6 ms·

Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. People can use the same set of facts and come to very different conclusions. That’s a separate issue fr

by atty 3mo ago

Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. People can use the same set of facts and come to very different conclusions. That’s a separate issue from “are these facts correct” and what happens when an individual or entire party starts getting most of their news from highly partisan and unreliable sources.

ceejayoz 3mo ago
> Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. Sometimes, but not always. https://www.fastcompany.com/91561329/widening-health-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives https://www.fastcompany.com/91561329/widening-health-gap-bet... > By 2016, the gap had begun to appear in biomarker measures. By 2020, it was showing up in deaths from causes such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Since then, the gap has only widened. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2% of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34% of “very conservative” respondents.
- jjk7 3mo ago
  It's interesting how distrust for big pharma used to be left wing, but is now right wing. How did that happen?
  - ceejayoz 3mo ago
    It's a whole thing. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-left-alt-right-share-beliefs-white-power-movement/672454/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-lef...
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
  - bjourne 3mo ago
    It's only interesting after you've removed all signs of nuance and dumbed the argument down to two keywords: "big" and "pharma". People are rightfully skeptical of pharmaceutical companies due to the enormous amount of power they wield over our lives and how they use that power, e.g., multi-national companies suing third world states over patent infringement for distributing generic live-saving drugs.
glenstein 3mo ago
>Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. It certainly can be orthogonal, in some notional sense, and in many cases that explanation is good enough. But in practice there are too many contrary cases to ignore, and there's often an integral relation between factual veracity and polarization, especially with respect to American polarization of politics. Global warming, the results of the 2020 election, the percent spent of federal budget spent on foreign aid have factual answers and right wing affiliation can be predictive of (1) not agreeing with the facts and (2) treating factual corrections as "liberal bias". I think left wing versions exist also but are less systematic: 2004 election results, efficacy of plastic recycling or dangers associated with nuclear power are cases where I think left wing partisan affiliation probably predicts being wrong on the facts. And meta-narratives about the relation between factual information and partisan bias are themselves as likely to be polarized as anything, complicating the ability of people to do good analysis, or of accurate analysis to be trusted by people committed to certain meta-narratives that would deny the possibility of factual knowledge predicting polarization.
- michaelmrose 3mo ago
  I think Nuclear power is an interesting case and can be usefully contrasted with say vaccine denial. The anti nuclear position is one that was certainly correct at someone point in time and retains many good arguments that require technical chops to untangle and requires one to come to many other technically challenging conclusions to come to the arguably correct position. Vaccine denial requires one to ignore decades of fairly simple positions about which no expert credibly disagrees nor has in our lifetime. It's like watching 2 packs of athletes some of which are failing to clear 1 meter hurdles whilst on the other side some are tripping on little nubs set in the floor.
- quickthrowman 3mo ago
  I would characterize myself as left of center. > 2004 election results, GWB beat John Kerry in a fair election. > efficacy of plastic recycling Collecting plastic to recycle is almost certainly not worth the fuel and labor it takes, it gets landfilled more often than not. We’d be better off collecting only separated PET and HDPE and landfilling the rest. > or dangers associated with nuclear power Nuclear power is the safest method of power generation that uses steam or gas to spin a turbine.

by atty 3mo ago

ceejayoz 3mo ago

> Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. Sometimes, but not always. https://www.fastcompany.com/91561329/widening-health-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives https://www.fastcompany.com/91561329/widening-health-gap-bet... > By 2016, the gap had begun to appear in biomarker measures. By 2020, it was showing up in deaths from causes such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Since then, the gap has only widened. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2% of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34% of “very conservative” respondents.

jjk7 3mo ago
It's interesting how distrust for big pharma used to be left wing, but is now right wing. How did that happen?
- ceejayoz 3mo ago
  It's a whole thing. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-left-alt-right-share-beliefs-white-power-movement/672454/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-lef...
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
- bjourne 3mo ago
  It's only interesting after you've removed all signs of nuance and dumbed the argument down to two keywords: "big" and "pharma". People are rightfully skeptical of pharmaceutical companies due to the enormous amount of power they wield over our lives and how they use that power, e.g., multi-national companies suing third world states over patent infringement for distributing generic live-saving drugs.

glenstein 3mo ago

>Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. It certainly can be orthogonal, in some notional sense, and in many cases that explanation is good enough. But in practice there are too many contrary cases to ignore, and there's often an integral relation between factual veracity and polarization, especially with respect to American polarization of politics. Global warming, the results of the 2020 election, the percent spent of federal budget spent on foreign aid have factual answers and right wing affiliation can be predictive of (1) not agreeing with the facts and (2) treating factual corrections as "liberal bias". I think left wing versions exist also but are less systematic: 2004 election results, efficacy of plastic recycling or dangers associated with nuclear power are cases where I think left wing partisan affiliation probably predicts being wrong on the facts. And meta-narratives about the relation between factual information and partisan bias are themselves as likely to be polarized as anything, complicating the ability of people to do good analysis, or of accurate analysis to be trusted by people committed to certain meta-narratives that would deny the possibility of factual knowledge predicting polarization.

michaelmrose 3mo ago
I think Nuclear power is an interesting case and can be usefully contrasted with say vaccine denial. The anti nuclear position is one that was certainly correct at someone point in time and retains many good arguments that require technical chops to untangle and requires one to come to many other technically challenging conclusions to come to the arguably correct position. Vaccine denial requires one to ignore decades of fairly simple positions about which no expert credibly disagrees nor has in our lifetime. It's like watching 2 packs of athletes some of which are failing to clear 1 meter hurdles whilst on the other side some are tripping on little nubs set in the floor.
quickthrowman 3mo ago
I would characterize myself as left of center. > 2004 election results, GWB beat John Kerry in a fair election. > efficacy of plastic recycling Collecting plastic to recycle is almost certainly not worth the fuel and labor it takes, it gets landfilled more often than not. We’d be better off collecting only separated PET and HDPE and landfilling the rest. > or dangers associated with nuclear power Nuclear power is the safest method of power generation that uses steam or gas to spin a turbine.