Ranthropologist

Tag: media

  • Facts and Fauxpinions

    Facts and Fauxpinions

    A few days ago a friend linked to an article on my Facebook page and asked “is this you?” I read the article, titled “No, It’s Not Your Opinion. You’re Just Wrong,” and laughed. I laughed at first because it sounded like something I would say, and I laughed as I read the article because it made a serious point in a humorous way. This is not just a Daily Read post because I want to expand on some of the things mentioned in the article. I suggest reading it first, because the author, Jef Rouner, makes beautiful work out of distinguishing between facts and opinions. The point of this post, inspired by Rouner, is to provide a discussion of some of the critically important concepts he addresses.

    I continue to feel concerned about the availability of so much information through the internet. Our ability to do a Google search and open ourselves to a world of knowledge is a wonderful thing, but it has a dark side. I’m not going to harp on the point here since I’ve addressed it many times before, but a lot of the problem comes from an inability to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and lies, data and anecdote, science and snake-oil. Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. We deploy motivated reasoning to justify our beliefs and choices. We are easily bamboozled by sophisticated nonsense. We are prone to a whole host of logical fallacies, a subject I’ve only barely managed to skim so far. We tend to stop cold on our quest for knowledge when we come across a source that backs up what we already want to believe, and scoff at or dismiss information that refutes our beliefs; that is, we fall prey, sometimes willingly, to confirmation bias. And we will reject the arguments of others by throwing out a few non-arguments in response: “I’m entitled to my opinion.” “I’m allowed to have my beliefs.” “I have the right to free speech.” Aside from the fact that these statements are not actually arguments but are instead information-free, knee-jerk, defensive cliches bereft of any logical content or reasoned rebuttal, they are also frequently wrong.

    To begin: an opinion is not a fact. Neither is a belief. This reiterates what Rouner says in his article, but it bears repeating: an opinion is a judgement of a fact. A fact is a verifiable truth. The earth’s existence is a fact. That the earth is round is a fact. That the earth orbits the sun is a fact. These facts have all been verified. None of them is an opinion. If someone says to you, “In my opinion, the earth is flat,” they are not actually stating an opinion; they are making a claim that the flatness of the earth is a fact. They are wrong. Opinion has nothing whatsoever to do with it. This example is obviously ridiculous, but it applies to other areas of fact. Evolution is a fact that has been verified. Yet there are plenty of people who will say that in their opinion, evolution – especially of humans – has not occurred. Again, this is not an opinion because an opinion is a judgement of something. So, you could say that in your opinion, scientists who study evolution are arrogant; but if you say that evolution, in your opinion, is wrong, you are using opinion the wrong way. You cannot substitute an opinion for a fact. If you do not think evolution occurs, then by all means marshall whatever evidence you can in support of your hypothesis, but leave your opinions out of it.

    This confusion of opinion with fact happens all the time. It tends to occur when people are unable to marshall the evidence to support their ideas, so all they can say is “Well, I’m entitled to believe that evolution didn’t happen.” But are you? Are people really entitled to dismissing known facts because it happens to not match with their ideological predilections? I sometimes wish we could do this, but it just doesn’t work: facts don’t give a shit about your opinions or your beliefs. I think that when someone rejects a fact because it is not true, in their opinion, we should call those fauxpinions.

    Related to the unsupported, non-entitled opinion is the lament that a person’s right to free speech is being suppressed by those who deign to argue with, dismiss, or ignore a person’s non-factual fauxpinions. Again, this happens when a person is unable to pull together a body of actual facts and evidence to support their side of the argument. I wish I didn’t have to point this out because it’s so achingly obvious, but somebody disagreeing with you does not constitute a violation of your freedom of speech. A debate does not constitute a free speech violation. A ban or an unfriending is not a free speech violation. A deleted comment is not a free speech violation. Someone pointing out where you may be wrong is not a free speech violation. Someone having a different opinion from you – and yes, even though I have harped on facts, it is obviously possible to have different actual opinions about a fact (e.g. different opinions on the death penalty) – is not a free speech violation. Even the loss of commenting privileges on a website, or the deleting of your account, is not a free speech violation.

    So what is a violation of freedom of speech, then? It is when the government suppresses speech. That’s it. It’s really that simple. If any government official, agency, bureau, department, et al deletes your Twitter account, then, my friend, you have experienced a violation of your freedom of speech. If Twitter deletes your account, they are not violating your free speech. They may not be justified, but Twitter, Facebook, the comment section in your local paper, your Tea Party cousin, your socialist aunt – none of these entities is obligated to listen to you or allow you to say whatever you want to say. So please, for the love of speech, do not whine about how your rights have been violated because somebody blocks or deletes or, god forbid, disagrees with your speech. You may have the right to say it, but I have the right to disagree with it, ignore it, or dismiss it.

    We all have a lot to learn online and from each other. We will all have different opinions about the facts we encounter. We will all sometimes feel dismissed or ignored by people who disagree with us. And we should all learn to back up what we say with logic and reason, avoid fauxpinions, and know the difference between facts and opinions. Our speech will be better for it.

  • Daily Read: Uncriminal Immigrants

    Daily Read: Uncriminal Immigrants

    I really shouldn’t have to point this out, but after a few days of seeing the primacy of the Kate Steinle killing on Fox News (as seen from the treadmill at my gym), I am compelled to share the data. Here’s the deal: Steinle’s killer was an illegal immigrant. The shooting took place in San Francisco, which is a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants – a designation that means the city will not use municipal funds to enforce federal immigration laws; nor will they routinely question people about their immigration status. Here’s the part I shouldn’t have to point out: Steinle’s killer, Francisco Sanchez, did not kill her because he is an illegal immigrant. Being an illegal immigrant did not cause him to shoot her. There is no causative element between his immigration status and his actions. Granted, if he wasn’t in San Francisco, he couldn’t have killed Steinle; but it is a massively fallacious and illogical cognitive leap to assert the proposition that being an illegal immigrant is causative. Correlated, yes; causative, no. Here’s the basic assertion: Sanchez killed Steinle. Sanchez is an illegal immigrant. Therefore, illegal immigrants are killers. This is like saying that all fish swim. I also swim. Therefore, I am a fish.

    I realize that I’m simplifying this – I don’t think any rational person is actually proposing that all illegal immigrants are killers or criminals. But the sensationalizing of this story and the framing of it as a consequence of illegal immigration gets to me, because the data do not support the proposition that illegal immigrants are more likely to be criminal. That’s where we get to the Daily Read for today. This article from The Economist gives the data, which show clearly that Latin American immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. It’s a brief but illuminating read that, among other things, reports that “America’s major cities, and the country as a whole, have seen a significant decline in rates of violent and property crime over the past 30 or so years. Crime has fallen even as the proportion of Americans born on foreign soil has grown, and as rates of unauthorised immigration have gone up.” So as far as I’m concerned, it’s irresponsible and disingenuous for Fox News and other media outlets to claim that Steinle’s death is a direct consequence of illegal immigration and sanctuary cities, and worse, that immigrants to this country are more likely to be criminals.

    Not Here to Cause Trouble

  • Opinions Unhinged

    Opinions Unhinged

    Lately my motivation for writing has been at a low ebb. Even posting more than occasional “Daily Reads” has been an effort. It’s not because I’m not reading anything worth sharing; it’s more that I’ve started to feel overwhelmed with how much there is to share. I use the media aggregator site Feedly to gather all my news sources in one place, and if I fail to check it before the end of the day I’ll often have more than 200 headlines tempting me to click – and I’m only gathering feeds from 14 sites (ranging from NPR to Jezebel, with some blogs thrown into the mix as well). I end up feeling exhausted by it all, even though I end up bypassing many of the articles. Often I will click on a promising headline only to find the article wasn’t worth it; or even worse, give in to the temptation to click on something that is more titillating than thought-provoking (Jezebel does this to me all the time – although the site posts many worthwhile and thoughtful articles, they are also awash in cute animal videos and celebrity gossip). But I’ve decided that the most exhausting part of this whole exercise is cutting through the ideological mud-slinging and self-righteous preening I encounter in much of what I read.

    I am so. tired. of people burying what are otherwise worthwhile arguments about important issues in a heap of hyperbole about how people who have a different point of view are worthless pieces of shit. I am sick of seeing headlines in publications like Salon that describe conservatives as “unhinged,” “foaming at the mouth,” and “lunatic.” I am so over reading descriptions of dissent as “blistering” or “harsh” or “scathing” when the opinions themselves turn out to be reasonable and well-founded critiques. Why does everything have to be described using the most over the top adjectives possible? And more importantly, why is it that having a different opinion makes a person mentally ill?

    This is really the crux of my problem. When you dismiss an opponent as insane, that means that you are not engaging with the meat of their argument. Publications that trade in hyperbolic descriptions and headlines are engaging in click-bait tactics, and it is to the detriment of the carefully considered arguments and opinions that the articles themselves often contain. I realize that these publications need to make money, and page-views are critical to the bottom line… but we as readers are being done a disservice. Moreover, the arguments and opinions themselves are also being ill-served. Believe me, I have my visceral reactions to some of the points of view of people with whom I strenuously disagree; Ann Coulter, for example, makes my blood boil (and not incidentally, she is a good example of a person who cynically leverages hyperbolic and vitriolic attacks into a scheme to separate a certain segment of the population from their money). But in the end, trading in ad hominem attacks and ridiculously over the top exaggerations does no service to reasonable and intelligent debate.

    This is a paradox I have long pondered: the person whose views you find so objectionable finds your views to be equally objectionable. A person who is opposed to gay marriage feels just as strongly about the rightness of their take on this issue as I feel right about my view that marriage should be available to all. This does not make the person who disagrees with me unhinged. People who embrace conservative views genuinely believe that their approach is what is best for the country (and the world), just like I genuinely believe that progressive principles are what is best. How are we ever supposed to have any sort of constructive conversation about our differences when we – and the media we are exposed to – label those with different views as crazy? Why do we take the easy way out by calling names and thus ignoring the substance of what a person believes? By doing that, we run the risk of overlooking sincerely held – and potentially damaging or dangerous – beliefs; that is, if we can arrogantly dismiss someone as crazy (or ignorant or stupid), then we are missing the opportunity to spell out, with rationality and reason, why we believe that person to be wrong.

    When someone defends the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of Southern culture and history, rather than as a symbol of racism, how likely are you to get that person to listen to and acknowledge the deeply rooted and horrifying history of chattel slavery associated with the flag if you start the conversation by calling that person a racist? (If you have any doubt whatsoever that the Confederate battle flag was flown in the cause of defending slavery, I implore you to click that link.) When a person states that their religion prohibits them from acknowledging marriage as anything other than one man and one woman, what are the chances they’ll engage with you in a productive conversation if you tell them they are a bigot? Is an anti-vaxer suddenly going to start vaccinating his kids because you tell him that he is a bad parent who is putting others in danger? Is it possible for us to acknowledge that people can have strongly held beliefs about things that we may consider to be wrong without assuming that those people are 100%, irredeemably bad? The world is not that simple.

    I want to be very clear here: I am not making an argument for excusing racism, prejudice, intolerance, irrationality, or bigotry. I am making an argument for engaging with people respectfully, even if we don’t respect the basis of the opinions they hold (although, to be sure, there are some opinions and ideologies that don’t deserve to be engaged with at all because they are so extreme, e.g. Holocaust denial or the Westboro Baptist Church. In that case, I think the best approach is to not give those people a platform). As I said above, the person you disagree with feels just as strongly about her opinion as you do about yours. Would you be willing to listen to what she has to say if she leads off by telling you that you are crazy for having your opinion? Nobody’s mind has ever been changed by insults; if anything, minds are solidified when faced with personal attacks and vitriol. Sadly, in this new media world of clicks, ads, and anonymity, I’m afraid that the attacks will win, and debate, rationality, and respect will continue to lose.

  • Daily Read: Chocolate-Dipped “Science”

    Daily Read: Chocolate-Dipped “Science”

    Are you confused by science reporting about health and nutrition? Have you given up listening to what the media reports about our diets and what foods are good (or bad) for us? If you answered yes, I’m not surprised, and I fear that reading this article will give you even less confidence in media reporting on these important topics. But I still think you should read it. John Bohannon explains the hoax he perpetrated with the help of some German researchers in a bid to illustrate how easy it is to dupe the media into publishing bad science. In brief, Bohannon did an actual scientific study that generated real results showing that eating a bar of dark chocolate every day accelerates weight loss – but his methodology was full of holes and his conclusions were weakly supported. Nevertheless, when he got his study published in a pay-to-play “science” journal  that will take any study as long as the author pays the fee (an enormous problem itself and the topic of a future rant), and then released an accurate – but detail-scant – press release trumpeting his results, it was snapped up immediately and uncritically by media outlets throughout the globe and published with no scientific fact-checking.

    The upshot? We need more critical thinking not just in our media but in media consumers. People need to be taught how to critically evaluate how a study was conducted and ask the right questions: what was the sample size? What statistical tests were used to calculate the results? How many parameters did the study measure? I realize that learning how to do this takes education and experience, but we need it. It’s not enough to rely on media outlets to do it for us when their bottom line is driven by clicks, shares, and page-views. And this article also illustrates why it is so unbearably easy for the unscrupulous purveyors of modern snake-oil to fool their customers with sophisticated nonsense. It’s a large part of the reason the anti-vaccine movement has any traction at all, why the Food Babe has any followers, and why homeopathic remedies have yet to be banned from store shelves. We have to learn for ourselves how to spot bad science.

    I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here’s How.

  • Daily Read: Transracial Profiling

    Daily Read: Transracial Profiling

    Ever since the revelation on June 11, 2015 that Rachel Dolezal, the president of the Spokane NAACP, is a white woman who has been masquerading as black, I have been voraciously devouring articles about her. I am appalled at what she has perpetrated, and even more dismayed at the ways she has tried to justify her deception. She uses the language of the academy to bob and weave around the straight answers to questions about her race. I understand that language much better than the average person, and I see how damaging it is to use the important theoretical and real-world advancements we have made in understanding race (as well as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.) to justify what Dolezal has done.

    One of the more damaging comparisons that is being consistently drawn is between Dolezal’s racial appropriation and the transition of Caitlyn Jenner. I knew instantly and viscerally that this is a false equivalence (and it is explained beautifully in this article by Meredith Talusan). But another important issue is what is actually meant by the term “transracial.” Today’s Daily Read by Syreeta McFadden (writing in Alternet by way of The Guardian) is one of the better articles I’ve read on why Dolezal cannot be considered transracial. That is a very specific term that applies to very specific circumstances, and it does not apply to Dolezal. McFadden does not specifically address the difference between being transracial and transgender, but she does explain very well why what Dolezal has done is abetted by the white privilege into which she was born.

    Rachel Dolezal’s Definition of ‘Transracial’ Isn’t Just Wrong, It’s Destructive

  • Web of Echoes

    Web of Echoes

    I remember when I got my first email address. I was an undergrad at Humboldt State University in my third or fourth year (somewhere around 1993-94) when the administration decided to assign every student, teacher, and staffer their own personal address. I don’t recall being particularly excited by this development; I do remember that I embraced the usefulness of email pretty quickly.

    Coming around to accepting the internet in general was harder. If there was a World Wide Web, I didn’t know about it yet, and my brief exposures to technologies like Gopher that were used to remotely search the computers at other universities only made me confused. I didn’t see the point, and I dismissed the idea that I would ever need to use this new technology. I was fortunate that my roommate had a computer that I used for word processing (if I remember correctly, the program was WordStar, and it relied on function keys since this was a pre-mouse PC), but it never occurred to me that I would have a need for one of my own once we went our separate ways after graduation. Even as I got better at using the computer in my job at the Interlibrary Loan department at the HSU library and saw its utility for making it easier to match people with books and articles from other institutions, I had no inkling of what the future held. Stubbornly, even as I moved back to San Diego and got a computer expressly for the purpose of emailing with my long-distance boyfriend who was still at HSU, and signed up for my first commercial internet account (AOL, of course!), I told myself that I had no need for “surfing the web.” What a silly waste of time, I scoffed.

    Who’s scoffing now?

    Over twenty years past that first email address, I am now a daily and steady consumer of web-based content. I get my news from online sources. I communicate primarily through email at work (and by text with friends). I open my day with a bowl of cereal, a mug of coffee, and Chrome; I read online articles in the company of lunch at work; I skim through my social media accounts while eating dinner at home, or while standing in line at a store, and even right before going to bed. And for a while now, I have come to feel that all this exposure to online content has made my brain feel… clogged. A month or so ago, I started addressing the clog by reducing the amount of time I spend on social media (I only skim through the top few Facebook statuses when I get online now) and I don’t click on every single titillating headline on Feedly, where I aggregate most of my news and information sites. I had developed a severe case of FoMO (Fear of Missing Out, for the uninitiated) and that was contributing to the brain clog. I feel a little more clear now that I have stopped manically scrolling through post after post on FB until I find the last one I saw. I have a little more time to read actual paper books now that I am only clicking on the Feedly articles about real, hard news and mustering up the will to pass up the gossipy soft “news” about celebrities or car wrecks or scandalous-sounding crimes (I have written about the difference between hard and soft news before, only I called it News and news).

    I am feeling more at peace with the amount of time I spend reading online content, but I am still uneasy. In particular, I feel that we long ago passed the point of diminishing returns with the internet. As much as there is to praise about the democratizing power of the web and the ability of people from all over the globe (at least, those with internet access, which even in the United States isn’t everybody by a long shot) to access information, there is as dark side to all this instant access. The dark side is the fact that anybody who can access the web can add content to the web.

    Why is this bad? The answer should be obvious: people can say and write whatever they want, and they have no burden of proof. There are obviously websites and sources that are more trustworthy than others, but that doesn’t stop people from finding things on websites that are misleading, manipulative, or outright fraudulent and accepting them as true. The internet is the modern version of the snake-oil salesman’s wagon, but instead of traveling from town to town looking for marks, the snake oil peddlers of the internet are never more than a click away. For somebody like me, who values critical thinking, the scientific method, rationality, and skepticism, this aspect of the information age is ominous indeed. The democratizing power of the web has bred a vast and expanding digital library full of truth and fiction, but there is no librarian to make sure all this content is appropriately catalogued. It has become an enormous echo chamber, where we shout what we want and hear it echoed back to us from the sites and articles and social media posts that we already want to believe. No matter how crazy an idea may sound, I can all but guarantee that you can find some source backing it on the web.

    None of these ideas should be revelatory, and I expect that everyone reading this has already drawn these conclusions. Still, as I continue emerging from my brain clog and find new ways to cope with the ceaseless internet echoes, I believe these are things worth thinking about. We would all do well to think more carefully about the amount of time we spend online, and certainly to think very carefully about the conclusions we draw from what we read. It’s too easy to believe that the echoes are the only sounds we need to hear.