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Comment by carlmr | Hacker News Reader

>That the link between digital tech use and psychological distress is inconclusive would have come as a big surprise to me five years ago.

I think it's not so surprising since everybody "feels" this is true. Making people look where they can confirm their bias.

I'm not saying it's not a thing, but I think this is an issue with a lot of studies that look at something where people either do it and don't want to feel good or bad about it or have some beliefs about it being good or bad, e.g chocolate/wine/eggs are good/bad for you.

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The thing that actually is surprising is how many researchers don't even mention why they've excluded the possibility of a reverse correlation in their studies.

I think you meant to write "reverse causation"? Correlation is by definition symmetric and directionless. If the researchers make no causation claims, they don't need to be concerned about the direction of causation.

I haven't followed the field, but it's hard for me to imagine published research in serious academic journals where causation claims are made without at least some discussion about the direction of causation and hidden confounders.

It is likely that the poster was referring to a negative correlation. While incorrect terminology was used, correlations do have direction.

https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/173276/is-it-corre...

https://study.com/academy/lesson/negative-correlation-in-psy...

Negative correlation also known as anticorrelation does not mean there is a "direction". Simply, it is a scalar number and not a vector. Don't add to the confusion of terminology by using a colloquial definition of "direction" to mean it can be negative or positive. We could have defined correlation to be in [0,1] and your sense of direction would be very confusing.

Thank you for the clarification, you are absolutely correct that its positive or negative rather than having a direction.

Probably, not my first language.

> If the researchers make no causation claims

But sentences like "kids using their phones more than x hours a day are on average sadder" very much imply one.

Like the worse your mental health is the more you are on your phone?

Or the more you enjoy the idea of shooting people in the face, the more time you're likely to spend playing video games involving shooting people in the face?

Yep, things like that. I would at least appreciate adding a disclaimer, that this behaviour might be a symptom of some other issues for example at school.

It's the same thinking that links violent video games to violent behavior.

The causality fits very well into our world view. It also gives a very "simple fix". Limit video games, limit screen time, limit X.

When the real problem is significantly harder. Social, governmental, institutional and systemic racism.

If there's a real, reproducible, verifiable link, I'm all game for it, but when the problem is so wide spread and the answer is so simple, it really needs to be reproduced across multiple studies.

Because rarely is the problem + solution truly that simple.

> When the real problem is significantly harder. Social, governmental, institutional and systemic racism.

While I don't question that systemic racism is real, I don't quite see the link here. Isn't the kind of violence video games get blamed for more commonly committed by non-minority people who have mental health issues and/or were "social outcasts" rather than racially motivated? I mainly remember the topic as coming up in connection with school shootings and the likes, not potentially racial hate crimes.

100% agree on the looking for simple (and comfortable to admit!) fixes though. It is so much easier to say "we made a mistake letting kids play these games" than it is to face the truth that some people are either completely left behind by society or descend into incomprehensible madness for no comprehensible reason.

I believe what they mean is the majority of violent crimes committed by youth in the United States is committed by kids in historically redlined, segregated neighborhoods where the school system is non-existent, public services and infrastructure is falling apart if there at all, all the fathers have been arrested, the police and citizenry are openly antagonist to each other, so drug trade and criminal gangs are the best shot they have at participating in any kind of a community at all.

Solving that will go a lot further than worrying about the comparatively tiny number of suburban white kids shooting up their schools.

Note that "systemic racism" here doesn't need to mean any individual involved in this is still racist. It can just mean the lasting after-effects of institutional racism from decades ago that we never bothered trying to actively undo and just hoped everything would get better when we told the institutions they could no longer legally be racist.

Thanks, that makes sense — where I live most of the talk around video games was about school shootings, not "regular" violent crime among young people, that's why I was a bit confused.

> The causality fits very well into our world view. It also gives a very "simple fix".

> Social, governmental, institutional and systemic racism.

Some people use video games as bogeyman, some people use time spent online, and you just used racism. Could it be that you are from the US (alternatively: from the anglosphere) and i am not?

At this point i find it hilarious how US people point at every second problem and be like, "racism is behind this". I hope i'm not the only one who feels this is some kind of insane.

Systemic racism is the QAnon theory of the left. Every disparity between races has one simple explanation, racism, disregarding all other possible causes. The data contradicts the narrative but data doesn’t matter as long as they believe it’s right.

S8E18 of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (granted, a left leaning show) had a rather interesting section into Housing discrimination ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_discrimination_in_th... )

I think most people, right or left leaning, could agree to recognize that as systemic racism?

It used to be there were laws enforcing racial segregation, that was systemic racism. Those laws are gone yet the effects still persist. But when there is discrimination now it is caused by individual actions, there is no system behind it anymore. So is that still systemic racism?

Furthermore, how do we know housing discrimination is caused by racism instead of class? If a landlord doesn't want to rent to black Americans he's racist. If he doesn't want to rent to white Americans he's not. But what if in both cases he's worried about not getting rent because of perceived class, is one racism and the other not?

literally got turned down to purchase property in a manufactured home park yesterday; because they have a "minimum credit score 670" rule for occupants. (My credit score is >750; but the unit was going to be occupied by my daughter who has some chronic health issues).

if that's not housing discrimination, I don't know what is.

Now look at which races are overrepresented in which classes and you will understand systemic racism. Intent of the landlord is irrelevant.

See, this is exactly the fallacy I'm talking about. Black Americans are poorer on average so naturally it's because of systemic racism. It's the only explanation.

When we look at Nigerian Americans we see they earn more than whites and they are more educated than whites. We see the same with other ethnic minorities. If class was determined by the color of someone's skin this would be impossible. Clearly there are other factors at play.

Political discourse in the US would be a lot more healthy if the focus was on class instead of race.

One argument made in the episode was that since only white people could get mortgage loans the wealth generated from owning property, was exclusive to them. Which is more or less the wealth that defines the middle class today?

> classes

IMHO this is the elephant in the room. The US is a bad place for poor people, and the black folks are overrepresented in the poorer social classes.

The social and economical system of the US is failing, and media and politicians are sprouting anti-racist slogans to distract attention away from their failings to improve the living conditions of the poor.

Its not racism, its poverty that is eating the country.

> Systemic racism is the QAnon theory of the left.

No, its not.

> Every disparity between races has one simple explanation, racism, disregarding all other possible causes.

No, “systemic racism” is not “all racial disparities are caused by racism”. It is “some racial disparities are caused by institutional features that may seem racially neutral on shallow analysis but which structurally disadvantage particular races”.

> The data contradicts the narrative

Well, it certainly contradicts your strawman narrative, but that has nothing to do with what systemic racism is about.

Ok, so what are the disparities that aren’t caused by racism?

Man, this counter-question is surprisingly good at exposing the dogmatic "all disparities are caused by *isms" thinking in people. Bookmarked!

While it's always a good thought exercise to ask oneself "what else might (partially) produce this result", that does not mean one is equipped to answer it accurately.

Additionally, if your goal is to "expose" people instead of working with them to figure out what is happening, then all you will ever find are exposures. That doesn't mean that's all there is to find.

People who insist that disparities in people are caused by _isms are just delusional. If i had to guess, these people are insecure and want to do these "endangered minorities" a favor to feel better about themselves. But i don't really know for sure.

I say this is a emotionally driven pattern and nothing rational or fact-based. In my eyes, the "systemic _ism" is just a pretext, the kind of pretext people make up to conceptualize their feelings. And i think it needs to be exposed to prevent it from interfering with the constructive talk.

What caused me to be bugged by irjustin's post: They accurately point out how humans pick the easy answers even when they are wrong, and he continues to make the exact same mistake in their next line. Just, how? Is it easier pointing at others than to reflect upon yourself?

> When the real problem is significantly harder. Social, governmental, institutional and systemic racism.

This post is a perfect example of Poe's law. I genuinely can not tell if it's satire, it is so extreme.

I'm not trying to demean the post or poster, but I think this is a good microcosm of current Western society, especially the US. Taking this post on face value, I genuinely don't know how to respond this this. It triggers the same feeling I get when someone tells me Jewish people secretly control the world.

It really seems like these conspiracy minded beliefs are getting major uptake on both the left and right, and that strikes me as extremely dangerous. I wonder how this sort of thinking correlates with excess screen time? It does seem like these ideas largely spread online.

The true corruptor of youth is that satanic D&D "role-playing "game""

You've clearly confused cause and effect here, I think it's obvious that the youth have corrupted D&D. :P

Have you seen the modern editions? They certainly have.

I think most players would disagree

I'll just go ahead and pocket that template. Thanks!

Fat makes you fat.

A coworker once asked me "What if we called sugar fat? Would people eat less of it?".

Probably. It's a tribute to how monumentally successful Big Agro convinced America that fat was bad over the past 80 years. We're only just now starting to come out of those dark ages and we still have a long way to go.

I know I drink a lot less coke ever since I saw just how well it works as a rust remover.

Not necessarily. Eat only fat and you'll enter ketosis, where most of your fat will be converted into sugars.

That’s the point of GP. It’s not true, but it sounds reasonable.

But why comment at all, if they are agreeing?

Towards the end of the 20th century, as the obesity epidemic was starting to become a real concern, the general layman's (and possibly medical?) understanding in Western countries was that to lose weight you should consume less dietary fats.

This lead to a lot of low-fat diets and products that advertised themselves as "99% fat free", "fat reduced" etc. - many of which contained extra sugar.

Of course, now we know this belief was not only wrong, but harmful. At the time, though it "felt" true.

I am almost certain this cultural phenomenon is what GP was referencing.

To add to the discussion?

the italics are working as scare quotes here

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