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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Where do you start when you research a controversial issue?
 
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wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

Avocados posted:

First of all, your subforum has an amazing amount of post icons.

In one of my college courses, the term "minimum wage increase" was uttered and we derailed for a half hour. Some arguments seemed far better than others, some sounded like they were backed sufficiently, but all in all I can't really put my two cents on the issue because I don't know much about it. I can ask my professor about it, who is incredibly for wage increase, or I can watch cable news and want to claw my eyes out, or read internet articles and hope I get lucky that the site isn't too biased. (Actually I've come to realize a lot of news websites are pretty garbage and don't like them as much) Or I can look up peer reviewed scholarly articles on my state university's website and wade through a lot of verbose explanations.

I'd like to have a sufficient amount of knowledge if I have to discuss these things or hear about them on the news, moreso if I'm the one voting for them. But it seems like it's a lot to take in when everyone is offering to give you their totally expert opinion. How do I remain well informed without having to write my own thesis on hot button issues such as these?

If these issues are being discussed in generalitiies like "minimum wage increases are (good|bad|problematic|necessary|SOCIALLY JUST|a fetish of mine)" etc then do not worry, you are absolutely knowledgable enough to stick your oar in and flail away without having read anything in particular. Most of the people you'll be talking to, including your professor, are just advertising their team affiliation at that level so models and data and facts and etc don't matter.

If you actually want to know what you're talking about for whatever reason the thesis route is pretty much your best bet. If you don't want to do that, I guess read as widely as possible and try to keep in mind that on economics the orthodox view is usually right and backed up by a whole lot more evidence (which you'd encounter if you were doing your thesis, but you're not) than whatever alt-econ the author is trying to say is The One Weird Trick that will fix <problem> caused by Capitalism. However, unless the analysis is very specific (you'll know it's sufficiently specific because your eyes will glaze over and you'll probably stop reading) it's probably just the author masturbating to something lazily based on their intuitions about economics (or their perception of their readers' lazy intuitions about economics) so keep that in mind as well.

IDK, good luck OP. Whatever you do, don't get your opinions from D&D.

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wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

Ytlaya posted:

Orthodox economics actually kind of agrees with the general "D&D consensus" on this issue, though.

Kind of. The orthodox view would be something like "a small increase in the minimum wage, from where it is today, will probably have no or minimal employment effects and might be worth it anyway." D&D tends to jump from that to "Minimum wage increases don't impact employment", which as a general statement is counter to the orthodox view and not supported by the literature.

* # ¿ Nov 7, 2014 15:30
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wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

Popular Thug Drink posted:

You also want to be careful of people who overly generalize the position of others or ascribe attitudes to others as a group, it's usually a sign of intellectual weakness when someone uses this language in support of an argument.

It's a pretty accurate generalization though, so there's that.

But sure, #notallD&D.

* # ¿ Nov 7, 2014 15:43
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Where do you start when you research a controversial issue?