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Comment by zxcvvcxz | Hacker News Reader

> When an article makes a politically correct claim:

"Yeah I totally feel this is true, this one time [insert anecdote here]"

> When an article makes a not-so politically correct claim:

"Well it's not peer reviewed / look at the paper that's publishing it / this is the wrong definition / headline is misleading / [insert criticism not related to the claim]"

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> When an article makes a claim i like

"Yeah I totally feel this is true, this one time [insert anecdote here]"

> When an article makes a claim i don't like

"Well it's not peer reviewed / look at the paper that's publishing it / this is the wrong definition / headline is misleading / [insert criticism not related to the claim]"

It's not necessarily wrong to expect different standards of evidence for different kinds of claims, and to expect a very high standard of evidence for claims that might have profound social implications.

The problem is that it doesn't often come down to what will have profound social impacts, instead it tends to be what the loudest group of folks disagree with.

Those are two different things.

Little to do with profound social impacts, its all about how much the evidence contradicts what someone either believes or wants to believe.

Now people certainly can hide behind the idea that they only do so for profound social implications but by then they are just trying avoid acknowledging that they know whats being said is true.

there are always some socially unacceptable facts, the kind people either nod their head or just acknowledge silently. It comes from being in a society where truth is second to needs.

Assuming that the consequences of acting like X is true when X is false, are much worse than the consequences of acting like X is false when X is true, there's a subtle but important difference between saying "we should err on the side of acting as if X is false", and saying "we should be skeptical of claims that X is true"

This observation sounds like a case of confirmation bias to me. Check out this thread for multiple examples of how this "not-so politically correct claim" "makes sense" (among other thoughtful anecdotes along the trajectory of the article's headline)

but look at the ratio, way more disagreement that something like a "we need better infrastructure" article.

When the topic is politically correct people agree and argue about the edge cases. When it's not politically correct people do mental gymnastics or pile up anecdotes to discredit it.

Are we looking at the same thread? There are clearly many more comments in here expressing anecdotal confirmation of the study's findings than those suggesting the study's methods preclude it from consideration.

By time stamps, I think the first wave of comments had one tone, and the next wave of comments took the opposite tone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling

Does virtue signalling actually exist? I haven't seen any peer-reviewed papers about it.

Given the forum I'm surprised nobody has cited pg's pyramid yet, which is very relevant here.

Everyone should give this a read if they haven't already:

http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

s/politically correct/supports my preconceptions/

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