I was reading a couple of NY Times articles online recently (this and this) and, while the content was troubling, the fact that these are online added a new wrinkle to bring all kinds of other trouble: comments. This could very easily be a self-defeating topic since this blog has a label "comment-whoring" since like all narcissists who write these things, comments are like money, crack and Reese's cups all rolled into one. (I love Reese's cups, by the way.)
The comments in the two stories kind of remind me of the reaction to the Halftime in America ad, which I'm pretty sure you've seen already. People saw what they wanted to see in it, regardless of response. I know I myself am not above bias, so I do that too. But, being an engineer, I also know that data is important. I want to point you towards this link of of Confirmation Bias and Hostile Media Effect, both are cognitive biases that I think are relevant. (There are probably more, but who are we kidding? You're not clicking those links.) For example, the Depression and Post WWII eras are cited by both Keynesians and anti-Keynesians as justification for their positions. The same data yields wildly different conclusions. How? Those biases.
Another example: last week, the latest unemployment numbers came out, and they declined and currently sit at 8.3%. To quote from Businessweek, "While the unemployment rate has declined 1.4 percentage points over the past 24 months... the population-to-employment ration hasn't budged, holding at 58.5%..." Both supporters of the president and his opponents have cited the unemployment decline as a vindication, as an improvement of the statistics on the one hand on the one hand, and a demonstration of the ineffectiveness of his policies on the other.
In each case, they both can't be true at the same time. Yet, the folks who leave comments on those articles assert each position with such verve that the other side must be stupid or deceptive to disagree. I'm not sure that deception is entirely out of the question in some cases, but really, a lot of this is driven by confirmation bias and seeking out data that supports your established position, rather than looking for real data. Data is, after all, boring.
Sometimes, though, finding legitimate data is a challenge. For example, who is a credible source on climate change? (Honestly, I don't believe either side. I don't think anybody understands the science to nearly the degree they say they do.) Or, if you saw Meet the Press on Sunday, Mitch Daniels asserted that a lot of the stifled business climate is a result of excessive government regulation, to which Michael Bloomberg later agreed. However, neither really said which regulations. It's just a mantra that people say. Then again, there are plenty of people think that the business climate is the way it is due to insufficient regulation. They can't both be right at the same time.
Many comments in the first NY Times link talk about how the Constitution is both obsolete and hard to change and, just like Daniels, don't really talk about why. There is also a sense that the stagnation caused by the Republicans as an opposition party is somehow contrary to the intent of the document is a rather sever misunderstanding of its purpose. An active government was not considered a positive by the authors of the Constitution. Additionally, it being hard to change is by design. That is a problem, though, for people who think that government should be more active regardless of how they feel. On the other hand, it is venerated as a sacred document by those who think it is from the hand of God, and any desecration is blasphemy. They both can't be right at the same time.
I frequently call these discussions, especially on public pages like that as arguments between retards on the internet, so I don't know how seriously I should take them. I feel bad about calling them retards, though, because it's not a nice word. It carries a weight, though, that I think is hard to convey otherwise. How can I imply that same weight without being offensive?
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