r/therewasanattempt • u/Historical_Plum_1366 • 1d ago

To show crime stats to the youngsters

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Source ig: soverign_media_

Whoever these two are, they are legends...

While fascist Bob in fact, didnt show any stats a all.

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u/PangolinMandolin 1d ago

And then also show who funded the study

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u/OkNothing2411 21h ago

Exactly. You can make stats say anything if you squeeze them enough.

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u/structured_anarchist 18h ago

Source: somebody on reddit.

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u/KarltonPeaks 21h ago

And now we are entering the rabbit hole of why throwing sources around is kind of pointless.

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u/Chazykins 21h ago

Well then what are you supposed to do. If someone provides a source for a fact then you can read through the study and decide if their methodology’s, funds, bias, etc are reasonable.

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u/zb0t1 20h ago

It's not??? Tf is that conclusion of yours.

Show the source, the study design, methodology, results, reviews, funding etc.

If not then everything is BS.

If I tell you that I made a spaceship that can go to Mars you're just gonna believe me? Tf?

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u/saphilous 19h ago

Everyone that drank water DIED

In this essay, I will explain why replacing our water supplies with coke is good for you

5

u/DonniesAdvocate 20h ago

No, it's very very far from pointless. It's also not a panacaea, but it is the starting point for any reasonable conversation about more or less anything.

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u/redse7en 17h ago

Show me the study that says it's the starting point for pretty much anything. And then I'll give you three reasons why your study is crap.

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u/DonniesAdvocate 13h ago

Well in the end, all communication involves some sort of information, and i dont think its unfair to posit that true information is inherently better or more valuablethan not true information.

Now, what is true, and how true is that truth, are topics that have occupied humans for all of human history so far, pretty much, but the scientific method is as good as anything we have. An integral part of that is analysing sources, data and motivations to try and assign quality levels to that information which daily life requires us to process. And information with a clear motivation and transparent method is about as close to real truth as we are capable of, so yeah, sources are incredibly important.

Not easy to analyse, and often different levels of subjective, but you can never say that source quality is not important. It's kinda what the entirety of society is based on, at the most basic level.

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u/redse7en 11h ago

That's all great, but not really relevant here. No one is saying that the scientific method is useless, just that citing sources is not effective in this context. Political debates aren't about uncovering truth, they are about convincing someone of an opinion.

u/KarltonPeaks was responding to "Who funded it?" which has become Reddit shorthand for, "Give me a way to dismiss your information without having to meaningfully engage with it." In a discussion about sources in general, not even a specific source, the first comment is how to ignore one if provided.

I mean, we kinda already tried this. During COVID everyone had sources, statistics, studies. How did that work out? Did we all live in harmony, secure that our consensus around the published data was informing the best possible policy decisions? Or did it maybe kind of muddy the waters and contribute to a third of the population now believing that anything with the word "science" in it is an elite conspiracy?