[ppu6502]

Originally Posted by alt lit To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I reject the “only scientific info valuable / all non-scientific info not valuable” binary. I think information can have value in a variety of presentations, although people should not misuse information based on its intent and purpose. In fact, I have written an entire thread To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. about the natural and necessary coexistence of science and story, including their distinct roles in our perception, cognition, and communication. So on this point we’ll have to agree to disagree.

It's not information, it's a cherry picked story. You could have just as easily picked people with polar opposite views for each interviewee. This makes it manipulative propaganda. It has value only as a tool to lead people toward a particular view of an issue.

You can see it working throughout this thread, in fact.

I think it's wrong and dangerous, plain and simple.

[Megalomania]

	Originally Posted by peter To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If such skills become less rare (as they are) is it necessary to reward them as we'd expect? Why does it matter? It doesn't.

Not sure what you're talking about. If you mean should PhD's be rewarded less when those skills become more numerous - with more people willing and able to perform a specific job then yes.

[Firebrand]

	Originally Posted by alt lit To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I understand your view and agree with aspects of it, but I think it does readers a disservice in assuming that people can’t differentiate between the species and the genus. Some people won’t, and those are the same people on whom a scientific study would also be lost. Those people aside, I still think there is value in analyzing both the general and the specific instances.

The problem is this article is highly cherry-picked, which destroys its widespread consideration. It's not only not a blanket consideration for the general trends, psychology, and thinking of these various socioeconomic brackets, but it's an intentionally vectored one, making it's value dubious at best, and, more likely, a confirmation bias piece for people aligning with the 99%. Reading Karl Marx would be better use of time.

[alt lit]

	Originally Posted by ppu6502 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It's not information, it's a cherry picked story. You could have just as easily picked people with polar opposite views for each interviewee. This makes it manipulative propaganda. It has value only as a tool to lead people toward a particular view of an issue. You can see it working throughout this thread, in fact.

Let’s analyze.

Regarding manipulative: An exaggerated claim in this case, considering the clearly stated intent of the author. Had I linked to an article authored by a political mouthpiece or something produced by a special-interest think tank, you may have a legitimate grievance. Alternately, if you could point to a specific instance in the article where the author says one thing and then does something else, which is “manipulative,” then you might have a point. If you read the synopsis and then the entire story, you will see that the author states clearly his intent and plainly his method, and then he goes about it just the way he says he will. By inexact analogy, it’s roughly the journalistic equivalent of statistical sampling, wherein just like the scientist, he clearly explains his purpose and method in selectivity. He doesn’t claim the article comprehensively portrays the lifestyle or represents the viewpoint of everyone in an income bracket, and so his failure to do so doesn’t make it “manipulative.”


Now for propaganda: Just because you do not value the method, agree with the substance, and/or like the presentation does not lower it to the standard of “propaganda.” This claim falls even flatter when you consider the readership of GQ and the way in which the individuals in each income bracket are portrayed. This article is hardly political fodder for people who wear Gucci suits, Armani shoes, and Tag Heuer watches. With just a little bit of discernment, it’s easy to see that all reason and sense of context seems to have been lost in this line of the discussion when you’re using phrases like “manipulative propaganda.”

	Originally Posted by ppu6502 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I think it's wrong and dangerous, plain and simple.

And I think indiscriminately devaluing entire categories of information is wrong and dangerous, plain and simple. This mindset can be the germ of justification for censorship under any number of bullshit rationales. Given the choice between more information or less, accepting that a variance in quality is inevitable, I think the limitation of information is far more dangerous. While I don’t condone a self-imposed bubble, you’re certainly free to inhabit one and read nothing you disagree with or find to be a waste of time. But your decision to do so in no way objectively validates your subjective viewpoint on the value of information you choose not to consume.

Originally Posted by Firebrand9 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

The problem is this article is highly cherry-picked, which destroys its widespread consideration. It's not only not a blanket consideration for the general trends, psychology, and thinking of these various socioeconomic brackets, but it's an intentionally vectored one, making it's value dubious at best, and, more likely, a confirmation bias piece for people aligning with the 99%. Reading Karl Marx would be better use of time.

The article’s clearly stated purpose is to describe the day-to-day life and viewpoint of one person in each income bracket. Nothing more.

I understand the general spirit of what you’re saying, and I agree with it in the proper contexts, but it’s simply misapplied in this instance. You’re attempting to assign a purpose to the article that the article itself does not claim to have.



----
Writing more broadly than specifically to either of you here: This line of argument, which seeks to indiscriminately devalue information based on classification rather than substance, is increasingly common in broader discussions about difficult social, political, and economic issues. I understand the tactic perfectly well, and it’s usually legitimate by technicality, based on the fact that every scientific study has flaws that are exploitable in theoretical debate and every medium of communication must adopt a point of view to be effective, which then opens it to criticism regardless of the view adopted. But in reality, it’s a cop-out in a search for substantive discussion about pragmatic answers. People's inability and/or unwillingness to earnestly listen/read with the intent of understanding and then to engage in rational discussion over substantive matters (rather than trivial classifications) of disagreement is a major obstacle in this country right now. It’s both a cause and a symptom of our paralysis to pragmatically address problems we all agree we have.

[thod]

Have you seen those soulless shuffling zombies mopping the floor at McDonalds? They didn't start out that way. I contend there is not one of the office based crew that would not elect to stay in their current job rather than change to that at the same pay. The reward for an education is an interesting job, it does not need higher pay to attract people.

[peter]

Originally Posted by alt lit To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

This leads to a sociological/psychological observation and question. Observation: It’s difficult to determine the causal relation between wealth and empathy. Question: Is being empathetic a character trait that increases the likelihood of poverty or is poverty a condition which increases the likelihood of empathy? Clearly both could be mutually and simultaneously true, not to mention there are more factors than these two at play, but it’s interesting to think about in terms of a primary cause and its societal implications.

I think, perhaps, that identification might engender empathy or otherwise. I was struck recently reading a comment by a sophisticated, western european survivor of Treblinka (who by all accounts seemed a decent enough person) recalling his first encounter with a transport of uneducated Jews arriving from the east: "[t]hey were so filthy and uneducated. They know nothing. It was impossible to feel compassion for them".

I don't think the middle classes, for example, have really ever empathised with the poor (as in understood them) and have traditionally expressed their 'empathy' through the sterile channels of charity; the poor in return have often resented this seeing it as, among other things, a disguised attempt to change their values, values which the middle classes didn't understand.