. But pointing that out is futile. Most people don’t want facts.
When I look at this chart I see ups and downs but overall a pretty steady upward trend. I don’t see eights years of Obama misery and then triumph under Trump. That was my point.
Your point was that people don't care about facts, which you are proving in ironic fashion. Even when presented with evidence and facts, you fail to acknowledge it.
I'm sorry, is this showing a _causal_ relationship between political bias and perceptions of reality? The headline and article make it sound like that, but it could just as easily be that your perception of reality causes your political bias. Or that some other thing causes both of them.
I can't see the paper to be sure because it's behind a paywall.
It turns out those polled are not good at knowing verifiable facts like:
What share of U.S. immigrants receive unemployment?What share of U.S. immigrants are Muslim?
Why do people even hazard a guess at this stuff? Does your average Joe registered voter really think they have such a handle on immigration in their country that they think they know the religion of everyone coming in and who is receiving exactly what benefits?
What I don't quite understand is the article is arguing that left and right can't even agree on the facts and both are wrong. But when I look at the examples they are both wrong, but way "to the right" on the facts.
I suppose you could turn it round and ask: why are certain groups so obsessed with forcing immigration on people that don't want it? Don't those people have a right not to have their minds changed by people with an agenda? Who decides what opinions are palatable or otherwise, and why are they seeking to subvert commonly held beliefs for their own benefit?
I was thinking more the ideologues prevalent throughout virtually every major global institution and goverment. But there does seem to be evidence of NGOs and traffickers collaborating in the Mediterranean for example.
Or, take the fact that the US lags Denmark in inter generational income mobility. Which is true, but it’s also true that the difference is due mainly to taxes and transfers flattening the whole distribution instead of fundamental structural differences that enable more movement: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/09.... Put differently, it’s not that the welfare system allows the son of a gardener to become an engineer, but that massive income redistribution reduces the disparity between gardeners and engineers. (For many Americans, that distinction could be dispositive in whether you support an expanded welfare system.)
So take these facts the next step. The authors studied these things in the context of support for reducing income inequality. Isn’t there a very plausible argument here that the experience of poor Asians shows that there isn’t a systemic structural problem keeping people in the bottom 20%? Or, isn’t it plausible that the generous welfare state doesn’t really fundamentally change people’s’ trajectories, but just reduces the divergence between those trajectories? And if you teach people the first set of statistics but not the second, are you educating them to make up their own minds, or feeding them facts to support a preconceived notion?
Stepping back: experts should certainly understand these facts. But what do we expect ordinary people to take away from them? Consider the work done by Piketty and Saez on income inequality: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/10/16850050/i.... Defining "income equality" actually is quite a quagmire. For example, in their 2003 work, P&S excluded the effect of tax transfers (such as the earned income tax credit) which significantly overstated the degree of inequality. Or, they mention that marginal tax rates were higher in the 1960s, but exclude the fact that the tax bases were narrower, such that the actual average tax rate on the top 1% hasn't changed dramatically over the decades: https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high. And there are so many other confounding variables to account for. The immigrant population today is almost triple what it was in 1960. Because immigrants often start at the bottom of the ladder, an increasing immigrant share could make incomes seem stagnant even though they’re growing within each different demographic. You also need to account for household sizes, major differences in marriage rates, etc. There are an enormous number of variables.
I'm not trying to take a side on this issue, I'm just using it as an example. These are issues of vast complexity. The facts are things experts can fight over. But do we really expect people to make political choices based on this information? Invocation of "facts" and "experts" have an intuitive appeal, but the "fact" is that for almost any disputed political issue, the facts are far from clear. So people use heuristics: ideologies, knee-jerk reactions, general principles, values. It's not clear to me that's wrong.