[rectang]

CSB investigations still represent an objective source of truth which competes with the PR that companies put out absolving themselves of blame in the event of any mishap. Removing the CSB frees up companies to "self-regulate" and blast out bogus framings.

[potato3732842]

Do OSHA and the EPA not have dual jurisdiction with the CSB on these matters?

[monkeyelite]

> an objective source of truth

An alternative source with different incentives and culture, not an objective one.

[kurikuri]

Nuance is not always a good thing. This type of nuance doesn’t forward the discussion in any way and, in this case, muddies the waters and leads to some odd implications. Sure, we can say there is no objective source of truth and chastise the author for using that word, but the term objective in this case has meaning that the author is trying to articulate… most likely that there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives.

Additionally, by stating that the CSB provides an ‘alternative source’ of truth, as a correction to an originally described objective one, you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth, rhetorically raising the value of the information the company provides while lowering the value of the CSB information.

Don’t be the person who adds nuance for the sake of nuance.

[rectang]

> Sure, we can say there is no objective source of truth and chastise the author for using that word

I regret my imprecise use of language which has taken us down this tiresome metaphysical subthread. I should have merely emphasized that the CSB presents an alternative point of view to that of the company. It was not essential to my point that the CSB be unassailable.

[kurikuri]

Ah, I was being a bit sarcastic in my response to monkeyelite, I believe I understood what you wrote and was trying to get at the vacuity of their response to you.

I derailed this conversation to make a meta point, and it wasn’t your fault at all.

[monkeyelite]

> there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives.

Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.

> you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth

Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government.

> Don’t be the person who adds nuance for the sake of nuance.

The term “objective truth” was just thrown around. Might as well just say it’s an “absolutely good”. The level of discourse in these threads is science = good, agency with science in name = science. Cuts against agency = bad.

What are the costs and benefits to this organization? It appears some sub threads have identified a possible overlap with other agency’s responsibility. It would be interesting to know the extent that is true.

[kurikuri]

> Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.

Sure, I agree with what you’ve stated here.

> Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government.

I reread what I wrote and still don’t see that I framed the conversation in this way. What I did frame was the motivation of the company (which I implied to be profit) versus the motive of the government (that of public interest). These are both biased and the effect of the bias could be anticipated: companies would slant their published information with a focus on the effects of profits, whereas the government’s overt bias would slant its information output towards safety (in the case of the CSB) without much concern for profit.

> The term “objective truth” was just thrown around. Might as well just say it’s an “absolutely good”. The level of discourse in these threads is science = good, agency with science in name = science. Cuts against agency = bad.

Sure, we both agree the author is biased towards the government, but you’ve missed the thrust of what I wrote entirely: your nuance added absolutely no value to the discussion, it didn’t make a point or refute anything the author said.

[fireflash38]

You believe in multiple sources to verify truth. Then why are you arguing against one of these sources? Why are you (effectively) saying that we should just trust a single source of truth - the companies who have explicit financial incentives to deceive?

[potato3732842]

He didn't say that he was against anything. He just nitpicked over impartial vs different bias and everyone jumped down his throat over it.

[ordu]

> Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.

It is just metaphysics. I like it also, but it is impractical. I find it useful to train my mind to see things from different angles, but it is useless to talk about concrete things.

Can you find examples of a biased reports on CSB's youtube channel? If not, it is a good example of uselessness of metaphysics. If you are declaring all their reports biased, while being unable to show the bias, it is just empty words.

[monkeyelite]

> It is just metaphysics

I would call it having a baseline understanding of organizations and media.

> Can you find examples of a biased reports on CSB's youtube channel?

Yes? Can you not?

The top video in this thread, “safety pays off“ highlights their successes and does not discuss their failures or costs. So yes that video was designed to make their organization appear in the best light possible.

[garte]

So you would subtract their failures from their successes and make some sort of calculation about its usefulness from that?

The world doesn't work like that. Objectively, it doesn't.

[ordu]

> The top video in this thread, “safety pays off“ highlights their successes and does not discuss their failures or costs. So yes that video was designed to make their organization appear in the best light possible.

Oh, yes, you are right, it is a bias. But this bias tells us nothing about objectivity of CSB investigations and recommendations. It tells us nothing about the objectivity you had objected to.

[nsriv]

Re: overlap with other agency's responsibility

So you would prefer that only one agency speak with one voice on a subject? Sounds very counter to the "multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth" principle you espoused. In practice, government agencies often have disagreements in areas of overlap and hash it out before making a public recommendation, or settling on a course of action.

[monkeyelite]

> So you would prefer that only one agency speak with one voice on a subject?

It’s generally better to know what each groups bias is and compensate than to pretend there are unbiased groups. That rhetorical move tends to be the most malicious and deceiving.

[intermerda]

> Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.

Do you believe in priors? Or do you evaluate each perspective at its face value?

> Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government.

That's not the dichotomy here. It's a biased government acting on behalf of biased companies.

> The term “objective truth” was just thrown around. Might as well just say it’s an “absolutely good”. The level of discourse in these threads is science = good, agency with science in name = science. Cuts against agency = bad.

The only discourse you personally have contributed is "both sides."

> What are the costs and benefits to this organization? It appears some sub threads have identified a possible overlap with other agency’s responsibility. It would be interesting to know the extent that is true.

Sounds like you are intentionally giving benefit of doubt to well-known bad faith actors. This makes you incredibly naive at best, or biased sealioner at worst.

[monkeyelite]

> Sounds like you are intentionally giving benefit of doubt to well-known bad faith actors.

Sounds like you are reasoning with emotional labels and not information.

[ordu]

Going this way we should ban the word "objective", because no knowledge can be objective, because you need a thinking subject to process raw data to create knowledge.

Going this way we'll risk to end up in a world, where there is no truth and no falsehoods. All we'll have is something in between. It would take just one small step to say that any two opinions are equal in their utility.

You know, it is like Kremlin propaganda targets idea of "independent media", pointing out that any media is not truly independent, it depends on someone or something. It gets its funding from somewhere, it is subject of some laws and of abuses of law. It needs to take into an account interests of sponsors and from those who wield power. The core message for Russians is: Kremlin propaganda can be bad, but no worse than anything else. Or it can be reworded as: anything is propaganda. Therefore you can relax and just watch news of state television, because you'll never know the truth no matter how hard you tried.

It seems to me, that you are going in the same rough direction by rejecting objectiveness.

[monkeyelite]

> Going this way we should ban the word "objective", because no knowledge can be objective, because you need a thinking subject to process raw data to create knowledge.

That’s a good observation. Generally when talking about humans in a political context and organizations in general it’s a misnomer.

There are other contexts where it’s not.

[esseph]

We are living in a post-truth world, and more specifically, a post truth country in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/informed-societies/post...

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=14214

[ordu]

Oh, it is all about dumb people who cannot navigate the current informational landscape. Or about people who relies on informational processing disabilities of others. It doesn't mean that smart people should reject the notions of truth and false.

[monkeyelite]

I didn’t say anything about truth not existing. I said all organizations are presenting a perspective. It may contain truth, but it’s not an objective view.

[esseph]

Brilliant people make absolutely stupid decisions all the time - thinking you're not going to is the trap. It's not possible you could get caught in bullshit you _want_ to believe and _know_ is right, yeah?

You and everybody else buddy.

[ordu]

I'm going to explain my views on this in a full. It is a lot of text, but I hope it is ok.

People don't have an innate ability to distinguish truths from lies, they need to learn this skill. Before Internet and LLMs they were relying on authorities to dictate what was truth and what was falsehoods. Those authorities included newspapers and other media, but there were also courts, government officials, politicians and others. There were no easy way to spread misinformation wide, so people were shielded from them. The system worked to some extent.

Now, however, people are swimming in an ocean of lies. They haven't magically acquired skills needed to navigate in this environment. Their own judgments about truthfulness are no better then coin flips. The results are obvious: people experience learned helplessness[1], they avoid making judgments altogether. People instead are picking some "authority" and stick to it. In USA politics, for example, there are two authorities Democrats and Republicans, so it comes to choosing your side. It allows people to avoid psychological burden of making a judgement (they are afraid of failing again). Consequently, people never feel that they were mistaken, because even if they are, it is not their fault, but the fault of an authority. At the same time they see other people who firmly believe in opposite views. Here comes "post truth world". Truth is no longer universal, you can choose any "truth" you like.

However, it is possible to avoid learned helplessness, all you need is to be better than a coin flip at predicting in advance which statements are true and which are false. You need an ability to avoid traps at least in cases when you make an effort. I make an effort when I feel it is important. Moreover in the most cases I do not need to make an effort, because all previous efforts trained my skills that works by themselves. I just see symptoms and guess, and my guessed are often correct.

I think, I need to add one more important ability to have: one needs to get rid of an irresistible urge to have an opinion. It is ok to have no opinion on some topic, to keep yourself in undecided state. Moreover it is a preferred state, if you are not 100% sure or if the topic is not important enough to you to invest time to do some research and to keep an eye on it.

In light of this I do not see the world to be "post truth". I see the most of people seeing the world as a "post truth world", but it is just their rough approximation of the world, their model of it. My model-approximation is not the real thing either, I don't know a lot of truths and keep myself undecided. Yes, I make mistaken judgements also. But the probability of my mistake goes down when I make an effort to avoid it. I feel myself in control. I don't experience learned helplessness. I know that the Truth exists and oftentimes I could reach it, if I wanted to.

So your sarcastic tone is misplaced. I know my limitations and I strive to know them more.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

[rectang]

That's technically true but underplays the extent to which company self-enforcement PR is malicious nonsense at odds with reality. Companies are amoral piles of money which will do anything to become larger piles of money, and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest.

[monkeyelite]

> and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest.

I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests.

[feoren]

> I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests.

I do. I know a group of people that would happily let you shatter every window in their home if you also agreed to burn down the house of their brown-skinned neighbor next door. The same group of people that would cheerfully let you grope their own daughter's genitals if it meant that trans people suffered far worse. The same group of people who would gleefully give up their rights to due process if it meant that people who talk differently from them can be sent to prison camps en masse. The same group of people who cheer at the idea of letting the poor and sick die alone on the street, even as you do everything you can to keep them poor and sick themselves. This group will take any bargain against their own interests as long as others are suffering worse, and they will brag and cheer about it the whole time. And there are tens of millions of them.

[ordu]

Altruism is very real thing, with very real examples of behavior influenced by altruism. Moreover it altruism is not just something that people do, because they are culturally programmed to believe, that altruism exists. Examples of altruistic behavior are known for many species, including those, that cannot pass complex concepts from one generation to the next by telling fairy tales to their offspring.

Economics tends to use model where every agent is a total egoistic rationalist, and likely it is one of the reasons why the society tolerate totally egoistic corporations. You claimed in other comment that you believe that everything is biased? Don't you think that economics biased you toward egoism?

[monkeyelite]

> Don't you think that economics biased you toward egoism?

Yes. Economists and critics often do not recognize intangible rewards and incentives.

> Altruism is very real thing, with very real examples of behavior influenced by altruism.

Now do second order reasoning. I didn’t say nobody ever does anything for anybody else. I said organizations do not generally act and support information which is not in their interests.

[zimpenfish]

Minor nit - the word "generally" was not in "I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests" which makes it a weaker (and more easily defended) claim than your original.

[ordu]

> I said organizations do not generally act and support information which is not in their interests.

I can agree with this statement, but not with your original claim.

[vharuck]

People who donate money or time to charity. Volunteer firefighters. There's a massive list, really. Overall, kindness is a very common trait. Why else would we have so many countries with welfare programs, even for classes of citizens the majority will never belong to?

[monkeyelite]

Do you have any articles about firefighters voting to close or downsize the fire house?

[spauldo]

Voters?