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First of all, your subforum has an amazing amount of post icons. In one of my college courses, the term "minimum wage increase" was uttered and we derailed for a half hour. Some arguments seemed far better than others, some sounded like they were backed sufficiently, but all in all I can't really put my two cents on the issue because I don't know much about it. I can ask my professor about it, who is incredibly for wage increase, or I can watch cable news and want to claw my eyes out, or read internet articles and hope I get lucky that the site isn't too biased. (Actually I've come to realize a lot of news websites are pretty garbage and don't like them as much) Or I can look up peer reviewed scholarly articles on my state university's website and wade through a lot of verbose explanations. I'd like to have a sufficient amount of knowledge if I have to discuss these things or hear about them on the news, moreso if I'm the one voting for them. But it seems like it's a lot to take in when everyone is offering to give you their totally expert opinion. How do I remain well informed without having to write my own thesis on hot button issues such as these?
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Nov 6, 2014 00:53
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I ask an expert on the issue where they get their data from; you've done a decent first step posting here. If I want to find something out, I look at the data or get the data collected on the issue. Then, I look at established methodologies for analysis of similar issues, work out my methodology for an analysis of the specific issue I'm examining, and then see how far off my methods are from standard tools. This provides me with insight into whether I'm looking at a novel issue to be informed by personal experience on system dynamics related to the issue, or within the bounds of established theory. Then, I crunch the data, run a few simplified models, and work out the system which the data represents. For example, for mapping projects, once I know what I need and obtain the data that know I need, I transform it into layers and apply it to related datasets to be able to quickly glance at and inform whether networks, clusters, or opportunities emerge. This has served me well in finance, education/human development, targeting outreach efforts, and informing systemic models to capture full impact and revise metrics for more accurate target assertainment. Tl;dr you'd probably be really interested in a good research methods course and some stats classes. Trust, but verify your gut feeling on an issue and be open to surpressing your gut. Everywhere is bias, so figure things out for yourself and transform them into a framework through which you analyze others' policy positions. I maintain that so long as you know the bounds of the system in which an agent operates, and know the motivation/highest priority target ambition, you can deduce what levers and outlets the agent is likely to pass through next. My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 01:32
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Wikipedia and the citations on Wikipedia is all you need most of the time lol
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Nov 6, 2014 02:00
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My Imaginary GF posted:I ask an expert on the issue where they get their data from; you've done a decent first step posting here. If I want to find something out, I look at the data or get the data collected on the issue. Unless someone is quite skilled, they're going to be served far better by looking at the results of reputable studies other, more experienced people have done than trying to perform their own analysis. This is especially true when you consider the fact that it's impossible to really perform an "unbiased" analysis. Learning how to read scholarly studies is far less daunting than learning to perform a statistical analysis and will benefit the OP far more.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:59
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There really is no way to get unbiased sources. At least, you can read a bunch of conflicting viewpoints on an issue e.g. thinkprogress versus fox news and try to read between the lines and see who's bullshitting the least. It's more or so what I do on SA as well. Basically see which side has the craziest, most self-righteous supporters and summarily dismiss that point of view.
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Nov 6, 2014 05:37
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Academia and academic articles/journals is the closest you can get to unbiased, and even then it's iffy.
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Nov 6, 2014 05:43
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If you want to know what's REALLY going on, you need to use resources like dubious chain emails, random talking-head youtube videos, and obscure sites with early 90's web design layout. Those are the only sources not shut down by the CIA, for some reason.
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Nov 6, 2014 07:27
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Academic studies are the best but to find those it's usually easier to start in mass media and look for serious works cited, then go and track those down. For instance econ 101 says that if you raise the price of something the quantity demanded will go down. So by that if you increase the minimum then employment should go down. But several years ago on NPR (or possibly marketplace) they interviewed some economists who did a study on an actual minimum wage increase in some community. I think their goal was to find out how many jobs would be lost. Turns out there was actually an increase in employment. It could have been a variety of factors but the one theory that made the most sense to me was that the increase in wages meant more people had more money to spend and poor people spend a higher percentage of their income than rich people so, with the increased spending, the economy grew. The growing economy created more jobs. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to track down actual studies that support or oppose what I wrote above.
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Nov 6, 2014 10:59
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E: meh
Kristov fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Nov 7, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 17:01
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freerepublic.com niggermania.com foxnews.com drudgereport.com davidicke.com stormfront.org 4chan.org That's all you will need to research controversial issues. If you want accurate information about those controversial issues, you may need to go somewhere else...
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Nov 6, 2014 17:11
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lurker1981 posted:freerepublic.com This, unironically
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Nov 6, 2014 17:14
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I congratulate you for understanding the difficulty inherent with bias. As a corporate lawyer I have to cope with perspective and bias problems all the time. Trying to determine perspective of adversarial positions on a current issue is nearly impossible unless you look backwards in time - that's exactly why internet news sources are useless for understanding viewpoints that oppose your own. If I'm researching a legal issue I have legal resources that aren't relevant here, but for non-legal issues I have to go elsewhere. This sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I usually start with Wikipedia for everything unless I'm looking up specific case law. The minimum wage in the US Wikipedia article is not terribly helpful in this case, but it's at least a starting point. Of course, you can't cite Wikipedia as a primary source (usually), but you can sometimes identify the source of the competing viewpoints' theories and biases and how exactly they conflict. I can only imagine how your classroom discussion went, but minimum wage arguments are hyperpartisan and this issue in particular is one that both sides usually do not argue convincingly at all.
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Nov 6, 2014 21:13
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Avocados posted:First of all, your subforum has an amazing amount of post icons. If these issues are being discussed in generalitiies like "minimum wage increases are (good|bad|problematic|necessary|SOCIALLY JUST|a fetish of mine)" etc then do not worry, you are absolutely knowledgable enough to stick your oar in and flail away without having read anything in particular. Most of the people you'll be talking to, including your professor, are just advertising their team affiliation at that level so models and data and facts and etc don't matter. If you actually want to know what you're talking about for whatever reason the thesis route is pretty much your best bet. If you don't want to do that, I guess read as widely as possible and try to keep in mind that on economics the orthodox view is usually right and backed up by a whole lot more evidence (which you'd encounter if you were doing your thesis, but you're not) than whatever alt-econ the author is trying to say is The One Weird Trick that will fix <problem> caused by Capitalism. However, unless the analysis is very specific (you'll know it's sufficiently specific because your eyes will glaze over and you'll probably stop reading) it's probably just the author masturbating to something lazily based on their intuitions about economics (or their perception of their readers' lazy intuitions about economics) so keep that in mind as well. IDK, good luck OP. Whatever you do, don't get your opinions from D&D.
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Nov 6, 2014 21:15
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wateroverfire posted:IDK, good luck OP. Whatever you do, don't get your opinions from D&D. I find D&D is useful to inform your methodology. However you choose to analyze an issue OP, document your methods step-by-step and the logic you use to reach them. The conclusions are less important than the replicability of the methods you use to uncover, create and document data.
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Nov 6, 2014 21:26
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wateroverfire posted:If you don't want to do that, I guess read as widely as possible and try to keep in mind that on economics the orthodox view is usually right and backed up by a whole lot more evidence (which you'd encounter if you were doing your thesis, but you're not) than whatever alt-econ the author is trying to say is The One Weird Trick that will fix <problem> caused by Capitalism. Orthodox economics actually kind of agrees with the general "D&D consensus" on this issue, though.
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Nov 7, 2014 00:12
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Ytlaya posted:Orthodox economics actually kind of agrees with the general "D&D consensus" on this issue, though. Well then there's nothing wrong with his post is there?
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Nov 7, 2014 02:36
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wateroverfire posted:If these issues are being discussed in generalitiies like "minimum wage increases are (good|bad|problematic|necessary|SOCIALLY JUST|a fetish of mine)"  Avocados posted:I'd like to have a sufficient amount of knowledge if I have to discuss these things or hear about them on the news, moreso if I'm the one voting for them. But it seems like it's a lot to take in when everyone is offering to give you their totally expert opinion. How do I remain well informed without having to write my own thesis on hot button issues such as these? If there's any data to be had then try to find the source, if the source seems trustworthy (bad studies thrive in unprofessional journals) and you're still not convinced then check the methodology used to gather the data for signs of bias or un-substantiated conclusions. There's really not much more to it then that, you can't be an expert on everything.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:26
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Ytlaya posted:Orthodox economics actually kind of agrees with the general "D&D consensus" on this issue, though. Kind of. The orthodox view would be something like "a small increase in the minimum wage, from where it is today, will probably have no or minimal employment effects and might be worth it anyway." D&D tends to jump from that to "Minimum wage increases don't impact employment", which as a general statement is counter to the orthodox view and not supported by the literature.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:30
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You also want to be careful of people who overly generalize the position of others or ascribe attitudes to others as a group, it's usually a sign of intellectual weakness when someone uses this language in support of an argument.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:33
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Popular Thug Drink posted:You also want to be careful of people who overly generalize the position of others or ascribe attitudes to others as a group, it's usually a sign of intellectual weakness when someone uses this language in support of an argument. Its generally a poorly disguised slippery slope crossed with ad hom. "Gay marriage supporters want to marry dogs there for they are wrong"
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Nov 7, 2014 15:35
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Popular Thug Drink posted:You also want to be careful of people who overly generalize the position of others or ascribe attitudes to others as a group, it's usually a sign of intellectual weakness when someone uses this language in support of an argument. It's a pretty accurate generalization though, so there's that. But sure, #notallD&D.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:43
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wateroverfire posted:It's a pretty accurate generalization though, so there's that. Pretty much not anybody.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:48
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Academic articles are overrated. They're usually very context-specific and only meant to be read by experts in that field. You might find one saying "a minimum wage increase in this particular experiment had an effect of X, controlling for other factors" but it would be a huge mistake to generalize from there to "minimum wage increases will have an effect of X no matter what the context." You might find a Big Data-style survey of tons of different cases that says "in general minimum wages tended to do X" but in the social sciences, comparing data across lots of different contexts requires a lot of assumptions, and changing the assumptions can radically change the outcome, so these studies frequently contradict each other. There's been lots of big, reputable studies done on minimum wages and they've all reached different conclusions. Basically, if a topic is controversial, there's probably not going to be an academic consensus on it. Sometimes because there's value judgments involved. Sometimes the topics that are controversial in everyday conversation are actually just poorly thought-out and don't have a right answer. A minimum wage increase is going to be good in some contexts and bad in others, anyone who tells you it's "always bad" or "always good" is lying, the argument just distracts from the real issue which is income inequality. It might sound terrible, but what I'd do is find some respected public intellectuals who you mostly agree with. Seek out people who are "biased" in the same way you are and who get paid to have opinions on lots of different issues. Then find out what those people say for any given controversial topic. This way, if it's one of those issues that just comes down to value judgments, at least you're reading people whose value judgments you agree with in other contexts. And if you find out that your favourite authors don't spend any time talking about the minimum wage at all, that tells you something too. Sometimes smart people say stupid poo poo when they're outside of their areas of expertise so you never want to rely on just one author, though.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:13
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I was actually planning on creating a thread along these lines because it's such an important question. I'm told that Anthropogenic Global Warming is overwhelmingly supported by scientific consensus, but as I'm just a guy who hasn't had any higher education beyond a few computer classes, how could I verify that claim. My conclusion is that at a certain point, you just have to find an information community that you trust. The big question is how to pick the right one. Even if you take a pragmatic stance and say "My trusted sources are generally right 80% of the time and wrong 20% of the time" you'll still be really wrong if you made the unwise choice to trust people who believe in reptilian conspiracies. There are some techniques that I think are useful. Carl Sagan offers the baloney detection kit: http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/saganbd.htm#BALONEY I find it's useful to use advertising as a clue when doing online research or watching TV or listening to the radio. The article will tell you what the author thinks of the subject, but the ads tell you what the author thinks of the audience. There was advice earlier to explicitly write out your reasoning for coming to conclusions. I think that sounds like a good technique to avoid fooling yourself.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:13
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Most issues are only controversial because some retard has a terrible opinion about something. For any given event/process you are likely to run into regarding social ills the facts and various possible workable solutions that increase human happiness are well known. I would say nearly all the major controversies you see in Western media exist purely because both sides of an "issue" are given equal footing even if the facts are clearly one sided - see climate change.
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Nov 13, 2014 02:24
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Sylink posted:Most issues are only controversial because some retard has a terrible opinion about something. For any given event/process you are likely to run into regarding social ills the facts and various possible workable solutions that increase human happiness are well known. I love your confidence that "human happiness" is easily measured, and, for that matter, that every issue has exactly two sides. I'm especially interested in your views of foreign policy. What's the solution to the situation in Syria? On climate change, you're right that the denialists are clearly wrong, but the issues still raise policy problems without obvious solutions. What's the Objectively Correct way to get all the necessary countries on board with fighting it? Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 16:19
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Not murdering people and taking their things because they are in a different tribe is pretty much the solution to all human problems. And I agree, not every issue has two sides, but the Western perspective often boils everything down to this, even though there probably are multiple good solutions to a given problem/issue. The solution to syria is there probably isn't one, because the religious fanaticism fueling parts of it won't be reconciled. People that far out on religion/being militant are mentally ill and any rational argument isn't going to work. I think you can mitigate fanaticism by providing basic needs (Maslow's heirarchy) which reduces the followers behind a given extremist movement but you can never convert the insane true believers. But I suppose that depends on how much of their beliefs are facade to rally people versus them actually believing it ?
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Nov 13, 2014 18:14
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e: ^^^^^ I'm not sure how enabling self-actualization contributes to a reduction in fervent belief if you're looking at things that are genuinely controversial rather than just an endless political football, you're honestly best off finding a source that declares their bias front and center and interpret what they say with that in mind. it's the ones that claim to be unbiased or objective that you need to watch out for.
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Nov 14, 2014 01:08
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I'm just going to talk about people even though you might call them "theories" or "evidence" or whatever depending on the specific question. -Totally agree that wikipedia is a good first step. -Pay attention to the authorship, it technically doesn't matter but it practically always does. -Most bad arguments fall in 20-ish categories... knowing the list of logical fallacies isn't a bad thing but reading person A describe how person B is wrong (which will usually involve some of those fallacies but 90% of the time it's rhetoric better described as creating-a-false-impression-with-technically-true-things) will usually give you a lot of what you need on a given topic and doing it on various topics with various persons A&B should develop your general radar. Usually the person who is right is more prone to get into a comprehensive deconstruction of the other person's argument. If a person who is wrong does it boy howdy does that almost always make them look even more wrong... usually they focus in on one point or sneakily fuzz the question or the goalposts. -Lots of questions don't have a simple answer or even an answer at all. edit: oh, I don't think I could come up with a general taxonomy of "what else do you need to know" evidence, it's kind of idiosyncratic to the question, but that comes into play all the time and I feel like a lot of smart people lose the forest for the trees sometimes. First example that comes to mind is Anthony Weiner dick pic press conference (first time)... lots of people were saying very reasonable things like "well it's Breitbart it must be BS" etc. but because he was cagey about whose penis was in the picture well poo poo what else did you need to know at that point. Only other one that comes to mind is rich people/companies lobbying hard against tax proposals or regulations "they would just dodge anyway you wouldn't get more revenue/better behavior/whatever". Right, you're going to the mat against something that wouldn't affect you makes a ton of sense. pangstrom fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Nov 14, 2014 |
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Nov 14, 2014 21:12
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Also the answer is dependent on the goal and what you are trying to optimize for and the methods used, which can be subject to arbitrary decision making. Take the issue "solve world poverty", does that mean you reduce the number of poor people by death camps or directly feeding them or ? You achieve the same end point either way.
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Nov 14, 2014 21:41
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