Did you ever doubt yourself when, after the Atlantic piece, it must have felt like the whole world was against you? What resources did you draw upon to stay the course and pull through?
I appreciate your work. Are you ever troubled by the possibility that the listenership of Blocked And Reported might develop the same tendencies toward sneering and throwing tomatoes which the show itself exposes? If so, have you thought of any ways to constructively address this? I had to stop listening because I didn't like the emotional habits I was developing, and was turning into what I was against. I'm reluctant to bring it up because it sounds like concern trolling. It's just real, though.
Well, if you disagree with some of the stuff you hear on BaR, that's actually pretty good, because it's important for us to listen and read content that we disagree with. I read The Federalist, which I consider to be bigoted and islamophobic, because it has a large audience. You can keep listening to the podcast; just treat it skeptically! That being said, I also wonder about the related question of audience capture. The hosts have alluded to "internet poisoning" before, and the story of Michael Shellenburger made quite an impression on me. I think that living on the internet in general makes people like the BaR hosts (and also me) more susceptible to these kinds of dynamics.
There wasn't any content or statement I disagreed with. It's not about disagreeing. In fact, the problem is agreeing so consistently about how right I and the hosts are. The show correctly exposes the problems with pleasurable righteousness, resentment, and grievance. Shellenburger and others seem to define themselves by who they oppose, the craziest examples of those who they are against, and become the craziest examples of the opposition to craziness. It's called "schizmogenesis". Paradoxically, there might be no way to attract group attention to that without participating in it.
I think what you describe is largely an indicator of how social media/internet forums & communities' natural tendencies is to drift into toxicity no matter how noble or benign initial intentions might be.
Do you think statistics should be taught as a requirement in high school? We see article after article using correlational data that are used to derive causal explanations. We see article after article using anecdotes in place of data. We see article after article using "statistical significance" (when studies are reported) instead of confidence intervals. Teaching about partial correlations. (and....sort of kidding here, but understanding that data are plural).
We know that journalism depends a LOT on thinking that is not statistical. All stories start off with their "grabber," which is an anecdote, to draw people in.
We didn't, as a species, evolve to understand the law of large numbers. We couldn't. There was no way to gather them. It is something that must be learned, with great effort.
I love this book for high schoolers, not stats but logic:Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language
Kids that age love to argue and win. Good time to hone their critical thinking skills!
If confidence intervals for some normally distributed trait among 2 sample groups are not overlapping, then there is a statistically significant difference (corresponding to whether the C.I. was 90%, 95% or 99% etc.) for that trait between those 2 groups, no? I don't think it's inappropriate to see that phrase be used, or p-values reported, in studies that also contain CI's, so I don't quite understand the premise of your question.
As for the use of correlations in hypothesizing causation... in the social sciences this is inevitable, because running true experiments with large groups of people is impossible/unethical, so I don't think it's bad that journalists do this when they also accompany the statistics with an appropriate possible causal mechanism, including by using anecdotes. It's up to you as the reader to determine whether you find an argument to be plausible.
P-values will almost always reach statistical significance if you have a large enough sample. But the practical implications come from CIs...i.e., the real meaning of the data.
And CIs are virtually NEVER reported in lay publications.
Articles in news sources do NOT hypothesize an appropriate "possible" causation. They state it, instead, as fact. And they only state one "possible" causation---often the one that reflects their biases. Without an understanding of the limitations of correlational data. And of how partial correlations can sometimes totally undo correlations that are obtained.
And readers, unless they are well versed in statistical reasoning, will not understand this. They will draw causal relationships based upon anecdotal evidence.
The public is getting the wrong conclusions from these anecdotal and correlational findings.
Here is a great example of this. The "finding" that black infants cared for by a black physician had half the death rate of black infants cared for by a white physician. You will see that it is presented as a cause-effect relationship, when it is only correlational. Well, by partialing out the health of the baby, this effect disappeared. There are more seriously ill black babies proportionally than white babies, and the specialists who care for ill black babies are predominantly white. Ergo more die but not because of the race of the doctor.
I agree with the point you made about black infant mortality, but I see this more as a problem with humility and extending to other citizens the benefit of the doubt, than knowledge of statistics. Sam Harris and Charles Murray both have worked extensively on various statistical analyses, but I still think Murray overlooks obvious confounding variables and methodological flaws he has made when deriving his claims because he might be a racist. I want to be clear that when I bring up the possibility of racism, I am not trying to end the conversation, or saying that he is a bad person who never has anything valuable to contribute, but we have to admit that the way we use statistical tools are essentially shaped by our values, which are separate from our ability to calculate an R^2 value.
That's not a problem. The problem is that the lay public reads correlational data as causal data, and lay publications (news sources) do this all of the time.
We are not being informed correctly when this is done. And the only solution is to be better educated about statistics.
Well, it's not a binary. It's more true of social sciences, and less true of physics, but not entirely true or false for either. Newtonian physics is theorized to break down next to a black hole (apparently... I'm not a physicist so I don't know why), but I'm not planning to fly to a black hole any time soon. I'm just saying that teaching everyone statistics might not lead us to a post-enlightenment utopia.
Then what is your answer to the problem that the public is being misled by articles in newspapers?
p.s. saying it will lead us to a "a post-enlightenment utopia" is an example of you making up something and then getting upset about what you, yourself, made up.
One other dimension to this problem is that the public does not understand replication. So many psychological studies, assumed to be true, have not withstood replication attempts. If people understood statistics they might understand why.
They need to understand p-snooping, the file drawer problem. All are statistical issues that, not being properly addressed (ever) in lay publications provides "facts" that aren't true statistically.
Do you have any moral or political convictions that you are reluctant to air publicly? If so, what would need to change for you to speak openly about them?
After the 2024 election it seemed obvious the lesson for Democrats was to move to the center and drop the "threat to democracy" strategy. Why didn't that happen? Why have Democrats and liberals been so slow to understand Trump supporters? In short, is the Democratic party permanently broken, and what is wrong with it?
I find that many of my democratic friends and family are missing facts, or at least not exposed to a 360 degree airing of facts. Whether it is Covid, the vax, tariffs, immigration, you name I believe their news sources leave them with blinders on. One reason to shy away from MSM and read independent journalist…IMHO.
What is it like to be on the receiving end of so many parasocial relationships? Podcasters talk into our ears for hours and it's hard not to feel like they are a part of our lives. (Unrelated: you and Katie were in my dream last night and I'm annoyed about it).
How often in life do you think we're right about something because we genuinely thought it through and came to a correct conclusion through sound deduction and how often are we right because real-life events happened to coincide with all our pre-existing biases and beliefs? I think of this lately b/c I've been so depressed at how many "heterodox" thinkers (with some honorable exceptions like yourself) revealed themselves to be either conspiracy theorist loons, Trump supporters or apologists, or "both sides are equally bad" types - basically, they revealed themselves to be what many progressives accused them of being from the jump. So how often are we right for reasons we should be proud of ourselves for and how often are we right b/c we got lucky? Happy Holidays!
Question about “most trans kids just need to get through puberty”:
What is the current state of the evidence that some/many/most under-18s who are unhappy with their sex, if they were to ride through puberty (and perhaps also get appropriate therapy while riding through puberty?) would come out the other side of puberty accepting their sex (and perhaps identifying as lesbian/gay, and/or becoming creative with sex roles)?
Also, I’d appreciate any links to data or stories about this that I could share with others.
The statement about getting through puberty (to mature adulthood, not just a switch flips or doesn't when puberty hits) applied to the majority of kids who were opposite sex identified before puberty, if they didn't receive medical intervention or social transition, in studies. See eg Singh, Bradley, Zucker, 2021.
There was a popular claim that if you identified as trans as an adolescent that it would be stable, originally made for these prepubertal kids but then extended to those with later onset. Byrne traced the source of that (not supported by the evidence ) claim in "another myth of persistence"(2024), peer reviewed. For adolescent onset even less is known, he discusses some there, also the HHS report has discussion and more references.
Me I'm a Saints fan who's happy the QB we drafted looks respectable and we got out from under the Derek Carr albatross. I'm just messing with my guy KW who I know is a die-hard Bears fan.
if you had the opportunity to eat cooked human meat with the consent, participation, and encouragement from the person the meat came from, would you eat it? this comes from a story about a guy who wrecked on his motorcycle, saved his leg that had to be amputated, and had a dinner party to eat his leg as tacos with friends who were willing to participate. if invited, would you eat the leg tacos? (ignoring existing vegetarian food restrictions)
Did you ever doubt yourself when, after the Atlantic piece, it must have felt like the whole world was against you? What resources did you draw upon to stay the course and pull through?
I appreciate your work. Are you ever troubled by the possibility that the listenership of Blocked And Reported might develop the same tendencies toward sneering and throwing tomatoes which the show itself exposes? If so, have you thought of any ways to constructively address this? I had to stop listening because I didn't like the emotional habits I was developing, and was turning into what I was against. I'm reluctant to bring it up because it sounds like concern trolling. It's just real, though.
This is a fantastic point. I have also become a more infrequent listener after watching myself veer into similar territory.
Well, if you disagree with some of the stuff you hear on BaR, that's actually pretty good, because it's important for us to listen and read content that we disagree with. I read The Federalist, which I consider to be bigoted and islamophobic, because it has a large audience. You can keep listening to the podcast; just treat it skeptically! That being said, I also wonder about the related question of audience capture. The hosts have alluded to "internet poisoning" before, and the story of Michael Shellenburger made quite an impression on me. I think that living on the internet in general makes people like the BaR hosts (and also me) more susceptible to these kinds of dynamics.
There wasn't any content or statement I disagreed with. It's not about disagreeing. In fact, the problem is agreeing so consistently about how right I and the hosts are. The show correctly exposes the problems with pleasurable righteousness, resentment, and grievance. Shellenburger and others seem to define themselves by who they oppose, the craziest examples of those who they are against, and become the craziest examples of the opposition to craziness. It's called "schizmogenesis". Paradoxically, there might be no way to attract group attention to that without participating in it.
I think what you describe is largely an indicator of how social media/internet forums & communities' natural tendencies is to drift into toxicity no matter how noble or benign initial intentions might be.
Any luck getting a debate or interview with Freddie deBoer?
Do you think statistics should be taught as a requirement in high school? We see article after article using correlational data that are used to derive causal explanations. We see article after article using anecdotes in place of data. We see article after article using "statistical significance" (when studies are reported) instead of confidence intervals. Teaching about partial correlations. (and....sort of kidding here, but understanding that data are plural).
We know that journalism depends a LOT on thinking that is not statistical. All stories start off with their "grabber," which is an anecdote, to draw people in.
We didn't, as a species, evolve to understand the law of large numbers. We couldn't. There was no way to gather them. It is something that must be learned, with great effort.
I love this book for high schoolers, not stats but logic:Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language
Kids that age love to argue and win. Good time to hone their critical thinking skills!
If confidence intervals for some normally distributed trait among 2 sample groups are not overlapping, then there is a statistically significant difference (corresponding to whether the C.I. was 90%, 95% or 99% etc.) for that trait between those 2 groups, no? I don't think it's inappropriate to see that phrase be used, or p-values reported, in studies that also contain CI's, so I don't quite understand the premise of your question.
As for the use of correlations in hypothesizing causation... in the social sciences this is inevitable, because running true experiments with large groups of people is impossible/unethical, so I don't think it's bad that journalists do this when they also accompany the statistics with an appropriate possible causal mechanism, including by using anecdotes. It's up to you as the reader to determine whether you find an argument to be plausible.
P-values will almost always reach statistical significance if you have a large enough sample. But the practical implications come from CIs...i.e., the real meaning of the data.
And CIs are virtually NEVER reported in lay publications.
Articles in news sources do NOT hypothesize an appropriate "possible" causation. They state it, instead, as fact. And they only state one "possible" causation---often the one that reflects their biases. Without an understanding of the limitations of correlational data. And of how partial correlations can sometimes totally undo correlations that are obtained.
And readers, unless they are well versed in statistical reasoning, will not understand this. They will draw causal relationships based upon anecdotal evidence.
The public is getting the wrong conclusions from these anecdotal and correlational findings.
Here is a great example of this. The "finding" that black infants cared for by a black physician had half the death rate of black infants cared for by a white physician. You will see that it is presented as a cause-effect relationship, when it is only correlational. Well, by partialing out the health of the baby, this effect disappeared. There are more seriously ill black babies proportionally than white babies, and the specialists who care for ill black babies are predominantly white. Ergo more die but not because of the race of the doctor.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/black-newborn-baby-survival-doctor-race-mortality-rate-disparity
Drawing cause-effect from correlational data gives a LIE.
People without training in the laws of large numbers will never get this idea without being trained in the thinking.
I agree with the point you made about black infant mortality, but I see this more as a problem with humility and extending to other citizens the benefit of the doubt, than knowledge of statistics. Sam Harris and Charles Murray both have worked extensively on various statistical analyses, but I still think Murray overlooks obvious confounding variables and methodological flaws he has made when deriving his claims because he might be a racist. I want to be clear that when I bring up the possibility of racism, I am not trying to end the conversation, or saying that he is a bad person who never has anything valuable to contribute, but we have to admit that the way we use statistical tools are essentially shaped by our values, which are separate from our ability to calculate an R^2 value.
Well, we see things differently.
I see statistical reasoning (good reasoning) as being MUCH more objective than any other way of acquiring knowledge in many fields.
But we can still be friends! Happy Holidays.
Isn't that true of all science? Starts with noticing a correlation then moves on to figuring out causation?
That's not a problem. The problem is that the lay public reads correlational data as causal data, and lay publications (news sources) do this all of the time.
We are not being informed correctly when this is done. And the only solution is to be better educated about statistics.
Well, it's not a binary. It's more true of social sciences, and less true of physics, but not entirely true or false for either. Newtonian physics is theorized to break down next to a black hole (apparently... I'm not a physicist so I don't know why), but I'm not planning to fly to a black hole any time soon. I'm just saying that teaching everyone statistics might not lead us to a post-enlightenment utopia.
Then what is your answer to the problem that the public is being misled by articles in newspapers?
p.s. saying it will lead us to a "a post-enlightenment utopia" is an example of you making up something and then getting upset about what you, yourself, made up.
One other dimension to this problem is that the public does not understand replication. So many psychological studies, assumed to be true, have not withstood replication attempts. If people understood statistics they might understand why.
They need to understand p-snooping, the file drawer problem. All are statistical issues that, not being properly addressed (ever) in lay publications provides "facts" that aren't true statistically.
So, I ask you again. What is YOUR solution?
Do you have any moral or political convictions that you are reluctant to air publicly? If so, what would need to change for you to speak openly about them?
What was the best book you read this year ?
After the 2024 election it seemed obvious the lesson for Democrats was to move to the center and drop the "threat to democracy" strategy. Why didn't that happen? Why have Democrats and liberals been so slow to understand Trump supporters? In short, is the Democratic party permanently broken, and what is wrong with it?
I find that many of my democratic friends and family are missing facts, or at least not exposed to a 360 degree airing of facts. Whether it is Covid, the vax, tariffs, immigration, you name I believe their news sources leave them with blinders on. One reason to shy away from MSM and read independent journalist…IMHO.
How to reach them? They have many alternative facts unfortunately :(.
What is it like to be on the receiving end of so many parasocial relationships? Podcasters talk into our ears for hours and it's hard not to feel like they are a part of our lives. (Unrelated: you and Katie were in my dream last night and I'm annoyed about it).
What are your top three jokes or lines from "The Simpsons"?
Now that the conversation around transgender issues has shifted more moderate, are you getting less hate online?
How often in life do you think we're right about something because we genuinely thought it through and came to a correct conclusion through sound deduction and how often are we right because real-life events happened to coincide with all our pre-existing biases and beliefs? I think of this lately b/c I've been so depressed at how many "heterodox" thinkers (with some honorable exceptions like yourself) revealed themselves to be either conspiracy theorist loons, Trump supporters or apologists, or "both sides are equally bad" types - basically, they revealed themselves to be what many progressives accused them of being from the jump. So how often are we right for reasons we should be proud of ourselves for and how often are we right b/c we got lucky? Happy Holidays!
Question about “most trans kids just need to get through puberty”:
What is the current state of the evidence that some/many/most under-18s who are unhappy with their sex, if they were to ride through puberty (and perhaps also get appropriate therapy while riding through puberty?) would come out the other side of puberty accepting their sex (and perhaps identifying as lesbian/gay, and/or becoming creative with sex roles)?
Also, I’d appreciate any links to data or stories about this that I could share with others.
Thanks!
Am not Jesse, obviously, but do have answers.
The statement about getting through puberty (to mature adulthood, not just a switch flips or doesn't when puberty hits) applied to the majority of kids who were opposite sex identified before puberty, if they didn't receive medical intervention or social transition, in studies. See eg Singh, Bradley, Zucker, 2021.
There was a popular claim that if you identified as trans as an adolescent that it would be stable, originally made for these prepubertal kids but then extended to those with later onset. Byrne traced the source of that (not supported by the evidence ) claim in "another myth of persistence"(2024), peer reviewed. For adolescent onset even less is known, he discusses some there, also the HHS report has discussion and more references.
What state is your book manuscript in? Are you close to finishing? Curious about what has been difficult to sort out or nail down.
Be honest: what realistic chance do you think your Patriots have of winning it all?
A Super Bowl XX rematch would be delicious.
Bears have to go back to the recording studio and lay down another top 40 track if that happens though.
I mean, the Bears are CLEARLY winning it all, so I'm not sure why you asked the question, KW. ;)
Go Pack Go! (Life long Cheesehead here) :-)
Me I'm a Saints fan who's happy the QB we drafted looks respectable and we got out from under the Derek Carr albatross. I'm just messing with my guy KW who I know is a die-hard Bears fan.
if you had the opportunity to eat cooked human meat with the consent, participation, and encouragement from the person the meat came from, would you eat it? this comes from a story about a guy who wrecked on his motorcycle, saved his leg that had to be amputated, and had a dinner party to eat his leg as tacos with friends who were willing to participate. if invited, would you eat the leg tacos? (ignoring existing vegetarian food restrictions)
reference article: https://www.vice.com/en/article/legal-ethical-cannibalism-human-meat-tacos-reddit-wtf/
What was that legal situation that you said is now over?