Counting is hard when you don't have theories + Post post-truth + Everyone is biased

[C C]

Counting is hard, especially when you don't have theories
http://junkcharts.typepad.com/numbersrul...ories.html

EXCERPT: In the previous post, I diagnosed one data issue with the IMDB dataset found on Kaggle. On average, the third-party face-recognition software undercounted the number of people on movie posters by 50%. It turns out that counting the number of people on movie posters is a subjective activity. Reasonable people can disagree about the number of heads on some of those posters....

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Post Post-Truth
https://blogstats.wordpress.com/2016/12/...ost-truth/

EXCERPT: [...] It was a peculiar experience, but I learned a lot. As I watched the story move around the Web, I saw how the worlds of fake websites and fake news exist to reinforce one another and give falsehood credence. Many of the websites quoted not the original, dodgy source, but one another. There were more phony sites than I’d realized, though I also learned that many of their “followers” (maybe even most of them) are bots — bits of computer code that can be programmed to imitate human social media accounts and told to pass on particular stories.

But it is also true that we are living through a global media revolution, that people are hearing and digesting political information in brand-new ways and that nobody yet understands the consequences. Fake stories are easier to create, fake websites can be designed to host them, and social media rapidly disseminates disinformation that people trust because they get it from friends. This radical revolution has happened without many politicians noticing or caring — unless, like me, they happened to have seen how the new system of information exchange works.’...

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Everyone Is Biased And There Is No Reality
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/eve...o-reality/

EXCERPT: The latest episode of Sparks, FiveThirtyEight’s monthly science podcast that runs in the What’s The Point feed, hits on a theme that comes up again and again around our newsroom: how biased our poor brains are. The science team talked about how our minds work after reading Will Storr’s book “The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the enemies of science,” in which Storr chronicles his attempts to understand people whose beliefs differ from his own.

Science writers Maggie Koerth-Baker and Anna Maria Barry-Jester and senior editor Blythe Terrell chewed on how we can try to overcome our own biases, the best way to talk with people we might disagree with, and whether we all live in our own distinct reality.

Maggie will interview Storr in the second part of the podcast, coming your way next week. We’ll add the audio here when it’s ready....

[Syne]

The best way to overcome bias? Frequently interact with people of dissenting view points.

[Secular Sanity]

The best way to overcome bias? Frequently interact with people of dissenting view points.

At this point in time, I’d have to say that it has more to do with maturity than biases.

You see, female brains prune themselves and establish connections faster than male brains. Don’t think of it as nagging or womensplaining. I’m just trying to nudge the process along.

I don’t want to see you end up like my neighbor. He prefers younger women, too. Ones that tend to be somewhat out of his league. He mistakenly assumes that his narrow field of expertise is enough to attract and catch his prey. If you’re overconfident, and misjudge your value, you could end up saying something as stupid as "My dog keeps me company, but I can’t have sex with my dog." A lonely old man with a little dog, is that how you want to end up?

Sitting on my front porch, looking at the stars, I hear his dog yelping in pain, and I think to myself what a fucked up world…poor little dog.

[Syne]

No wonder you got banned from SciForums.

Those faster established connections are the source of your bias. Connections formed too quickly and now difficult to disentangle.

[Secular Sanity]

No wonder you got banned from SciForums.

Those faster established connections are the source of your bias. Connections formed too quickly and now difficult to disentangle.

Biases? Nah, but a source of my wickedness, perhaps. I may not eat babies, but I am wicked through and through.

[Syne]

The level of discourse here is quickly making this forum a joke. Even compared to biased mods elsewhere.

[Secular Sanity]

I think someone doth protest too much.

Did you even listen to the podcast?

Maybe she’s right. Maybe what we’re noticing is a backfire effect rather than an increase in anti-science nonsense.