> So that's why you make sure your assumptions and claims match what happened.
Ah yes, of course. Like everyone in this thread, and every other culture war based thread on HN eh? Everyone is super seriously making sure that their statements are free of error, and signs of uncertainty are far more plentiful than high confidence.
> For instance, anyone who claims that the economic impact was solely the result of government action, and that no private individuals or organizations changed their behavior independently, is ignoring the timeline of events.
> Anyone who claims that the vaccines didn't change things so that post-vaccine policies could have been equally successful pre-vaccines, is ignoring the stats.
The mind tends to be drawn to easy, clear cut scenarios, but tends to be highly averse to wading into scenarios where certainty is not so obvious.
> All this stuff is pretty easily googleable in the current and past-two-years news records, and yet you still get lots of people here making arguments based on completely different claimed facts.
Agreed....and this is an intelligent forum, on a relative basis anyways - which is another thing one can notice: people have a tendency to think only in relative terms. "I am clearly much more intelligent than those Trump supporters, therefore I must be intelligent [on an absolute scale]". How many flaws like this are hardwired into human consciousness, running completely sub-perceptually, turning our perception of what is all around us into a gross misrepresentation completely without our knowledge?
What if this actually is a big deal, but we can't be bothered to even consider the possibility?
I'm not saying I think everyone on HN is doing their homework.
I'm saying that if you want to make sure you're not running yourself in circles and letting your own previous assumptions dominate your ongoing judgment, you should be doing your homework.
If you don't keep doing your homework you will almost certainly fall into that trap.
It wouldn't surprise me if the level of correlation between intelligence and "doing your homework" was near-0, to be honest, but that's just a guess in part based on people's behaviors on HN. ;)
> I'm saying that if you want to make sure you're not running yourself in circles and letting your own previous assumptions dominate your ongoing judgment, you should be doing your homework.
This seems a bit like "just" focus on your breath in meditation.
Ah yes, of course. Like everyone in this thread, and every other culture war based thread on HN eh? Everyone is super seriously making sure that their statements are free of error, and signs of uncertainty are far more plentiful than high confidence.
> For instance, anyone who claims that the economic impact was solely the result of government action, and that no private individuals or organizations changed their behavior independently, is ignoring the timeline of events.
> Anyone who claims that the vaccines didn't change things so that post-vaccine policies could have been equally successful pre-vaccines, is ignoring the stats.
The mind tends to be drawn to easy, clear cut scenarios, but tends to be highly averse to wading into scenarios where certainty is not so obvious.
> All this stuff is pretty easily googleable in the current and past-two-years news records, and yet you still get lots of people here making arguments based on completely different claimed facts.
Agreed....and this is an intelligent forum, on a relative basis anyways - which is another thing one can notice: people have a tendency to think only in relative terms. "I am clearly much more intelligent than those Trump supporters, therefore I must be intelligent [on an absolute scale]". How many flaws like this are hardwired into human consciousness, running completely sub-perceptually, turning our perception of what is all around us into a gross misrepresentation completely without our knowledge?
What if this actually is a big deal, but we can't be bothered to even consider the possibility?