I find that in office politics, once data is presented, it becomes the 'facts'. (Or at least the narrative that gets promulgated forward.) It's incredibly challenging to change the 'facts'/narrative. Often because of the challenge in demonstrating the others' data are false or show a misleading picture.<p>I think this is somewhat like convincing people that believed the early studies on hydroxychloroquine. A narrative was built and despite multiple studies and RCTs, it continues in many circles. If the initial data showed a different picture, I have a hard time imagining the on-going challenge of fighting this disinformation battle. (it would have been another).
My personal motto in dealing with this is:<p><i>Stressen, Meutern, Flegeln!</i> as a juxtaposition of
<i>Messen, Steuern, Regeln</i> which is German for [1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentation_and_control_engineering" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentation_and_control_en...</a><p>The battle for hearts and minds [2] <a href="https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/battle-hearts-and-minds" rel="nofollow">https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/battle-hearts-and-min...</a> is nothing new, now fought by cybernetic means. [3]
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics</a><p>Considering this, as a precaution to not having ones strings pulled by mechanisms of media, regardless of state- or non-state actors in the [4] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy</a> I implented a mental default-deny for pull requests in the spirit of [5] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Not_Being_Governed" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Not_Being_Governed</a><p><i>Stressen</i> as in stress back if someone/thing is stressing you.<p>By <i>Meutern</i> as in mutiny.<p>And lastly by <i>Flegeln</i> as in being a Yahoo, Redneck, Hick, Hool, Honk, Punk etc. about it.<p>(Edit: Vanishing fast into the off, yelling <i>Geronimo Banzai</i>!)
He seems not to expect change in the "populist" element in the current media landscape. The only policy opinions/spitballs I read in the interview were banning political advertising on social media and public support for independent journalism, and he didn't give the impression that he thought either would go very far.<p>It seems like paradigm shifts happen more often than we think. They always surprise me, at least (BLM, same sex marriage, legalized pot in the US). Reading between the lines, I think he's saying that barring a paradigm shift, this new kind of "anti-democratic populism" is going to be around for a while.
Carl Bergstrom is one of my favorite Twitter follows, especially on topics that are pushed by seemingly legit sources (including peer-reviewed publications) but contain serious flaws in reasoning. The course sounds amazing, and I'm sure the book is good as well.
"If some guy rolls in with a fancy algorithm telling you someone is a criminal using facial features, you need to be able to say that is nuts."<p>OK, maybe. But I think that it is just as often political correctness as science that allows one to dismiss such assertions out of hand. As much, as a gentile, I would like to be able to dismiss "The Jews really are smarter than the rest of us" out of hand, some unpopular assertions may in fact be true. And I think truth has to come before other considerations. (Though it may be best not to make such assertions at all if there's not a good reason to.)<p>Overall, though, I really liked what Bergstrom had to say. What he had to say about mockery being unproductive was some practical wisdom.
@dang: Could we get a title change?<p>Maybe "Carl Bergstrom on data manipulation, fake news, and the importance of using science as a lie detector"