this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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Asklemmy
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Hahaha so naive
How so?
The wisdom of the crowds is eerily accurate when there are lots of independent samples. Keyword, independent. As soon as each of the samples are aware of each other, or, the number of independent samples proves to not actually be that high, it falls apart pretty quickly.
Weirdly enough, VSauce just put out a short on this a couple of days ago.
not weirdly enough - I saw the exact same video yesterday, assumed it had been in circulation for a while, and decided to steal his knowledge as my own and presented here like I'm a stats expert
Two independent sources have corroborated the same information. Thus it is factual.
I'm not sure I get your comment... I learned that crossing different official and reliable sources was the best way to get most of any information bit. Taking the overlapping information as the most reliable one.
Care to simplify what you're meaning, so even stupid me can understand?
Thank you !
news outlets doing their own reporting is a good thing, news outlets waiting to see what others report, or reporting news from a other outlet is a bad thing.
sometimes getting lots of different sources doesn't amount to much if they all come from the same source, or are reporting deliberately in-favour/contrarian to another news source
Thanks :) got it !
What if certain sources from other languages were followed?
Read their username
You hear 2 biased self serving lies, the truth is unrelated to both lies. Thinking about averaging is a very one dimensional thinking.
Maybe the difference is most people don't do just two.
Yep that's a good start, and cherry picking your sources to get crumbs of information too.
RT is super unreliable but they consistently share facts that western media omits. Al Jazeera also have great nuggets of info.
What you call reliable is in the eye of the beholder though. Biasing thoughts by omission happens very often and is very effective. The way to check it out is in whatever field you're a specialist, check how many factually correct but misleading articles are.
Also an example: Unemployment is high: one group says immigration is high. Other says economy is slow. What's the average? Or inflation is high, and the solution is austerity. Then they claim wages have to be kept low, although it's shown that wages effect is shortening profits, not hurting economy. What's the average?
While the truth is that governments were printing money like crazy during COVID , and people in fragile circumstances have to suffer increased unemployment, lower wages and inflation, while capitalists have profits higher than ever.
But you'll never find admission of guilt by unresponsible money printing on the media. So there's no average in the right direction here.