Thread by @SteveEnglishbey

A recent comment from "slay" asking as to how to 'weed out' subjectivity" prompted me to cite this interesting/relevant chart that very much pertains to this question.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1472649556965969925

The context of slay's question was me stating my skepticism as regards the so-called "fact-checkers."

I said this: ""fact checkers" ...one should be highly skeptical of those who claim this as an objective category. Recently [in court] Facebook admitted that their so-called fact-checkers were protected under 1st amendment OPINION interpretations [see Stossel vs. Facebook].

Slay's question prompted me to take a quick look at some definitions of "subjectivity".
Here's one: "the quality of being based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions."

From my vantage point, this def. merely begs the question: Who the hell is NOT ...."influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions."???!!!

I would argue that ALL human perception is a function of some exquisite/complex interaction of genetics and experience [ on the genetic side, for ex. the inherent biological differences between male/female can and will determine SOME aspects of how one perceives reality].

Yea yea, I realize that there is a very small/ perverse strand of people in the utterly irrational anti-science mindset [the "woke" mentality] that would be appalled at such heretical notions, but I could care less.There ARE some objective truths!!.

Thus, from my perspective it essentially IMPOSSIBLE to completely eliminate the potential biases that can derive from this complex interaction of biology and experience.

I think that in may ways this is actually a good thing. I think that this kind of collective experience can and does very much add to the richness and diversity of human thought and potential. [Do we really want a "Spock-like" human utterly devoid of feelings and perceptions?].

Thus, I think that Slay's notion of "weeding out" subjectivity is really NOT the way to think about addressing this difficult question.

Rather, I think Elon Musk's citation is instructive. What one really needs to do -----in an effort to effectively mitigate against aspects of bias is to LEARN to recognize bias.

And I think that really starts WITHIN each person, i.e. one needs to WORK HARD at recognizing as to how they may be biased. Then learning to recognize this potential in others.

I dare say that I have really tried to practice this kind of cognitive challenge over the yrs. [working as a researcher for Newsweek mag. really helped to force this issue].

Many of those biases on Musk's list I am pretty familiar with. I'm personally aware of them in various ways.

Quite a few of these are related to cognitive strategies that cognitive psychologist recognize as mindset issues which can help or hinder how to interpret the world.

One that Musk cites, and that cognitive psychologist also talk about is seeing life via the "glass is half empty" perception.

Which is relatively similar to thinking in terms of the "worst case" scenario.

Let's make these ideas a little less abstract. And definitely has ramifications as regards those so-called elites making decisions.....decisions that effect millions of people.

The following from the Spectator magazine's editor and his conversations is VERY illustrative of the "glass is half empty" bias I think.

spectator.co.uk/article/my-twi…

You REALLY need to read the entire article to really understand why I cited this ex..

But here's one key phrase I think that is illustrative of my argument.

"Note how careful he is to stay vague on whether any of the various scenarios in the Sage document are likely or even plausible. What happened to the original system of presenting a ‘reasonable worse-case scenario’ together with a central scenario? "

"And what's the point of modelling if it doesn't say how likely any these scenarios are?"

"From what Professor Medley says, it’s unclear that the most-likely scenario is even being presented to ministers this time around. So how are they supposed to make good decisions?"

Bottom line ---and in the context of slay's question on subjectivity/bias: How can it not be considered bias to create models SOLELY based on "the glass in half empty" inputs?

Had the Sage researchers insisted on models that countered their "glass half empty"/worst case scenario, public policy decisions would be much more rational!

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