Re: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding?
I completely agree with this. I've seen that study and it is good, Britannica's counterclaim was rather empty for me. I had my students do an analysis of Wikipedia articles related to I/O Psychology and they found few things to criticize in the relevant Wikipedia articles based on comparison to their textbook on the same topics and other credible independent sources. Paul On Mar 11, 2010, at 8:30 AM, sbl...@ubishops.ca wrote: > We're big boys and girls. We all understand the need for > caution, whatever the secondary source. Singling Wikipedia out > has a whiff of condescension about it, the hint that I know better, > but you need a reminder. If one really felt that the information > provided is so untrustworthy as to require a repeated warning, > then why is it being cited at all? --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1214 or send a blank email to leave-1214-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
RE: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding?
Well I see my brief ironic statement had its effect although its intention seems to have been missed. I am in total agreement with Stephen and was drawing attention to it by including it in my brief post for that reason. Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences John Brown University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 rfro...@jbu.edu From: sbl...@ubishops.ca [sbl...@ubishops.ca] Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 7:30 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding? On 11 Mar 2010 at 1:25, Allen Esterson wrote: > ?In response to posts on "truth finding" Rick Froman cited Wikipedia > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth > and added "Standard disclaimers apply." > > Has anyone anything more to add? :-) Yes. Now that it's spreading, I think it's time to give this tiresome and unnecessary "standard disclaimers" warning a rest. And let's give Wikipedia a break as well. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1212 or send a blank email to leave-1212-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
Re: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding?
On 11 Mar 2010 at 1:25, Allen Esterson wrote: > ?In response to posts on "truth finding" Rick Froman cited Wikipedia > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth > and added "Standard disclaimers apply." > > Has anyone anything more to add? :-) Yes. Now that it's spreading, I think it's time to give this tiresome and unnecessary "standard disclaimers" warning a rest. And let's give Wikipedia a break as well. No one has shown that Wikipedia is any more unreliable than any other secondary source, in particular other encyclopedias. In fact one small study in _Nature_ suggested Wikipedia did just as well as that celebrated source of all knowledge, Britannica. So unless we're going to label _all_ our secondary sources with this phrase, perhaps we should just retire it. We're big boys and girls. We all understand the need for caution, whatever the secondary source. Singling Wikipedia out has a whiff of condescension about it, the hint that I know better, but you need a reminder. If one really felt that the information provided is so untrustworthy as to require a repeated warning, then why is it being cited at all? OK. Grumpy time over. Standard disclaimers do not apply. Stephen Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1209 or send a blank email to leave-1209-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
RE: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding?
?In response to posts on "truth finding" Rick Froman cited Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth and added "Standard disclaimers apply." You can recognize when the experts have got involved when you read on that webpage more than you ever needed to know about the etymology of the words "truth" and "true": The English word truth is from Old English tríewþ, tréowþ, trýwþ, Middle English trewþe, cognate to Old High German triuwida, Old Norse tryggð. Like troth, it is a -th nominalisation of the adjective true (Old English tréowe). The English word true is from Old English (West Saxon) (ge)tríewe, tréowe, cognate to Old Saxon (gi)trûui, Old High German (ga)triuwu (Modern German treu "faithful"), Old Norse tryggr, Gothic triggws,[2] all from a Proto-Germanic *trewwj- "having good faith". Old Norse trú, "faith, word of honour; religious faith, belief"[3] (archaic English troth "loyalty, honesty, good faith", compare Ásatrú). Has anyone anything more to add? :-) Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London allenester...@compuserve.com http://www.esterson.org ------------------------------ RE: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding? Rick Froman Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:03:46 -0800 One problem might be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth Standard disclaimers apply. Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences John Brown University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 rfro...@jbu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1207 or send a blank email to leave-1207-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
RE: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding?
One problem might be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth Standard disclaimers apply. Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences John Brown University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 rfro...@jbu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1205 or send a blank email to leave-1205-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
Re: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding?
On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:46:27 -0800, Christopher D. Green wrote: >Mike, > >I agree with almost all of this, except that you seem to have mistaken >cable "news" television for science (or scholarship more generally). >It's not about finding facts. It's about keeping the viewers entertained >until the commercials come on. It's a business. Note, it doesn't >actually matter much what the facts of Eliot Spitzer's affairs are to >anyone but his family (either you wouldn't vote for a man who buys sex, >or you think it is irrelevant to his job as a government official), but >it is entertaining (for many) to see him grovel a bit and perhaps get >just a hint or two of the sordid details. Although today's news organizations often appear to be in the infotainment business in contrast to their old "straight news" orientation in long past where the news division was not expected to turn a profit but instead was to serve the public by providing it with useful information, afflicting the comfortable, and attacking those in positions of power, especially public officials, who abuse their power. The area of "investigative journalism" is representative of this view; consider the short Wikipedia entry on it (Standard disclaimers apply), see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigative_journalism In earlier times this was also called "muckraker journalism", see the Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker Perhaps one of the greatest or classic example of such journalism was the work of Jacob Riis who's "How the Other Half Lives" showed many how the immigrant poor lived in the slums of Manhattan's Lower East Side; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Riis and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Other_Half_Lives More recent examples include the release of the Pentagon Papers, Woodward and Bernstein's reporting on the Watergate break-in and related crimes, the Iran-Contra drugs for guns deals, and Syemour Hersh's reporting in the New Yorker on the Iraq war; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh The PBS series "Frontline" continue to provide documentaries in this vein and the PBS news hour related news programs try to maintain high standards in reporting and, perhaps the most important role the new media has, speaking truth to power when it tries to lie. Unfortunately, the playwrght and sceenwriter Paddy Chayefsky anticipated what might happen to network news when it was expected to justify its existence through ratings and market share in his screenplay for the Sidney Lumet film "Network"; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_%28film%29 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_Chayefsky (By the way, Chayefsky's novel "Altered States" was a great read and was a great portrayal of academic research gone wrong -- Ken Russell completely botched making a movie out of the novel, so don't confuse the movie for the book). Today, journalism as a business is pretty much a joke. Journalism as a professional career which has at its core getting the "true story" instead of the "official version" or the "spun version", which holds to its code of ethics (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards ) still plays a significant role in telling us about the world and why it operates the way that it does. >By the way, what are they doing to Washington Square? I was there a >couple of days ago and it looked like a WWI battlefield. Renovation of the park. See: http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/washington_sq_park/reconstruction.php In the first stage of rennovation, the western part of the park (i.e., where most of the drug dealers hunt out and the chess tables used in "Searching for Bobby Fischer" were located) was closed down and re-landscaped. The fountain was also moved to make it aligned with the Arch, that is, now one will be able to see the fountain through the arch if looking south on Fifth avenue. One reason why the fountain was "off center" was because there was a road going through the park which connected Fifth avenue to what is now LaGuardia place (a continuation of West Broadway above Houston Street). Buses would come down Fifth avenue, goe through the park, and wind up south of the park. The Sixth Avenue elevated subway, now long gone, came up from downtown along West Broadway and turned westward at what is not LaGuardia Place and West 3rd street until it reached 6th avenue/Avenue of the America and turned right/north uptown. Today, the IFC Center/theater is at the junction of where West 3rd St ends and the el would have turned. Now the eastern part of the park in being renovated which is what you saw. For more info including some of the background issues, see: http://www.thevillager.com/villager_238/washingtonsquareparkrenova.html and http://www.flickr.com/photos/70118...@n00/sets/72157603687378665/ and http://gothamist.com/2008/01/24/washington_squa_6.php and from the NYU student newspaper: http://nyunews.com/topics/locations/washington-square-park/#/news/2
Re: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding?
Mike, I agree with almost all of this, except that you seem to have mistaken cable "news" television for science (or scholarship more generally). It's not about finding facts. It's about keeping the viewers entertained until the commercials come on. It's a business. Note, it doesn't actually matter much what the facts of Eliot Spitzer's affairs are to anyone but his family (either you wouldn't vote for a man who buys sex, or you think it is irrelevant to his job as a government official), but it is entertaining (for many) to see him grovel a bit and perhaps get just a hint or two of the sordid details. By the way, what are they doing to Washington Square? I was there a couple of days ago and it looked like a WWI battlefield. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Mike Palij wrote: > There has been a long-running trend that having a "conversation" > especially on a TV talk show has become an acceptable means > for getting "truthful" or "honest" information about a person or a > situation. For example, many news shows, financial advice shows, > and "talk" shows have some tarpet person (e.g., a disgraced > politician, etc.) come on and be given an opportunity to tell > "their side of their story". It seems that in recent years, having > a politician like Eliot Spitzer come out, say that they did something > wrong (though often not specify what they did wrong), are sorry > for doing it, and apologizes to various people who may have > been harmed. Yet, there typically is no formal investigation or > attempt to establish what actually happened. The recent > David Letterman case of attempted "extortion" by Robert > Halderman and the plea deal that he took is a case in point: > what actually happened? Do people think that they know what > happened on the basis of news or other media reports? Or > does the illusion of understanding develop because people > may think they know/understand the situation, can "read between > the lines" and infer what is not being said, and conclude that they > know the real motivations of the actors involved? > > I became conscious of people having "conversations" while watching > some of the financial news networks and noticed how interviews > with various traders, financial industry analysts, economists, etc., > were framed as "conversations" and not as specific advice about > what to do. Within this framework, one could use as many or as > few facts as possible, not distinguish facts from opinions, and were > not required to base anything they said on fact. After all, they were > not engaged in a college lecture or a formal presentation to a professional > group or something critically similar group, they were just involved in an > "informal conversation". In the context of talking about financial > matter it has become clear that such conversations are different from > advice or recommendations that a broker/economist/etc might give > as a plan of action. Presumably "advice" represents some thoughtful > analysis of the facts and the advice giver has some sense of the probabilities > of whether the advice is right or wrong. In a conversation there is no > such guarantee though it may appear that the person speaking might > have done something comparable. Though the person engaged in > a conversation may feel no obligation to be completely truthful (and > thus violating one of Grice's maxims) while a paid consultant may feel > the need to formalize the basis for their recommendations. The > paid consultant might be sued for giving bad advice but the talking > head on TV is unlikely to get such a response after giving really bad > advice. > > I have also seen how political discussion have become essentially fact-free > and where a person's opinion is taken to be as good as a fact or even better > if the listener agrees with the opinion. Thus, birthers, deathers, and other > extraodinary positions are rarely pinned down on the facts and errors > in interpretation of facts, and out-and-out lies are accepted when > presented in the context of a conversation (as when a person is > interviewed on the news and the interveiwer either doesn't know what > the facts are or doesn't care to confront the interviewee on their mendacity). > > Again, this seems to be a long-standing situation but perhaps it has > become magnified in recent years. The economic recession and the > causes for it has perhaps sharpened the divide between when one > is giving "advice" and when is just engaged in a conversation (i.e., > just BS'ing; with no obligation to be make sure that what one says > is consistent witht he facts). Political discourse has made it easier > for people to say nonsensical things which is carried on the news > channels without even a rudimentary level of fact checking or the > calling of "Shenanig
Re: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding?
While your larger point goes well beyond this particular instance, you are aware that when a person pleads guilty they enter into the public record an allocution that specifies exactly what they admit were their improper actions. Allocutions are points of negotiation between prosecutors and defendants and judges have occasionally determined the allocution was insufficient and require the defendant to provide greater detail/expression of remorse, etc. An example of an allocution would be Bernie Madoff's: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13219846/Bernard-Madoffs-Plea-Allocution We never got the back and forth of claim and counter claim of prosecutor and defendant, but we have Madoff describing what he did to the extent the prosecutors and judge required him and that his lawyers allowed him. Granted, it isn't out there in the media record, but it exists and can be accessed by interested persons. Your larger point about opinion and conversation is still very appropriate, though I wonder what the psychological content is. Paul Bernhardt Dept of Psychology Frostburg State University pcbernhardt _at_ frostburg _dot_ edu On Mar 10, 2010, at 10:10 AM, Mike Palij wrote: > Yet, there typically is no formal investigation or > attempt to establish what actually happened. The recent > David Letterman case of attempted "extortion" by Robert > Halderman and the plea deal that he took is a case in point: > what actually happened? Do people think that they know what > happened on the basis of news or other media reports? Or > does the illusion of understanding develop because people > may think they know/understand the situation, can "read between > the lines" and infer what is not being said, and conclude that they > know the real motivations of the actors involved? --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1183 or send a blank email to leave-1183-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
Re: [tips] When Did Having A Conversation Becomae A Substitute For Truth Finding?
I doubt muchly that the media has ever really been in the business of truth finding or evidence gathering. I see television as entertainment. The news, or "60 minutes" etc. are just a type of "reality show": their primary purpose is to entertain. As well, with regard to political scandals etc. are there any facts or truth? How would you know? --Mike --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1181 or send a blank email to leave-1181-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
