There has been a long-running trend that having a "conversation" especially on a TV talk show has become an acceptable means for getting "truthful" or "honest" information about a person or a situation. For example, many news shows, financial advice shows, and "talk" shows have some tarpet person (e.g., a disgraced politician, etc.) come on and be given an opportunity to tell "their side of their story". It seems that in recent years, having a politician like Eliot Spitzer come out, say that they did something wrong (though often not specify what they did wrong), are sorry for doing it, and apologizes to various people who may have been harmed. Yet, there typically is no formal investigation or attempt to establish what actually happened. The recent David Letterman case of attempted "extortion" by Robert Halderman and the plea deal that he took is a case in point: what actually happened? Do people think that they know what happened on the basis of news or other media reports? Or does the illusion of understanding develop because people may think they know/understand the situation, can "read between the lines" and infer what is not being said, and conclude that they know the real motivations of the actors involved?
I became conscious of people having "conversations" while watching some of the financial news networks and noticed how interviews with various traders, financial industry analysts, economists, etc., were framed as "conversations" and not as specific advice about what to do. Within this framework, one could use as many or as few facts as possible, not distinguish facts from opinions, and were not required to base anything they said on fact. After all, they were not engaged in a college lecture or a formal presentation to a professional group or something critically similar group, they were just involved in an "informal conversation". In the context of talking about financial matter it has become clear that such conversations are different from advice or recommendations that a broker/economist/etc might give as a plan of action. Presumably "advice" represents some thoughtful analysis of the facts and the advice giver has some sense of the probabilities of whether the advice is right or wrong. In a conversation there is no such guarantee though it may appear that the person speaking might have done something comparable. Though the person engaged in a conversation may feel no obligation to be completely truthful (and thus violating one of Grice's maxims) while a paid consultant may feel the need to formalize the basis for their recommendations. The paid consultant might be sued for giving bad advice but the talking head on TV is unlikely to get such a response after giving really bad advice. I have also seen how political discussion have become essentially fact-free and where a person's opinion is taken to be as good as a fact or even better if the listener agrees with the opinion. Thus, birthers, deathers, and other extraodinary positions are rarely pinned down on the facts and errors in interpretation of facts, and out-and-out lies are accepted when presented in the context of a conversation (as when a person is interviewed on the news and the interveiwer either doesn't know what the facts are or doesn't care to confront the interviewee on their mendacity). Again, this seems to be a long-standing situation but perhaps it has become magnified in recent years. The economic recession and the causes for it has perhaps sharpened the divide between when one is giving "advice" and when is just engaged in a conversation (i.e., just BS'ing; with no obligation to be make sure that what one says is consistent witht he facts). Political discourse has made it easier for people to say nonsensical things which is carried on the news channels without even a rudimentary level of fact checking or the calling of "Shenanigans". Perhaps I'm wrong but it seems to me that there is a sense that the truth of a matter can be achieved by simply having people talk about it. Though knowledge-sharing may occur in these situations, explicit testing of specific hypotheses is unlikely to occur nor might statements be critically appraised for their factual basis (or truth value). I am reminded of a story I heard about 30 or so years ago from research oriented clinical psychologists Ph.D.s. The problem they discussed was how to choose a clinical psychologist for someone in your family. Would a particular orientation be important? Would certain skills be important and so on. The answer that I heard was the clinical psychologist, regardless of orientation or other factor, to choose was the one that other clinical psychologists had high regard for as a clinican. On a commonsense basis, this might seem to make sense. From a rational, scientific perspective, why would such advice be taken seriously given the cognitive biases people use, limitations of memory and adequate data on effectiveness of the clinicians, and so on. Nonetheless, I understand that similar criteria are still in use and even operate in other areas, such as in medical treatment even though the existence of systematic reviews and meta-analyses should probably play some role in the evaluation of treatmetn strategies. Are conversations really such a powerful source of truthful and useful information or do they help to develop an illusion of understanding which also blinds one to other things like evaluating the factual basis of the advice given in the conversation? If so, perhaps that why students may not rely upon what they learn in class or even see the relevance of scientific research. They can just have a conversation and figure it out. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1179 or send a blank email to leave-1179-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
