A big reason false beliefs spread is because they *feel* true. It sure fucking feels like the economy is bad right now but that's why we look to overall economic indicators. This doesn't mean anyone's experience isn't valid but we have to be able to describe reality so we can learn from it. - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

michaelhobbes.bsky.social • 223 days ago

A big reason false beliefs spread is because they *feel* true. It sure fucking feels like the economy is bad right now but that's why we look to overall economic indicators. This doesn't mean anyone's experience isn't valid but we have to be able to describe reality so we can learn from it.

Comments

jakobpunkt.bsky.social•223 days ago

It really matters what "feels like the economy is bad" means.

If it "feels" like the economy is bad bc *gestures at everything*, but in reality more ppl are stably employed and food- and housing-secure, then w/e.

But if more people are actually homeless and hungry, then the metrics are bad.

livfreeorcry.gay•223 days ago

economic indicators being good doesn't mean that the economy must also be good. the model is not the thing, and the metrics aren't even the model. overall indicators can lie to you just as easily as anecdotes.

careycuprisin.bsky.social•223 days ago

I don’t think generally bad feelings about the economy are ‘false beliefs’ in the same category as untrue beliefs about vaccines and autism. The comparison here is, in my opinion, verrrrry stretched.

zacharyherz.bsky.social•223 days ago

Especially when the economy seems to be 1) unusually bad for media and tech people, plus 2) unusually good for other low-wage workers who are historically not people we pay attention to when constructing narratives!!!

luarien.bsky.social•223 days ago

The economy is good *for who* though? We've been instructed that these markers mean it's good but who is it good *for*? Especially when one of those markers is predicated on keeping a certain amount of people unemployed and underpaid to put downward pressure on wages.

samcrut.bsky.social•223 days ago

For people who live off of investments instead of working for a paycheck.

luarien.bsky.social•223 days ago

Also people who fall outside the meager safety net.

I'm in crippling pain but it's not crippling *enough* for SSDI so I have to beg for money on the internet. And lemme tell ya, only other poor people donate.

lenoxus.bsky.social•223 days ago

One thing distinguishing this economy from any other in recent memory is unemployment being incredibly low and for a really sustained period of time. What is the marker you have in mind which prefers the opposite?

luarien.bsky.social•223 days ago

The growing rate of homelessness, the rising price of housing and healthcare, and the outsized inflation compared to wages predicated on the minimum wage.

Poor people are more poor from everything I've seen and experienced, while being reassured everything's fine. Emotional responses are logical

lenoxus.bsky.social•223 days ago

Those are all significant, except perhaps for minimum wage. The thing is that there's never been a time when every single economic indicator relevant to low-income people has gone in a "good" direction all at once, so we have to reckon with tradeoffs.

luarien.bsky.social•223 days ago

How is wages based on the minimum wage not relevant to outsized inflation? It's a significant part of the reason people are literally starving.

The use of our current economic indicators don't just fail to reflect low income, they ignore it all together to focus on full time/salaried employment.

lenoxus.bsky.social•223 days ago

Earning the actual minimum wage is rare at this point (which certainly doesn't mean everything's great, minimum wage ought to be $20 for sure)

luarien.bsky.social•223 days ago

There's a reason we're experiencing record homelessness and what people in positions of power think matters to economic health is part of that.

https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/

It's not the only thing, but you can't fix problems you're not even seeing because you ignore part time employment.

loosf.bsky.social•223 days ago

"rich people's yacht money"

michaelhobbes.bsky.social•223 days ago

Feel free to read the like 9 threads i've posted about this making the same point

luarien.bsky.social•223 days ago

So why are you conflating someone's benign observation of this fact with fucking known medical disinformation?

My life sucks is a statement coming from a single place; experience.

Vaccines cause autism is coming from a wealth of external sources and delivered as experiential.

hanfinity.bsky.social•223 days ago

But he's not comparing "my life sucks" to "vaccines cause autism". He's comparing "my life sucks" to "my son got autism after the MMR vaccine". Personal anecdotes do not counter overall statistical trends

hanfinity.bsky.social•223 days ago

And! Overall trends do not invalidate personal experience, that's important to note too. But blaming personal situations on overall trends that don't exist is counterproductive

luarien.bsky.social•223 days ago

One of those is the product of experience. One is the product of known medical disinformation.

The epistemology is different. Conflating the two causes harm. For the impoverished all it does is imply that the people not listening to their cries for help are also wrong about vaccines.

tir2600.bsky.social•223 days ago

You might want to go back and re-read what you're replying to.

hanfinity.bsky.social•223 days ago

A mom observing that her son has autism is disinformation?

joi-itos-jibo.bsky.social•223 days ago

They were both written accurately to be anecdotes.

And again “I need money to eat” and “fewer people than ever before need financial assistance to eat” are not, at all, in tension! For some reason people *need* tension here when there’s simply none. It’s bananas.

worstplace.bsky.social•223 days ago

I think you maybe need to take a step back at the point where you're arguing that economic models have the same scientific weight as clinical trials

hanfinity.bsky.social•223 days ago

I don't think anyone is giving them the same weight, just relating them from a societal trend vs. individual experience standpoint

michaelhobbes.bsky.social•223 days ago

"my son was vaccinated and six months later he was diagnosed with autism" isn't disinformation, it's a straightforwardly factual sequence of events. The problem was that people inferred a broader conclusion — the vaccine caused his autism — from their anecdotal experience.

michaelhobbes.bsky.social•223 days ago

That is normal and human and extremely logical in most cases — but it's also why we need to double-check our experiences against broader evidence. A *lot* of people are struggling right now. That is absolutely true and valid. It's also true that that experience has become less common since 2020!

luarien.bsky.social•223 days ago

That link is the product of disinformation. It was not a casual link to anyone but the most distrustful of medicine before Andrew Wakefield.

That link as datum is, in fact, medical disinformation and the product of an extensive medical disinformation environment.

That isn't like saying I'm poor

cheyinka.bsky.social•216 days ago

I had neighbors who believed that the rabies vaccine caused kennel cough, because the dogs they were fostering for the local shelter had usually *just* gotten the vaccine and almost always arrived from the shelter with kennel cough.

inthesky.bsky.social•223 days ago

It’s like the people who disavow the realities of climate change because they experienced an unseasonably cool morning in August.

velocirobter.bsky.social•223 days ago

But Michael, you didn't specifically reply to every person demanding precise interpretation with those 9 threads!

raoulduke1976.bsky.social•223 days ago

No, I think it’s the comparison with vax conspiracy that has people a lil pissed.

velocirobter.bsky.social•223 days ago

This is called moving the goalposts, don't do it.

luarien.bsky.social•223 days ago

No it's not, I specifically responded to the invoking of vaccines causing autism. The epistemological context around the two sentiments are at issue and is very important to considering my problem.

A different analogy would be better because it frames people in poverty as being conspiratorial.

hindchristopher.bsky.social•223 days ago

there have been two very large economic crashes in the last two decades, and one of them was responded to with insufficient stimulus which led to long-term entrenched unemployment for a small % of people (which across a whole country is still a large number of people), 1/

hindchristopher.bsky.social•223 days ago

and the other with over stimulus which led to a short burst of inflation experienced by most people, which was also alleviated by other policy for the lowest income quartiles. it is crazy that there are people who would think of themselves as left wing who prefer the former response. 2/2

dorolfe.bsky.social•223 days ago

Absolutely take money from reach people and government spend it on the rest of us. It’s such easy math.

pfessenbecker.bsky.social•223 days ago

I also think "my ambitions were frustrated" feels like evidence the economy is bad when it isn't. Disappointment doesn't equal poverty, and to the extent economic policy can deliver a "good economy," it's not everyone realizing their meaningful career but grocery store workers getting paid more.

rewhan.bsky.social•223 days ago

Emotionally, it's hard to give a shit about "The Economy" when you're counting pennies to afford next week, and that's a very difficult hurdle to clear to convince someone even when you sincerely mean well.

rewhan.bsky.social•223 days ago

Consider also much of the time it's politicians (or political spokespeople) delivering the message of "The Economy is Up" and the general public's willingness to take the average politician at their word.

That's probably not helping either.