The whole labeling thing is poor politics, not least because people are so incredibly bad at it. It's at the heart of the tribal problem.

Sure some people are just but there are real issues and problems that are the mainstay of politics. The criminal justice system in the USA is a major part of the problem (unfortunately it's one of many major parts).

Cameras certainly help a lot. All interaction between the police and the public needs to be maximally recorded. It's necessary for the public protection (particularly the vulnerable groups) but it's also very good for the decent police.

The perception of welfare abuse is the problem LDO. You never ever want to be saying something that is contrary to what a lot of voters have personally experienced. I would be for a system that allocated the welfare resources more precisely if it weren't for the fact that the government is ****ing terrible at making decisions like that with any efficiency at all. One of UBI's many positives is the impact it has on how many federal employees are necessary.

I used to believe that there were smart people managing the economy... and then two crashes happened.

I used to believe in academic studies and then they p-hacked that into lying with numbers to advance their careers.

I used to believe in pharmaceutical trials and then I learned that they are as rigged as legally possible, and sometimes considerably further than that.

I used to believe that all calories were created equal and then I learned that something I was eating a lot of was basically an addictive drug (sugar).

I used to believe that HRC lacked charisma but was very capable.

What I'm trying to say is that a lot of the things that we say we say with a high degree of certainty. Maybe we should use our eyes in the real world to figure out whether or not the numbers we're reading need to taken seriously. I get that a lot of social scientists badly want the numbers to be right, but I've been lied to a lot. So have we all. I don't think it's crazy to question the motives of a person trying to tell us something is a 'fact'.

You guys get that these kinds of little lies with numbers made it possible for the big lies our dear leader is telling to get through right? When you allow dishonesty to exist you weaken your cause. We need to purge our own side of as much dishonesty as possible. Only when we are being truly honest with people will our message ring true.

We allow a ton of dishonesty from the government and we allow a ton of dishonesty about what is really going on inside of it. We need to take off the rose colored glasses and start making real tangible improvements that improve people's lives.

I'm sorry but the big lesson I've learned in my life is that every time I see something happening IRL and experts high in society tell me that I'm seeing it wrong I've been right. I'm not doing that anymore. If someone in authority tells me something that I'm seeing in person isn't happening in other places I tend to assume that they are lying to me until proven otherwise. Sorry not sorry.

It's certainly a major political, social, and economic constraint. Liberals in particular need to do a MUCH better job of making their message connect with lower intelligence voters. Calling them racists is basically the worst strategy there is. Even if it's true.

OK. I agree that trying to change voter perceptions of social programs is a real issue. If it's an issue for SNAP it's an issue for UBI as well, though. I also agree that the Democratic party sucks, although I'm technically an elected Democratic party official :P

If you want to read a good critical take on social science research methodology, I recommend Howard Becker.

I'd also suggest that, despite the real issues that exist, encouraging further erosion of public confidence in academic institutions is also probably pretty dangerous, considering the alternative epistemologies people resort to. Which isn't to say that intelligent criticism of research should be avoided. It's just the "intelligent" part is important. "I don't believe that because of <insert anecdotes here>" is not that. Descriptive usage statistics for government programs are not subject to p-hacking: no claims about the significance of associations are being made. Descriptive stats are pretty reliable.

Also, a lot of what you are taking to be dishonestly is mostly just a mixture of incompetence and the fact that science is hard and most results should be taken as provisional. We don't always do a good job with that part.

Nope. The genius of UBI is that everyone gets it so they don't really get a chance to envy their neighbors. The thing that makes welfare such a toxic topic for the lower classes is that the people who make 30k a year working get almost no benefits and the people who work half as hard get enough benefits to bring them up into the 20-25k range. This generates a ton of envy among those not benefiting. With UBI it's just another thing everyone has that everyone is responsible for managing themselves. Some people will use it well and some will use it poorly... But everyone will feel like it's something everyone deserves within a few years of it coming into existence.

I'd also advocate taxing all income including UBI payments. That way everyone, including the poor, think long and hard before advocating additional spending. We've only been running deficits like this since Reagan, and despite it working since then I don't think any of us can be certain what will happen if we keep it up. It's never been done before on this scale, so surprises are quite possible. Probably wise not to press our luck too much. Thankfully we have a lot of government revenue already. I think maybe we should spend that money well before asking for more.

EDIT: I'd argue that allowing academic institutions to mislead people is bad for their credibility. As of right now they deservedly have very little credibility. If they want to change that they could do some actual science instead of trying to make the data fit the hypothesis. Major reforms are needed to how the scientific community does things as well. Honestly at this point why SHOULD the public believe them when a substantial % of their 'experiments' can't be reproduced?

Trying to sweep things under the rug doesn't improve credibility at all lol. In fact nothing is more damaging to credibility than someone finding out you've been dishonest with them. Being wrong is fine. You can easily be wrong about something... But let someone find out that you lied and you really don't have a place in the conversation anymore. The academics have a lot of work to do in their governance before anyone can take anything they say seriously.

Expecting the ordinary citizen to do the mental lifting required to tell the good studies apart from the bad studies is unreasonable. At this point it's getting to be a situation like the Catholics directly before the reformation where the intelligensia are having high level conversations about philosophy and theology in Latin so that the non-educated cannot possibly be exposed to new ideas. Just asking them to trust you when you've lied before isn't going to work. They need institutions that can provide the information with credibility. For that to work the institutions must have rigorous standards. The sooner the better.

The average IQ is 100 no matter what 'side' you're on. There is plenty of 'stupid' to go around.

I think it's hard to argue that our dear leader doesn't have a special flair for communicating with the below average. I also think it's hard to argue that any of them understood a single argument the Dems made the entire last election cycle.

Are descriptive stats reliable? Police and educational stats certainly aren't. Healthcare stats certainly aren't. Why would the other stats be better?

I have a nasty suspicion that most stats produced by government agencies about their own impacts are at least as cooked as police stats. There is just too much to gain from it. And given what I know about the other types of data it's pretty clear that 'I'm not lying this time...' is a pretty lousy argument. How would I know exactly? Asking me to simply trust isn't going to work. I'm an atheist for a reason lol.

I wouldn't count on that making people less likely to complain about "undeserving" recipients.

You're confusing psychology with sociology. Sociologists don't generally do experiments. The replication problem was raised in psych by psych researchers. Medical research is also different in its methods.

I agree of course that we could do a better job performing research and communicating about it, but I think your criticisms are under informed about the issues.

Each side has talking points which are the same ones every time and are designed, broadly, to be understandable to the meanest intelligence.

Remind me what was the argument the Dems made during the last election cycle, I must've missed it. Except for 'lol, Trump?'

As you intimate, it depends on what you are trying to measure, who is doing the measuring, and how you are trying to measure it. If I say that "70% of white Americans are racist" (a number I just made up, to be clear), you might rightly wonder how "racist" is being defined and what methods were used to measure it.

But if I say that 75% of SNAP recipients are children, you probably already have a very good idea about what is being measured and how. The methodological considerations are pretty straightforward. We know how to determine who receives benefits, and we're pretty good at collecting census data. That statistic is not a measure of effectiveness either, so I don't think your concern about intentional manipulation of data is very compelling. Especially without evidence. I'm not aware of any evidence of intentional misrepresentation of government program usage data, like ever. It's also not actually clear how the workers who collect data on these programs would benefit from manipulating them, nor how you could reconcile that with the relative stability of the data given changes in which political party controls the executive branch. The conspiracy theory isn't really plausible.

Some police statistics are pretty reliable, like FBI UCR data on arrests or convictions. Data on prison populations is also almost certainly pretty reliable. Other police statistics are problematic because of a lack of uniformity in reporting, like officer-involved-shootings. Others are problematic because it's hard to measure what you want to measure, like whether or not the use of force was justified in a given situation. Or the amount of gang activity. There's definitely also reasons to be suspicious of data about police use of force compiled by the police (cf. the introduction of this article on disparities in reporting), but that is not a reason to conclude that any data collected by any governmental agency is inherently suspicious.

I think you're under informed about the history of government stats.

Let's take a super modern example: https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/wa_fv190.txt

This is a USDA report about current truckload prices to produce shippers nationwide. Absolutely none of it is accurate.

Start at the top:

CENTRAL AND WESTERN ARIZONA
-- CANTALOUPS, HONEYDEWS AND LETTUCE SLIGHT SHORTAGE --

ATLANTA 5200 5400
BALTIMORE 6400 6600
BOSTON 7200 7400
CHICAGO 4800 5100
DALLAS 3200 3600
MIAMI 6500 7000
NEW YORK 6800 6900
PHILADELPHIA 6500 6600

Right now today my customers are paying trucks to go from Nogales, AZ (which is in the shipping area) to the Orlando, FL area for 4800-5000. FL is one of the worst markets in the country this time of year (10 months of the year really... it doesn't suck in May-June). So basically this government report is massively off on every market.

You're telling me that this government report is off dramatically but the others I'm supposed to trust. One of the only government reports that I have the expertise to just eye test is off by 20%+. In a business with <10% margins. So useful.

You asking me for that level of trust is unreasonable. I majored in econ so I've got a better handle than most on how people lie with statistics. I've also got a better handle than most on how a group of institutional people can protect the ideas that their careers are based on from reality.

The level of verification that is required to use the statistics you want to rely on isn't getting done. Until it is you're going to need something else. Trying to use statistics generated by the people whose work those stats are describing is terrible full stop.

Sadly in this modern age the first question you have to ask when you get a new source of data is 'why was this gathered and by whom?'

lol, if this is the kind of reasoning to use, it's just time to pack it in, because there is no sense arguing with you.

You mean logic?

Please tell me how, after the Vietnam War, anyone could ever blindly accept government statistics as simple fact?

I get it makes winning arguments on the internet easier, but that doesn't necessarily translate to the real world.

EDIT: First you call me a racist then you make a one sentence post attacking my reasoning without providing any kind of counter argument. How are you still a mod and why am I not allowed to block your posts?

lolz

If the only evidence you appear to accept is unverifiable anecdotes you've witnessed yourself, then why would anyone try to convince you of anything? I haven't witnessed your anecdotes, and I can't verify them, and you don't believe anything you haven't personally witnessed, and everything that isn't your anecdotes is a massive conspiracy meant to fool everyone. Your worldview is completely closed to input from anyone else, and furthermore, your manner of arguing is fundamentally unable to convince anyone, because they have no reason to believe your isolated stories.

Them getting angry and defensive is proof that they DON'T like talking about it. They don't like talking about it because nobody likes to have their nose rubbed in a subject where they know they are wrong but can't admit it for ego reasons.

Trust me the average lower class GOP voter loves the cops on facebook and hates every cop they ever met in person (unless they are friends with cops outside work ldo).

So because you can't figure out how to defeat my argument it's automatically wrong? I've provided plenty of information to back up my viewpoint. I'm using simple logical arguments about how accurate the average statistic is... Which varies from very accurate (private studies done by people with a vested interest in knowing what is actually going on) to very inaccurate (crime stats for major metro areas, any healthcare stat, any stat produced by a think tank)

I don't think any of it is a conspiracy, but I also believe that members of human groups do what they can to make their group look good. That means sweeping any problems under the rug. When stuff is getting swept under the rug the stats will be off. I think nearly every stat is off to some degree and handicapping that is one of the big challenges of operating in politics today.

I also think there are all kinds of special interests lobbying government agencies continuously about how those stats should be calculated in a way that shows their cause favorably. Again this isn't a conspiracy any more than a flock of birds flying together is a conspiracy. It makes sense for the individual to be a good member of the group.

I haven't stopped using stats entirely, I just strongly suspect the ones that don't line up with what I'm seeing IRL. When they matter to me I start digging. Obviously when I first got into transportation I went out and tried to use the government stats I linked in this thread. They weren't just wrong they were actually dangerous. Thank god I figured that out quickly.

No-one half-reasonable is going to blindly accept government statiistcs

That's obviously a far cry from completely rejecting even government statistics. Academically generated statistics are going to be better but still not to taken blindly.

The bigger problem is people taking them at face value. Getting back to being tribal - the tendency is to take at face value the ones from the home tribe while finding every possible fault with the other sides.

just bc something may be "grossly, ridicously, overregulated" does not mean that conservatives have the correct answer. it does not mean that they will support removing the right regulations or making proper replacements.

so, no, I would not cll it overregulated necessarily.

Oh, but there's no way you could be doing this, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

I try to be just as skeptical of stats generated by people of 'my own tribe'. A lot of the time when people are doing dishonest things with numbers it's not even intentional. There is just something that happens to people when they sit down with a massive data set. They usually seem to find a way to make it fit their pre-existing notions rather than changing their notions to fit the data.

This gets more and more aggressive the further away from the hard sciences they get.

Are you always this bad of a poster or are you drunk? I've posted extensively in this thread about what side I'm on and what I believe is happening. I've made solid logical arguments for my viewpoints. You haven't actually done anything except make nihilistic ****posts that strongly remind me of Christians who try to use the bible as evidence that there is a god. It exists because all of my arguments don't work if it doesn't! Screw you guys I'm going home!

There is no objective reality and all numbers and studies are lies is just a totally helpful principle, absolutely not something you tell yourself to imagine that you're special, you got it buddy

They love defending it, because they conceive of themselves as, and aspire to be, the sort of person who defends it. This is, sure enough, inconsistent with the fact that most of them probably don't like interacting with cops. They don't care. Pointing that out to them is just another way of tricking them into not being the sort of person who defends police brutality.