Am I the only one that believes that such narrative and speculative writing style by officials is actively harmful to democracy?
Phrases like:
- in sweeping and systematic fashion
- was welcomed by the Trump campaign
- links between
- ties to
- connected to
Granted, communicating the complexities of reality is very difficult, but I sincerely do not believe that a serious effort has been made in this case (or is in other cases, in general) to as accurately and clearly as possible communicate(!) that which is "known" (including the degree of certainty), versus that which is suspected, etc.
Psychologists and neurologists have very little understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which people form beliefs, but they do know that it is extremely complex, and can easily be demonstrated to be highly prone to error or manipulation.
Considering this, in a serious political system (as seems to be the common claim of what we have in Western democratic nations), I would expect more bi-partisan (among politicians and citizens) acknowledgement of these shortcomings, and support for a process of continuous improvement in the manner in which the public is informed of affairs. But instead, I rarely see this idea discussed, and it seems to me the aggregate manner in which reality is being described to us is becoming more chaotic/uncertain/indecipherable, not less.
My intuition tells me this is not accidental, but of course there is no way of knowing if that is true or not. But, I think it would be beneficial for the public to become more aware of this phenomenon, and start drawing attention to this attribute of public discussions on a regular basis - in doing so, perhaps the quality of discourse could be improved.
Your intuition is correct. This is not accidental. Those phrases are used because certain things are known with a high degree of certainty. Meetings between Trump campaign members and Natalia Veselnitskaya's group lend credence to those phrases[1]. There is a significant evidence documenting Russian Interference (consider the IRA involvement alone) and the links between the Trump campaign and Russians[2], some of which fell within the investigative scope of Mueller's team.
A nuanced report that concluded the existence of foreign interference, of campaign links to that foreign interference, and also of not significant enough evidence to conclude coordination between the two groups is going to include a lot of nuance in the phrasing of its conclusion.
> Your intuition is correct. This is not accidental. Those phrases are used because certain things are known with a high degree of certainty.
I suspect we differ on what my intuition is. If I'm not mistaken, you seem to believe this style of language is because of the nuanced nature of the issue, whereas my intuition is that the style of language is chosen to ~muddy the waters and sow confusion. We're each entitled to our respective opinions, but neither of us knows what the reality is.
Various issues in this drama are "known", with varying degrees of certainty. Something important to keep in mind though, is that degree of certainty on complex, subjective (indeterminate) matters often varies significantly per person. Reality is often a lot messier than people like to acknowledge.
My point is roughly: there is a tremendous range of public opinion on this matter (and many others), with each individual likely being extremely confident that their belief is the correct one. It also seems fairly reasonable that hardly anyone on either side has actually read the report in question.
This seems like an undesirable state of affairs in a democratic nation. It seems to me that, at the very least, it would be possible and beneficial for an alternative, non-narrative based, summary of "just the discrete facts" (with accompanying certainty declarations, etc) document to be produced that would facilitate greater effective transparency, as well as improve the public's ability form beliefs that are more consistent with reality (and presumably in turn, decrease the variance/polarization in beliefs).
Although, based on my observations of social media discussions and voting patterns, I not only see little support for this sort of idea, but instead rather strong opposition to it. It seems like most people, on either side of the divide, desire certain things to be true, as opposed to desiring to know the truth of what has actually happened. If my intuition is correct, this seems like a harmful mindset for voters in a democracy to hold, not to mention the second order harm in areas such as general public harmony, and willingness to cooperate on other important initiatives such as climate change.
Phrases like:
- in sweeping and systematic fashion
- was welcomed by the Trump campaign
- links between
- ties to
- connected to
Granted, communicating the complexities of reality is very difficult, but I sincerely do not believe that a serious effort has been made in this case (or is in other cases, in general) to as accurately and clearly as possible communicate(!) that which is "known" (including the degree of certainty), versus that which is suspected, etc.
Psychologists and neurologists have very little understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which people form beliefs, but they do know that it is extremely complex, and can easily be demonstrated to be highly prone to error or manipulation.
Considering this, in a serious political system (as seems to be the common claim of what we have in Western democratic nations), I would expect more bi-partisan (among politicians and citizens) acknowledgement of these shortcomings, and support for a process of continuous improvement in the manner in which the public is informed of affairs. But instead, I rarely see this idea discussed, and it seems to me the aggregate manner in which reality is being described to us is becoming more chaotic/uncertain/indecipherable, not less.
My intuition tells me this is not accidental, but of course there is no way of knowing if that is true or not. But, I think it would be beneficial for the public to become more aware of this phenomenon, and start drawing attention to this attribute of public discussions on a regular basis - in doing so, perhaps the quality of discourse could be improved.