26 ms·

"If you make any other assumption than "I don't know what's happening here and need to learn more" you'll constantly be making these kind of errors. You don't h

"If you make any other assumption than "I don't know what's happening here and need to learn more" you'll constantly be making these kind of errors. You don't have to have an opinion on every topic." I can do this and still start off by assuming the corporation is in the wrong. The tendency to optimize for profits at the expense of everything else, to ignore all negative externalities is inherent to all American corporations.

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> I can do this and still start off by assuming the corporation is in the wrong You really can't. You can start off with a prior that it's more likely the corporation is wrong than not. But if you're assuming your conclusion, you're going to find evidence for what you're looking for. (You see the same thing happen with folks who start off by assuming the government is in the wrong.)
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
dmos62 9mo ago
It might seem like bias will get you to where you're going faster, but at the end of the day it's just bias.
- peppersghost93 9mo ago
  That bias is well earned. Maybe one day corporations will do enough good things in the world to undo the evil they've perpetuated. I'm not holding my breath.
- ang_cire 9mo ago
  I have a bias towards not dying, and so far that has steered me away from activities that increase my likelihood of it. Bias is not intrinsically negative (that's prejudice), it just means a preference towards.
  - dmos62 9mo ago
    A bias in perception won't help you be perceptive.
    - ang_cire 9mo ago
      Sure it will. I see some lifted pickup truck, I know where to focus my attention to better perceive a potential outsize source of accidents. If I know where a hidden driveway is, I know where to focus my attention to better perceive any cars emerging. My knowledge of the driveway biases me towards looking towards it, where another driver without that knowledge would not. Biased perceptions of things as dangerous will absolutely make us observe them more closely in order to better perceive danger. You're still (perhaps inadvertently) equating 'bias' with 'prejudice', but experience biases our perceptions in positive ways, like clocking a hot stovetop.
      - dmos62 9mo ago
        You think I think there isn't a difference between bias and prejudice, while I think you think there isn't a difference between prejudice and knowledge. What I really care about is guilty-until-proven-innocent masquerading as civilized, or false-until-proven-true masquerading as scientific. The starting position should be I don't know. I may have seen cases that look like this, I might know where to look first, but I don't know what I'll find. Until I do, not before.
        ang_cire 9mo ago
        > I think you think there isn't a difference between prejudice and knowledge I'm having trouble following this. Of course there's a difference between prejudice and knowledge. Being aware that studies show pickup trucks are statistically more dangerous than other classes of vehicles (SUVs included, which is nuts!), and thus wanting to avoid them, is knowledge. Thinking that pickup truck drivers are wannabe macho chuds, and thus wanting to avoid them, is prejudice. From the outside, you have no clue whether avoidant behavior stems from knowledge-based-bias, or prejudice. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion I'd conflated the two. > What I really care about is guilty-until-proven-innocent masquerading as civilized What? > or false-until-proven-true masquerading as scientific I have no clue what this has to do with our discussion. > The starting position should be I don't know. I may have seen cases that look like this, I might know where to look first, but I don't know what I'll find. Until I do, not before. Ah, I see where you're going. You're wrong. If you truly believe that you don't use lived experience to make prefactual assessments throughout life, you haven't thought about it enough: When you walk up to a new computer, you don't assume that you have no idea how the mouse will work, just because this is a new mouse you haven't individually encountered before. You assume (and act on the assumption) that it will work the same as other mice. You don't swab it just in case it's a bomb, or covered in poison. You just act on your expectations of how it will behave -UNTIL- you see evidence to the contrary. The problem is you're trying to (as I said) equate bias with prejudice. The comment from pepperghost93 was about the belief in corporations' willingness to do bad things. You and Permit1 clearly assumed they were merely prejudiced against corporations, and not basing their wariness of corporate malfeasance on factual data showing corporations being willing to, in fact, do immoral and illegal things. tl;dr Ironically, you, in the process of decrying bias, used your own biased perception of prefactual judgements to assume they were coming from a place of prejudice rather than knowledge.
Workaccount2 9mo ago
The main thing that people snag on is scale and frequency. If you are super into "ACAB" (all cops are bastards) you can easily "research" this all day for weeks and find so many insane cases of police being absolute bastards. You would be so solidified in your belief that police as an institution are fundamentally a force of evil. But you would probably never come across the boring stat that less than 1 in 500,000 police encounters ever register on the "ACAB" radar. This is almost always where people run aground. Stats are almost always obfuscated for things that people develop a moral conviction around. Imagine trying to acknowledge the stat there are effectively zero transgender people perving on others in public bathrooms.
- drewbeck 9mo ago
  If someone had this experience I’d encourage them to look into how police departments across the US consistently fight against any accountability for the cops who perpetuate those relatively few awful encounters. “Most interactions are harmless therefore the negativity is overblown and cops are trustworthy” is one takeaway if you stop your research at the right point. “if you have a bad experience with a cop the entire department will turn against you; they are not to be trusted” is a more accurate takeaway. As you say, stats very often obfuscate.
  - gruez 9mo ago
    If we apply your logic, would you say it's fair to go around and say "all teachers are bastards", when referring to teacher unions that make it hard to fire incompetent teachers? Or maybe "all doctors are bastards" when referencing how the american medical association (the trade association for doctors) makes it hard for more doctors to be admitted?
    - adrianN 9mo ago
      Misanthropy is the logical conclusion /s
    - shadowgovt 9mo ago
      Sure, but one key difference is that if either of those groups steps outside the law, you can recourse to the law to check them. Since police are part of the law, when they don't hold their own accountable, there's no recourse. And that's a real problem. This is before one even starts unpacking the knapsack of how much law is designed to protect the police from consequences of performing their duties (leading to the unfortunate example "They can blow the side off your house if they have reason to believe it will help them catch a suspect and the recompense is that your insurance might cover that damage.")
api 9mo ago
When you go shopping and see two items for sale that seem nearly identical, do you buy the cheaper one? If you have long term savings do you want it to earn interest? The desire to optimize for profit exists at all levels among all participants in the economy. Everyone does it. We are the system and the system is us. Regulations are usually the only way to fix these things because there are game theoretic effects in play. If your company spends more to clean up and others don’t, you lose… because people buy cheaper products and invest in firms with higher profit margins. The only way out we’ve found is to simultaneously compel everyone. But that doesn’t remove the incentive.
- peppersghost93 9mo ago
  Yeah I'm aware. Learning about how American capitalism functions is what set me on the path of being an anticapitalist. Reforms and regulations will never be effective here in solving this issue. The system itself is poisonous.
  - engineer_22 9mo ago
    what is the solution
    - peppersghost93 9mo ago
      Destruction of the system and building a new fairer one. Similar to how feudalism gave way to capitalism, things can improve. What details are you wanting to know exactly?
      - engineer_22 9mo ago
        What would that look like?
        peppersghost93 9mo ago
        An egalitarian society where the means of production are owned (or mostly owned) by the working class. A blend of that and small private industry with heavy regulation would be nice. I like how the Kurds in Rojava are trying to build things but it's impossible to know how successful their ideas could be while they're dodging bullets from Syria and Turkey. The Zapatista movement is another way of doing things I'd consider.
ljsprague 9mo ago
Many individuals optimize for profits too.

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago

> I can do this and still start off by assuming the corporation is in the wrong You really can't. You can start off with a prior that it's more likely the corporation is wrong than not. But if you're assuming your conclusion, you're going to find evidence for what you're looking for. (You see the same thing happen with folks who start off by assuming the government is in the wrong.)

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

dmos62 9mo ago

It might seem like bias will get you to where you're going faster, but at the end of the day it's just bias.

peppersghost93 9mo ago
That bias is well earned. Maybe one day corporations will do enough good things in the world to undo the evil they've perpetuated. I'm not holding my breath.
ang_cire 9mo ago
I have a bias towards not dying, and so far that has steered me away from activities that increase my likelihood of it. Bias is not intrinsically negative (that's prejudice), it just means a preference towards.
- dmos62 9mo ago
  A bias in perception won't help you be perceptive.
  - ang_cire 9mo ago
    Sure it will. I see some lifted pickup truck, I know where to focus my attention to better perceive a potential outsize source of accidents. If I know where a hidden driveway is, I know where to focus my attention to better perceive any cars emerging. My knowledge of the driveway biases me towards looking towards it, where another driver without that knowledge would not. Biased perceptions of things as dangerous will absolutely make us observe them more closely in order to better perceive danger. You're still (perhaps inadvertently) equating 'bias' with 'prejudice', but experience biases our perceptions in positive ways, like clocking a hot stovetop.
    - dmos62 9mo ago
      You think I think there isn't a difference between bias and prejudice, while I think you think there isn't a difference between prejudice and knowledge. What I really care about is guilty-until-proven-innocent masquerading as civilized, or false-until-proven-true masquerading as scientific. The starting position should be I don't know. I may have seen cases that look like this, I might know where to look first, but I don't know what I'll find. Until I do, not before.
      - ang_cire 9mo ago
        > I think you think there isn't a difference between prejudice and knowledge I'm having trouble following this. Of course there's a difference between prejudice and knowledge. Being aware that studies show pickup trucks are statistically more dangerous than other classes of vehicles (SUVs included, which is nuts!), and thus wanting to avoid them, is knowledge. Thinking that pickup truck drivers are wannabe macho chuds, and thus wanting to avoid them, is prejudice. From the outside, you have no clue whether avoidant behavior stems from knowledge-based-bias, or prejudice. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion I'd conflated the two. > What I really care about is guilty-until-proven-innocent masquerading as civilized What? > or false-until-proven-true masquerading as scientific I have no clue what this has to do with our discussion. > The starting position should be I don't know. I may have seen cases that look like this, I might know where to look first, but I don't know what I'll find. Until I do, not before. Ah, I see where you're going. You're wrong. If you truly believe that you don't use lived experience to make prefactual assessments throughout life, you haven't thought about it enough: When you walk up to a new computer, you don't assume that you have no idea how the mouse will work, just because this is a new mouse you haven't individually encountered before. You assume (and act on the assumption) that it will work the same as other mice. You don't swab it just in case it's a bomb, or covered in poison. You just act on your expectations of how it will behave -UNTIL- you see evidence to the contrary. The problem is you're trying to (as I said) equate bias with prejudice. The comment from pepperghost93 was about the belief in corporations' willingness to do bad things. You and Permit1 clearly assumed they were merely prejudiced against corporations, and not basing their wariness of corporate malfeasance on factual data showing corporations being willing to, in fact, do immoral and illegal things. tl;dr Ironically, you, in the process of decrying bias, used your own biased perception of prefactual judgements to assume they were coming from a place of prejudice rather than knowledge.

Workaccount2 9mo ago

The main thing that people snag on is scale and frequency. If you are super into "ACAB" (all cops are bastards) you can easily "research" this all day for weeks and find so many insane cases of police being absolute bastards. You would be so solidified in your belief that police as an institution are fundamentally a force of evil. But you would probably never come across the boring stat that less than 1 in 500,000 police encounters ever register on the "ACAB" radar. This is almost always where people run aground. Stats are almost always obfuscated for things that people develop a moral conviction around. Imagine trying to acknowledge the stat there are effectively zero transgender people perving on others in public bathrooms.

drewbeck 9mo ago
If someone had this experience I’d encourage them to look into how police departments across the US consistently fight against any accountability for the cops who perpetuate those relatively few awful encounters. “Most interactions are harmless therefore the negativity is overblown and cops are trustworthy” is one takeaway if you stop your research at the right point. “if you have a bad experience with a cop the entire department will turn against you; they are not to be trusted” is a more accurate takeaway. As you say, stats very often obfuscate.
- gruez 9mo ago
  If we apply your logic, would you say it's fair to go around and say "all teachers are bastards", when referring to teacher unions that make it hard to fire incompetent teachers? Or maybe "all doctors are bastards" when referencing how the american medical association (the trade association for doctors) makes it hard for more doctors to be admitted?
  - adrianN 9mo ago
    Misanthropy is the logical conclusion /s
  - shadowgovt 9mo ago
    Sure, but one key difference is that if either of those groups steps outside the law, you can recourse to the law to check them. Since police are part of the law, when they don't hold their own accountable, there's no recourse. And that's a real problem. This is before one even starts unpacking the knapsack of how much law is designed to protect the police from consequences of performing their duties (leading to the unfortunate example "They can blow the side off your house if they have reason to believe it will help them catch a suspect and the recompense is that your insurance might cover that damage.")

api 9mo ago

When you go shopping and see two items for sale that seem nearly identical, do you buy the cheaper one? If you have long term savings do you want it to earn interest? The desire to optimize for profit exists at all levels among all participants in the economy. Everyone does it. We are the system and the system is us. Regulations are usually the only way to fix these things because there are game theoretic effects in play. If your company spends more to clean up and others don’t, you lose… because people buy cheaper products and invest in firms with higher profit margins. The only way out we’ve found is to simultaneously compel everyone. But that doesn’t remove the incentive.

peppersghost93 9mo ago
Yeah I'm aware. Learning about how American capitalism functions is what set me on the path of being an anticapitalist. Reforms and regulations will never be effective here in solving this issue. The system itself is poisonous.
- engineer_22 9mo ago
  what is the solution
  - peppersghost93 9mo ago
    Destruction of the system and building a new fairer one. Similar to how feudalism gave way to capitalism, things can improve. What details are you wanting to know exactly?
    - engineer_22 9mo ago
      What would that look like?
      - peppersghost93 9mo ago
        An egalitarian society where the means of production are owned (or mostly owned) by the working class. A blend of that and small private industry with heavy regulation would be nice. I like how the Kurds in Rojava are trying to build things but it's impossible to know how successful their ideas could be while they're dodging bullets from Syria and Turkey. The Zapatista movement is another way of doing things I'd consider.

ljsprague 9mo ago

Many individuals optimize for profits too.