Re:The Social Recession: By the Numbers
by cr4nberry on Monday October 24, 2022 @06:39AM
(#33314941)
I agree with you that the solution offered was woefully inadequate. What I meant by pseudo problem wasn't necessarily the problem itself, but the framing of it.
The author cites a statistic about when students start driving, start drinking alcohol, etc. Then the author cites a statistic about "declining trust in institutions". It's easy to put a bunch of statistics like this together and imply that they indicate a lack of socialization (a common cause) or something like that, but all they really show us is a changing culture that the author (and many others) are bothered about
It's a pseudo problem (in my view) because it outlines several different (supposedly related) sub problems and then tries to tie them together as a single problem with some implicit common cause
And also this same trend of tying a bunch of seemingly-related things together without any sort of proof is unfortunately much too common in more recent, opinion-oriented journalism
Re:The Social Recession: By the Numbers
by hexatin on Monday October 24, 2022 @02:38PM
(#33320595)
Gotcha, in that case I’m definitely with you there; I don’t agree with how the author tries to tie all these things together and blame them on the usual suspects of “screen time,” etc. without any real basis
The author cites a statistic about when students start driving, start drinking alcohol, etc. Then the author cites a statistic about "declining trust in institutions". It's easy to put a bunch of statistics like this together and imply that they indicate a lack of socialization (a common cause) or something like that, but all they really show us is a changing culture that the author (and many others) are bothered about
It's a pseudo problem (in my view) because it outlines several different (supposedly related) sub problems and then tries to tie them together as a single problem with some implicit common cause
And also this same trend of tying a bunch of seemingly-related things together without any sort of proof is unfortunately much too common in more recent, opinion-oriented journalism