Delusions of Objectivity

[EricK]

I read this the other day http://timharford.com/2016/04/delusions-of-objectivity/ and immediately thought of many threads here - but especially the "Black woman attacks dreadlocked white man over 'cultural appropriation'".

From the article:

The truth is that we all have biases that shape what we see. One early demonstration of this was a 1954 study of the way people perceived a college-football game between Dartmouth and Princeton. The researchers, Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril, showed a recording of the game to Dartmouth students and to Princeton students, and found that their perceptions of it varied so wildly that it is hard to believe they actually saw the same footage: the Princeton students, for example, counted twice as many fouls by Dartmouth as the Dartmouth students did.

and

A more recent investigation by a team including Dan Kahan of Yale showed students footage of a demonstration and spun a yarn about what it was about. Some students were told it was an anti-abortion protest in front of an abortion clinic; others were told it was a protest outside an army recruitment office against the military’s (then) policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

Despite looking at exactly the same footage, the experimental subjects drew sharply different conclusions about how aggressive the protesters were being. Liberal students were relaxed about the behaviour of people they thought were gay-rights protesters but worried about what the pro-life protesters were doing; conservative students took the opposite view. This was despite the fact that the researchers were asking not about the general acceptability of the protest but about specifics: did the protesters scream at bystanders? Did they block access to the building?

This exactly mirrors the above-mentioned cultural appropriation thread where some people were adamant that the woman was behaving aggressively, and others, having viewed exactly the same footage, were sure she was not.

The same thing happens with other videos (eg police/citizen interactions), but also where events are just described in newspaper articles.

Obviously I do not have this character flaw, and nor do you. But everyone else in Political Discussions? Probably.

 

[ronburgundy]

I read this the other day http://timharford.com/2016/04/delusions-of-objectivity/ and immediately thought of many threads here - but especially the "Black woman attacks dreadlocked white man over 'cultural appropriation'".

From the article:

and

A more recent investigation by a team including Dan Kahan of Yale showed students footage of a demonstration and spun a yarn about what it was about. Some students were told it was an anti-abortion protest in front of an abortion clinic; others were told it was a protest outside an army recruitment office against the military’s (then) policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

Despite looking at exactly the same footage, the experimental subjects drew sharply different conclusions about how aggressive the protesters were being. Liberal students were relaxed about the behaviour of people they thought were gay-rights protesters but worried about what the pro-life protesters were doing; conservative students took the opposite view. This was despite the fact that the researchers were asking not about the general acceptability of the protest but about specifics: did the protesters scream at bystanders? Did they block access to the building?

This exactly mirrors the above-mentioned cultural appropriation thread where some people were adamant that the woman was behaving aggressively, and others, having viewed exactly the same footage, were sure she was not.

The same thing happens with other videos (eg police/citizen interactions), but also where events are just described in newspaper articles.

Obviously I do not have this character flaw, and nor do you. But everyone else in Political Discussions? Probably.

That's why one needs to use established operational definitions of concepts in order to engage in any rational thought or discussion about them.
That means using objectively observable/measurable features that have been previously used to indicate the variable in question.

Moving and block the path a person is going in multiple times, and putting your hands on them without permission while saying things 99.9% of people would not want said to them, would qualify as valid operational criteria for "aggression".
There seemed to be no disagreement that the women did these things, just denial that those things in any way relate to being aggressive, despite the fact that these deniers has used largely the same observable actions to infer predatory sexual aggression in prior instances.

IOW, it isn't just a matter of opinion. Those saying it wasn't aggression are objectively wrong, and internally contradictory.

 

[repoman]

I think this means we need to close this subforum, because it is a waste of all of time.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and Toni you have been called the fuck out!

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I think this means we need to close this subforum, because it is a waste of all of time.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and Toni you have been called the fuck out!

I read the same posts as you and I didn't see them as calling Toni out.

 

[repoman]

by inference if you read the posts in the SFSU dreadlocks thread.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

by inference if you read the posts in the SFSU dreadlocks thread.

Or by obviousness if you read this thread.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Stupidity is a symptom lacking objectivity.

 

[dismal]

I experienced this over many years in kids sports. A line call has an objective truth. It's either in or out. But whether you think a given call is in or out seems in practice to depend heavily on which team your kid is on. Some people I note are the opposite of what you would expect. They see it as against their team. Glass is half empty types, I guess.

I would put a little twist on this when it come to the SFSU dreadlocks case because encouraging that woman is really not helping the team. I don't think the reason that video shot to 2 million views is because that woman looked heroic and noble calling out some stoner kid over his hair. The best thing for Team Micro-Aggression is for this incident to quietly go away, like John Edwards or that congressman gun runner we never had a thread about.

 

[thebeave]

I experienced this over many years in kids sports. A line call has an objective truth. It's either in or out. But whether you think a given call is in or out seems in practice to depend heavily on which team your kid is on. Some people I note are the opposite of what you would expect. They see it as against their team. Glass is half empty types, I guess.

I would put a little twist on this when it come to the SFSU dreadlocks case because encouraging that woman is really not helping the team. I don't think the reason that video shot to 2 million views is because that woman looked heroic and noble calling out some stoner kid over his hair. The best thing for Team Micro-Aggression is for this incident to quietly go away, like John Edwards or that congressman gun runner we never had a thread about.

Funny, I was just about to write about my experiences with sports too. There have been a few times I've been invited to football game parties with friends who are rabid SF 49'ers fans. Me... I could really care less whether they win or lose. I'm not really into pro sports at all. I was just there for the beer. But it was so odd to see the bias in action. Every time there was a close call or some grey area, they would ALWAYS side with the '49'ers. A couple of times I'd say something like, "I dunno know... I agree with the referee on that one. The Cowboys should get the touchdown", and I'd get these death stares. Like they wanted to beat me up. I found the whole experience too tribal and the lack of objectivity actually unsettled me a bit. So I just don't even attend such events anymore.