[some people seem super annoyed that i pointed it out, and it seems to have brought out the brigade, so i'm just editing this out]
The better approach is to use your critical thinking skills and avoid ad hominem judgments about the author.
Errr, to start a discussion?
You don't have to have agendas to have reasoned intellectual discussions.
"Every author has biases, whether or not they are conscious or overt."
This is such a throw away line i'm not sure why you added it.
"The better approach is to use your critical thinking skills and avoid ad hominem judgments about the author."
In theory, yes, but honestly, i find it's not worth my time when i know it means he's likely leaving out info, etc, instead of trying to present stuff in a reasonable way.
I tend to see others do the same. I don't think you will change this (see, as an example, the viewpoints of the entire populace on pretty much anything, and the way they treat information presented by people they feel have agendas).
You can argue till you are blue in the face that this is not what should happen, but it won't change that it does :)
If you understood it, you would not have written something so naive as "Honesty, i wish articles like this were written by people without agendas, so that real discussions would be had."
Disclosure: Google employee?
Despite your claims in other threads about employees, i am not the company i work for. I also don't agree with them on a lot of issues, FWIW. When and if i speak for that company, i'll tag it as me speaking for that company so you know.
Otherwise, you should always assume it's just my viewpoint, just like you assume anyone else's view is their viewpoint. Anything else would make for a really crappy place to have discussions.
(I find it funny that every sibling comment basically says i shouldn't have done that, and says "you should discuss the thing, not the biases", which is a fair point. Meanwhile, you are saying we should discuss the biases).
Another example is if you review a product, you should disclose if you are being paid for the review, if you received the product to review for free, or even just if you got a discount on it in exchange for a review. It doesn't make it any less your opinion, it's just denoting the potential bias in your statements based on your relationship.
This is pretty ridiculous. I don't expect people having an opinion on child sex trafficking and talking about biases those article authors have to disclose whether they were abused as children, and are thus biased etc.
I'm not the one who wrote and published an article in a major news site.
I'll point out he didn't disclose his biases in his biography either, so apparently he doesn't agree with you, since he's literally complaining about google's biases.
"Disclosure isn't a statement you are speaking for your company, it's a statement you have a direct vested interest in the topic at hand."
Which is 100% totally and completely irrelevant to discussion of either someone else's biases or the topic of hand. If someone wants to start a separate discussion of my biases, that's fine too, but it could not be more orthogonal.
> Such as being a significant stockholder, or receiving a paycheck from one of the companies being discussed."
Why stop at companies? When discussing the california drought, should people living in areas affected point out they have a direct vested interest in one outcome or another (because they pay more, because it means water restrictions for them, because ...)?
and again, FWIW: I am neither a significant shareholder, nor do i have a direct vested interest in the topic at hand. If Google was regulated, or whatever, it would have literally no effect on me.
In any case, i'm not going to continue this line of discussion. I have no plans to change what i do, because i think it would make for a much worse discussion forum. you are welcome to do what you want.
That's not analogous. This is not about pre-emptive disclosure of bias. It is about disclosing the author's bias without disclosing your own, which constitutes dishonestly representing yourself as an uninterested party while maligning the author for pushing an agenda. It's unfair at best, and intentionally deceptive at worst.
An analogous situation would be like this: someone reads an article about child sex trafficking and criticizes it because of the author's bias, without mentioning their own relevant bias.
What you did is analogous: you criticized an author for having an anti-Google bias, without mentioning that you work at Google.
(whether they have power to stop it, or work to stop it is not what upton was talking about, and a completely different question)
They are just pointing out your hypocrisy.
I think most people can read criticism about their employer and not immediately dismiss it because they happen to like their employer. However, after your reading your responses here it seems hypocritical and downright dishonest that you didn't disclaim your affiliation before posting a comment that basically says "Oh it's Epstein lol whatever he's a hack"