exactly.
I already gave you stats on Medicare. Police departments on call are not wasteful either (for the same reasons as fire departments), nor are money to schools, disability payments, or motor vehicle departments, but as they are principally given money by the multitudes of state and local administrations, one would have to treat them on an individual basis.
I had problems with, and missed 1 and 5. Explanation below:
Essentially this was my argument with them. Also, a "substantial" amount seems inherently opinion. How much is substantial? According to whom? (I was going to say "who," but I'm on my phone and it kept putting an "m" on instead of a "?" And I decided to take it as a rainbow-like sign from above and stopped fighting it.
Yes!
why? do you believe the statement about "almost always wasteful and inefficient" is factual? Pew classifies it as opinion.
the wording was, "lost a significant portion", and in fact that phrase referred to 95%, an amount hardly anyone could call insignificant whilst arguing in good faith.
Sorry, I was unclear -- I noted they used words denoting opinion in some statements, and sometimes the statement was deemed an opinion, sometimes it was deemed factual. That inconsistency made the "test" less useful, in my opinion.
I accept the correction!
That data was not part of the question in the test, though. My understanding was that in the test I was supposed to categorize the "information" or claims based one what was presented. Had they said "ISIS lost 95% of their territory..." I'd rate that as a factual statement -- that is a number that can be researched and verified. Words like "significant," or my misremembered "substantial" (or "wasteful," or "inefficient") denote opinions. The opinion may be supported by facts, or may not. A statement like "they lost 95% of their territory," or "the UAP was flying at hypersonic speeds" are statements of fact -- which may turn out to be true, false, or unknown.
And an amount a presenter might include in their statement, if they were arguing in good faith. Of course, somebody may be acting in good faith and use imprecise language or make subjective claims. But people making claims using subjective language are more likely to set of my alarm bells.
I had a feeling someone was maybe going to answer like this but I don't agree, I should of put a disclaimer but I didnt, sorry.
Stop conflating "fact" and "factual", they are different words with different meanings.
I thought the same, but then I looked in a dictionary, and they're not different enough to not support Captain's point.
Yes. Everyday usage.
They spent some time over this rubric:Regardless of how knowledgeable you are about each topic, would you consider each statement to be a factual statement (whether you think it is accurate or not) or an opinion statement (whether you agree with it or not)?
-- https://www.pewresearch.org/journal...to-classify-statements-as-factual-or-opinion/Appendix A: Measuring capacity to classify statements as factual or opinion
By Amy Mitchell, Jeffrey Gottfried, Michael Barthel and Nami Sumida
Prior to launching the survey, researchers conducted a series of preliminary tests to determine how best to ask Americans to classify news-related statements. The purpose of these tests was to analyze the effects of changes in the language used in the question instructions and response options, the number of response options and the attributions of the statements to different news outlets. These tests were not intended to be representative of the U.S. adult population.
To explore different question wording options, a series of tests were conducted using SurveyMonkey’s online nonprobability panel. The sample size for each test ranged from 76 to 232 respondents. Each test included five to 22 news-related statements, a number of which were used in the final questionnaire. In addition to asking respondents to classify statements, each test included one of three open-ended questions, asking for challenges they had in classifying the statements, their general experience with the survey, or how they defined “facts” and “opinions.”
Determining the level of explanatory language
The best testing version (test 10 in the table) included explanatory language in both the question instructions and the response options. Test results suggested that this added language helped people better understand the task, alleviated pressure to have prior knowledge on the statement’s topic, and provided some guidance in what “factual statements” and “opinion statements” referenced.
Initial tests included no explanatory language, which, according to open-end responses, led to confusion among a number of respondents. (See the question wording in tests 1 and 2.) Some interpreted the exercise as either a knowledge quiz – in which they assessed the accuracy of the statement – or an evaluation of whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement.
The added language to the factual (tests 2 through 11) and opinion response options (tests 5, 7, 8 and 10) more clearly specified the task. Additionally, some tests (tests 3 and 4) experimented with adding a sentence, “We are NOT asking whether you agree or disagree with the statement,” in the question instructions, but tests with that addition did not perform better. Language was also added to the question instructions to lessen the cognitive difficulty respondents may have had when classifying statements (language such as “Regardless of your knowledge of the topic…” was added in tests 6, 9, 10 and 11).
Great evidence! It proves to me that Pew's intended meaning conflicts with many respondents' everyday meaning of the words. Which is what I took to be @CaptainCourgette 's point.
Yeah sorry I skipped over that.
they both look like they're describing something that happened (except the second statement is false), hence they're factual
So how would you assess the truth of the proposition in relation to government, except by comparing the outcomes to similar nongovernmental organisations?
I was pretty much going by all the Government Watchdog articles in MSM ive read over the years.
Mate I understand that,my point is its dangerous because now you can say the following is a factual statement
You have always been able to say that, and that's our point. However, in the interest of clarity of communication, those chosing to use the terms in valid, but contentious, ways should ensure that ambiguity or confusion is minimised. However, we can't cater for every audience, not least because we don't even know what every possible audience is. Do you object to these equally:
And did those articles apply the same criteria to large corporations, multinationals, charities, political party organisations, and all other instances of large scale institutions?
some of them probably. certainly not most. i still don't understand why the comparison is necessary for the survey question. It's not an IQ test, where if you train for it you'll do better. None of the other questions were comparative.
Yes, I did that as well, as I mentioned, with the same result.
to answer the question correctly, it wasn't necessary to decide the comparison
it wasnt hard to decide.
Bear in mind that just being an "opinion" tells us nothing about whether it is true or untrue, or whether (something I've often seen) it's an overgeneralization based upon a limited set of the facts, meaning it's "true-ish": true, but only concerning those specific criteria.
As I understand it, the cost at that time was due to the fact that the company no longer produced them, and needed to stop what they were doing and retool. That cost was set by the manufacturer, a private company.
Yes that what I can see as well
It may soften it but IMO the word factual should not not be in there at all as its misleading
I learned what i set out to learn. Namely why so many people on the internet say "it's not my opinion, it's a fact[ual]" when what they are saying is not true.
You can prove this by showing maps of ISIS territory at the start and at the end of 2017. It's a fact.
There is no way to prove this statement because "the economy" is a large complex system that defies analysis.
If you look at government spending, what you see is government spending money to further some goals. To prove that it's wasteful and inefficient, you'd have to demonstrate that there are more efficient ways to reach the same goals, which may be possible in some cases but not for "almost all".
It's factual because it can be proven or disproven (and has been).
Your first sentence does entirely that, combines fact with opinion. Just thought I'd point that out...
