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Replying toMarginal Revolution Thoughts on Black Lives Matter Movement

Marginal Revolution Thoughts on Black Lives Matter Movement

Suppose that you notice that on average, green shows up twice as often as red, but you can’t see a pattern to it. If you want to maximise your winnings, should you on average bet on green twice as often as red to match the frequencies you’re seeing? No, you should strictly bet on green every time.
(Anyone know where I might have read about this before? Pretty sure it’s somewhere on LW, but I can’t find it.)
Similarly, if a random black person is statistically more likely to be a criminal than a white person, then a police officer’s or prosecutor’s career incentive is to focus on them.

This analogy would work if there... (read more)

Per your ad-hominem attacks, I now perceive you as a troll

So you admit that your motivated perception is more important than reality.

Your linked definition of 'post-truth' is:

relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief

Note, the implicit inference that such circumstances are more common now than in the past, when this is almost certainly not true.

Rather, it's intended to side-step the former temporarily, while still being useful by creating better frameworks for deliberation, mediation and similar good practices

The problem is that it's frequently used as an attempt to reach conclusions while side-stepping the whole messy "looking at the facts on the ground" thing.

"I disagree with X and took it to PMs" to avoid giving the impression that his assertion was unchallenged.

What would be the point of that. To convince the other guy to see his mistakes? That only works if the person you're debating is well meaning and exceptionally rational.

Otherwise, the point of debating in public is so that observers can see for themselves who's being rational.

but even if he wasn't I would still attack his arguments rather than attack the man.

Didn't you also just say you don't want object level political discussions?

I wouldn't go ad-hominem against Gleb_Tsipursky

Well, right here I'm not debating Gleb, I'm debating you.

He seems to me to be an earnest debater with a lot to offer

Really, to me he looks like a standard cargo cult rationalist of the kind that Rational Wiki is full of.

I think the real problem here is that the pejorative term "Fake news" is succumbing to an effect I mentioned down in the comments earlier.

"succumbing"? It succumbed to that effect decades ago.

Attempting to "rise above" object level discussion does not get you closer to truth. It means the conversation gets dominated by charlatans like Gab.

In particular, you're not interested in reaching the voters who don't want say Muslim migrants raping and occasionally murdering girls in their neighborhoods. Good to know.