Hacker News Reader

Comment by splawn | Hacker News Reader

This is always going to be a problem unless critical thinking becomes a skill that everyone accepts as fundamental as reading and math.

View on HN

Well a hell of a lot of academics who claim to be critical thinkers didn't critically think about their own bias in this election.

Critical thinking is not a shield against your own bias.

>Critical thinking is not a shield against your own bias.

You are correct, it is not, but at least it acknowledges that biases are there. Most people don't even know what personal biases are to begin with.

But it isn't and this election proved exactly the opposite of what you claim.

<But it isn't

Re-read the comment you responded to. I agreed with you. What is it that you think I am claiming? My only claim (admittedly that I am aware of) is that fake news would have a harder time having impact in a climate where people practiced more critical thinking than they do currently.

My claim is that fake news aren't important in shaping peoples opinions. People are not going to change their views based on news.

shaping opinion != changing views.

fake news helps in reinforcing views already held, which matters.

Matters to what?

Democracy

(Not speaking for GP... Just a reminder that that is the context of what we are talking about)

In what way?

Are you not following this thread? We are talking about critical thinking wrt democracy. We got on this tangent because the first comment paraphrased the Jefferson quote: "If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."

I am following the thread, and you aren't answering the question.

If the news said this person murders puppies for fun, most people would close their mind to the possibility of voting for them.

I am assuming we are having this discussion on a more elevated level that obvious absurdities.

But even if you want to go down that road that I am pretty sure that there would be plenty of self correction happening unless you decided to stay isolated from the rest of the world right after you read that. Thats obviously not whats happening at all.

So what is the middle ground between these two absurdities? Parent said it does not matter. I am saying it is possible that it does matter.

It doesn't matter _enough_.

You have any sources what so ever that proves that misinformation actually made Trump president?

Forgive me if I am wrong... but didn't his political momentum mainly start with his very public lead role in the "birther movement"?

"Global Warming is a Chinese Hoax"

"Ted Cruiz's father killed JFK"

"Obama and Hillary founded ISIS"

Is it even possible to separate that man from misinformation?

Edit: I have anecdotal "evidence" that some of his voters where swayed by this stuff from conversations I have had with Trump supporters. While that isn't enough to make the claim that misinformation is the sole cause of his election (a claim btw, that I have not seen made on this thread.. you are the one that brought it up), it does show me that its impact was greater than 0.

Impact great than 0 does not mean it's enough.

You forget that people gravitate towards what they believe in already. They aren't sitting there evaluation who to believe in based on the facts out there.

>Impact great than 0 does not mean it's enough.

I agree, but it doesn't discount it either, it simply means greater than 0. Its not enough to draw a conclusion from which is why I haven't. My only claim is that critical thinking would lessen the non-zero impact.

What does this mean? What biases are you talking about?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

EDIT: I had assumed this is what we were talking about, excuse my own biases, lol :D

I am not ThomPete but if I had to guess, it's PC bias that blinded many to the potential of this outcome. Perhaps most glaring of these biases is the idea that all women should demonstrate solidarity for their gender and vote for a woman, even if it means voting against their own best interests and the interests of their communities. I don't see too many people calling that for what it really is: sexism.

If you're talking about the pollsters, which are not necessarily academics (bias much?), it seems like a stretch to say that making a prediction of a complicated future event based on statistical techniques is due to a lack of critical thinking. Their prediction models will have to be adjusted, sure. But all the people that were "proven" right because their intuition happened to match the outcome are using a much worse critical thinking technique.

Also, Clinton won women 54% to 42%.

No, I'm talking about all the columnists who openly refer to that 42% as traitors to their gender.

No, I'm talking about all the columnists who openly refer to that 42% as traitors to their gender.

I did a Google search (ironic, I know) for "Trump traitor gender" and I couldn't find columnists referring to Trump-voting women as traitors to their gender. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I think this illustrates the sort of problem we are faced with

Took me one search.

http://www.chicksontheright.com/feminists-say-white-women-ar...

Thanks, but that's a column that accuses feminists of the same thing that GP did. It isn't a column by a feminist accusing Trump voters of being gender traitors, although it does link to a single blog post on Slate http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/11/09/white_women_...

Perhaps that blogpost partially satisfies GP's assertion, but this little thread illustrates how difficult it is to fact-check political rhetoric, even in the absence of fake news.

This is silly.

Anyone who followed the election just a little bit saw plenty of that.

Here is another one that didn't take me more than one search either.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election/republican-women-su...

If anything it proves exactly what I said.

I do agree that you should be able to back up your assertions with some sources. As GP asserts, we all have our little bubbles of bias that seem incomprehensible to the rest, as we focus and magnify issues that are important to us.

In the interest of going forward instead of just arguing back and forth about sources, I looked for a few. Disclaimer: I am generally anti-feminist in my views. For reproducibility's sake, I used combinations of the following search terms: feminism, white women, trump, internalized misogyny, we need to talk, intersectionality. I also added tl;drs to each link but don't consider them canonical.

I didn't find enough posts outright calling women "gender traitors". I don't believe that is the most common feminist MO - they are more likely to blame "internalized misogyny" and "white women abandoning the sisterhood"(I guess that's close enough?), which are both long-standing narratives among feminism(feminists vs non-feminists, and the internal racial divide).

The rage I found was mostly on Twitter, feeding into my preconceived notion that Twitter is cancerous to actual discussion. Here's a quick twitter dump to illustrate:

> https://twitter.com/BDubBabyGirl/status/797128287206146048

> https://twitter.com/Karnythia/status/796350601449926656

> https://twitter.com/AnasuyaIam/status/796462867868512256

> https://twitter.com/NotYourBlkFrnd/status/796937029414096896

> https://twitter.com/TorraineWalker/status/796363979711021056

> https://twitter.com/MJStarLover/status/796246525647187969?re...

> https://twitter.com/NicCageMatch/status/796443880333811713?r...

> https://twitter.com/fawfulfan/status/796421710669115392?ref_...

> http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nus-womens-officer-har...

-------------------------------------------------------

Past the twitter outrage, the articles I found were a lot more analytical and introspective. Like I said, the most common themes were "white women betraying the sisterhood", and women in general "suffering" from "internalized misogyny":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLWv-hivjt4 - Women voting for trump are "fucking dumb"

http://forward.com/sisterhood/353945/so-um-about-the-white-f... - White women don't believe in feminism, they have "internalized sexism", they take comfort in playing the role of an object

(By the way, that last thing also happened vs Bernie Sanders voters, when Clinton supporter Steinem said women only vote for Bernie to make themselves attractive to "boys")

http://qz.com/835567/election-2016-white-women-voted-for-don... - white women have a history of betraying their sisters, white women choose men over women

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/11/09/white_women_... - white women sold out the sisterhood (the one you linked)

http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2016/11/09/dont-blame-whi... - blame internalized misogyny, women just can't help themselves?

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/08/the_mystery_of_republican_wo... - more internalized misogyny (pre-victory)

https://bitchmedia.org/article/white-women-you-need-talk-abo... - "When the conversation started to slowly turn to blaming white women.."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dear-white-women-we-mess... - Fellow white women, I’m done with you.

https://www.bustle.com/articles/194381-white-women-need-to-a... - internalized sexism

http://theslot.jezebel.com/all-along-it-was-you-1788758934 - White women care more about their privilege than their freedom to choose

https://www.bustle.com/articles/194493-white-women-failed-hi... - White women failed other women

https://mic.com/articles/159036/white-men-didn-t-win-the-ele... - the female misogynists who voted for Trump stood on the backs of others

http://reelgirl.com/2016/11/dear-white-women-who-didnt-vote-... - Dear white women, you fucked up

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2016/11/10/trum... - more internalized misogyny, women like patriarchy

https://dailyprogressive.org/2016/11/wtf-white-feminism-many... - Agreement with the Slate article

After conducting the search, I think that our internal narratives are easily reinforced by the bevy of media out there. Now more than ever it's important to be skeptical of "their side is worse", because the explosion of information availability makes it pretty easy to find negative views out in the open, especially ones that can make you very angry and emotional. That's pretty much the death of rational discourse.

Most of the stuff I found was analysis, or calls to action, not naming and shaming. Especially newspapers like the NYTimes, had multiple articles as CTAs to "stop shaming Trump supporters". A bit of a hopeful message going forward.

I think that had a lot to do with a candidate who bragged about committing sexual battery

Not sure what OP is talking about, but here's an example from HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841565

Someone is flagged & dead in this thread for daring to suggest that Meliana Trump might end up as first lady. Another (also flagged/dead) response called them a "poll truther" for that comment.

A lot of people want to blame "bad polling" for this, but they were biased towards Obama turnout numbers, which didn't happen, and ignored the fact that Trump was filling rallies and Hillary wasn't. Or how being viewed as a Trump supporter can be completely unsafe: See also:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/11/14/man...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNegGEoohK4

http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/trump-portland-oregon-protest-...

I know at least one family member was disowned by a friend of 11 years over this election.

An interesting observation about the HN thread that you linked to, is that the most substantive reply, that pointed out that Trump was sitting at a real, 25% chance of winning was not voted down.

A good and fair point.

But neither was the post saying "I have visions of Bill, passed out in a hammock on the White House lawn, surrounded by empties and cheeto packets." voted down, so that would tend to weigh against it being purely a matter of being a comment with no substance.

I'd say that it appears that people believed it was the type of political falsehood we're talking about here. I mean, it did say 'more than likely' so anyone who believed the 98-99% estimates should have considered it laughably false based on the evidence they knew. The other comment made a more specific, factual claim that couldn't be laughed off, though I saw many stories aghast that 538 would break ranks.

I can't find a source, but in part the consistency of the polls reminds me of the stories of how the measurements of some physical constant (g?) drifted over time because everyone felt beholden to the 'consensus' value, which was wrong. I wish I could find that, I think I saw it on HN a long time ago.

Obviously, it's 'safest' to use the same assumptions everyone else did. When 538 broke from the herd, a lot of people questioned them on it. Based on the results, they were at least 30+% more correct than the 99%ers. And I think all of them were operating on assumptions that have been invalidated.

I agree and wish there were more 'viewpoint diversity' in academia, in addition to gender, racial, and cultural diversity. Social sciences should allow for more freedom of thought without fear of being ostracized. There is a reason why academia is a polarizing environment: personal ideologies of social psychologists can influence how the topic is studied. As such, for example, conservatives have little influence in the scholarly disciplines. Less that 10% of professors in these fields identify as conservative [1].

I hope more institutions can look at viewpoint diversity more closely [2].

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-social-science... [2] http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/10/welcome-to-heterodoxa...

If by "bias" you mean the systemic blindness against the polling data showing the possibility of a Trump win, I agree with you.

But if you are implying that having a strongly-held political opinion is "bias", then I disagree. The idea that academics, or anyone else should be perfectly neutral (if that's your implication) doesn't really make sense.

What I am saying is that critical thinking in itself as OP seemed to claim isn't a solution. That's all really.

Idk if you write code or not, but if you don't think critical thinking is good in general when dealing with unknowns (such as when making a decision on a democratic vote), then I bet your debug sessions are hilarious to observe.

Because the kind of critical thinking thats required for coding is the same as the one required for discussing politics?

Care to back that idea up?

Critical thinking isn't some magic sauce that once you learn it it allow you to approach everything with that.

You still need experience and to build up an intuition about where and how to apply it in a given situation.

I don't know about "magic sauce", but I do my best to apply it to everything I can....

Critical thinking is about as generalized as you can get. The definition google spits out is:

"the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment."

Im curious... when would you not try to apply critical thinking when making a decision?

You are missing the point.

Yep. If you elaborate perhaps I will get exactly what it is you are trying to say. Are you trying to say "Critical thinking is hard and easy to mess up?" If so, then sure, I can see that. I just wish it was more of a thing in our culture...something that regular people regularly talked about.

What I am saying is that critical thinking doesn't have a lower boundary. It will always be subject to the premise we base something on.

A voter who doesn't have a job because of ex. globalization isn't going to apply the same critical thinking of a voter who is doing well and is benefitting from globalization.

We are all trapped by our frames of reference, no amount of critical thinking is going to change that and just because you know of critical thinking you aren't going to make better decisions.

Furthermore there are plenty of people who understand and apply critical thinking. What is really missing is constructive thinking but thats another thing all together.

True critical thinking involves the frequent re-examination of one's starting premises in the light of new input. Every time I gain some new insight or information, I become that much more likely to question my basic assumptions about, well, anything. It is a great error, upon finding a demonstrably correct solution to a problem, to assume that its correctness is everlasting. If it later turns out that the conclusion was correctly reasoned from incomplete information, it is all too easy to reject new and contradictory information because it would invalidate the conclusion, even though the conclusion in question was drawn without access to the new information.

Which is why access to a competent education is a basic requirement for a functioning democracy.

In my opinion, we aren't there yet since there are huge disparities between education quality across the public school system. One solution (IMO) is to standardize funding; today school districts rely on local funding which can result in tremendous funding disparities (and by extension, disparities in education quality).

Huh? How is education going to save you from that? Everyone, all the educated critical thinkers were wrong on Trump. Spectacularly wrong.

If the propaganda is good enough, I don't think any amount of critical thinking will save you.

(For example, critical thinking has helped me to date — I believe — because it's not worth going after me as you only need 50% of the population to win an election. Just as it isn't worth trying to write a Nigerian scam email that's good enough to get me because there is plenty of lower-hanging fruit.)

Thats a pretty good point. As far as I know critical thinking is our only "weapon" against propaganda, so I hope you are wrong.

> As far as I know critical thinking is our only "weapon" against propaganda, so I hope you are wrong.

Speaking up and attempting to educate people if they are buying the propaganda is another "weapon".

Of course it isn't always effective but if enough people challenge someone hopefully they may reconsider.

While I agree in general, critical thinking alone is inadequate if there isn't enough information or information pathways are constricted such that they deliver only biased viewpoints.

Critical thinking is already part of literacy.

Looks like we're about as good at it as we are with advanced math.

Advanced math?

Literacy does not imply discernment.

Reading and writing is basic literacy.

Accurate analysis of content is still a part of literacy. How you do that without discernment, I have no idea.

I think we are talking about different levels of critical thinking. There is simple reading comprehension as in "I understand the argument you are making" but then there is also a higher version as in "I understand the argument you are making and have weighted it with this criteria"

Might just be different levels of ambition.

I think people understanding arguments would be a nice step forward.

ahh ok, gotcha... we are in complete agreement.

EDIT: (I am a perfect example) :D

I see it like this. Literacy is reading what is printed on the page. Discernment is reading what is not printed.

Critical thinking won't save you from a subtle, deceptive piece of propaganda.

Pretending that propaganda and information warfare only affect dumb people is dangerous thinking.

Critical thinking is orthogonal to intelligence, imo. Which is why I think it should be taught with the same importance as reading and math. Perhaps it is a tautology, but as far as I know its the ONLY thing that could save you from a clever piece of false propaganda.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com