[FRIAM] anthropological observations

[uǝlƃ ☣]

I've quote-included what I think is the most important part of Dave's rant below your comment on consolidation of local outlets by right-leaning organizations. Dave's comment about "hard data" showing the model *extrapolations* being 20-50% higher than the numbers shown in local media.

To my eye, this seems similar to Nick's comments about the data at the IHME's site <https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america>. That *huge* shaded area on each of those graphs seems to be totally ignored.

And this inability to grok uncertainty seems similar to our inability to grok exponential growth. Those of us who deal with such things (statistical power vs significance, confidence intervals vs error, standard deviation vs coefficient of variation, even median vs mean -- not implying *I* do so, but some of us do) MUST have an intuition about such things that prevents them from ignoring the uncertainty bands around the center/trend.

I also suppose the underlying cause of such judgement problems drives climate deniers' conflation of meteorology with climate science (or meteorologists vs climate scientists).

My own failure to grok large-scale, systemic iteration/evolution slapped me in the face in the form of an assertion I once made to a biologist friend, something like 20 years ago(?). I see/saw the democratization of music production (including the emergence of things like Acid Loops or LMMS <http://lmms.io/>, dub/rap/glitch/noise/circuit-bending/algorithmic music, as well as the emergence of the celebrity-not-a-musician-at-all musician/pop-star) as a sign that our music landscape was diversifying. The biologist retorted something like "Maybe *your* friends are making their own music. But that doesn't imply that more people are making their own music." And, over the years since he made that retort, I now *see* a drastic dearth of diversity all around me (though, again, in *my* circles, there's an increase in diversity ... it's just swamped by the homogeneity surrounding it).


Had Dave (or Nick) *mentioned* that -50% was well within the cone of uncertainty, along with condemning *both* the over-simplifying nature of local and national media, his assertion of "hard data" would have been credible. Hard data is always accompanied by a statement of how soft/hard it actually is. A claim of "hard data" (or optimism) with no accompanying claim of relative hardness is not credible. But what can we do? It's the nature of specialization and social trust that expert knowledge has to be simplified in order to percolate out.

On 4/14/20 3:48 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>  3. I have some experience (working in local Radio in the early 70's and investigative journalism in the late 70's) and basis to believe that Local Media is no less biased nor more given to reporting facts than the National Media.   At *best*, a local bias (aligned with local ownership and/or local advertisers, real or aspirational) replaces the national bias.  I believe bias is always nearly invisible to those who share the bias in place.  At *worst* the local bias is in lock-step with the national bias which is often not just handed down from the affiliated network/syndication but in fact through a media conglomerate consolidation which has gobbled up a huge portion of the local print and broadcast media.  This often comes without the change of ownership being made strongly evident to the consumers of that media.  My personal bias/opinion is that the Right has done a bang-up job of gathering up local media around the country in the last decade or three to the purpose of
>     subtly influencing public opinion, in a similar way to the way they have tried to hijack social media.  https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/media-consolidation-means-less-local-news-more-right-wing-slant

> On 4/12/20 11:51 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>> 2) Models, projections and actual. In Europe I encountered almost none of the "the models predict and hence we are doomed unless ..." kind of articles that seem to dominate US mainstream media. Instead, "spreadsheet models" with data were published in tables by date, country, and raw number. European readers were left to make their own conclusions about how Netherlands data compared to Italian (for example) and make projections or draw conclusions as appropriate.
>> 
>> In local newspapers in Nevada, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Nebraska I saw articles that compared projected numbers from the models touted by CDC, Fauci, et.al. with actual local numbers. Local numbers varied from national model projections by as much as -50% and never less than -20%. (That is actual was dramatically lower than projected.)
>> 
>> I saw and heard numerous editorial commentaries with regard the discrepancy between what the 'experts" were saying and what was locally observed and questioning why the variance. This leads immediately to questions about "hidden agendas" on the part of the Federal government and the "experts."
>> 
>> CONCLUSION: A population that already mistrusts the Federal government and the"intelligentsia" is given one more reason, backed by hard data, for that mistrust. Also very clear — the population is NOT anti-science but IS very mistrustful of "authoritarian scientists" — those prone to saying "you wouldn't understand, but I do and you should trust me."


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