jeffbee 5 days ago

"Biased but across the spectrum" is nonsense.

  • ajross 5 days ago

    Purely semantic arguments aren't helpful to anyone.

    The word "bias" clearly has two senses in this context. The original term from signal processing indicates a persistent offset, which got appropriated in politics to reflect the idea of a "lean" in coverage. So now "Bias" means "politically charged in some direction or another".

    So you can have a "biased" term ("occupy") next to another biased term ("tea party") in a search. And it's reasonable to call the whole thing a collection of biased terms even though by the original definition I guess you'd say they cancel out and are "unbiased".

    Language is language. It may not be rational but it's by definition never "nonsense". Don't argue with it except to clarify.

    • jeffbee 5 days ago

      Your comment is longer nonsense. Individual data points in a population cannot be biased. Bias is an aggregate statistic of the sample population.

      • ajross 5 days ago

        > Your comment is longer nonsense.

        Sigh, here we go.

        > Individual data points in a population cannot be biased.

        Indeed they[1] cannot! By the first definition I listed.

        Conversely, the term "tea party" is a "biased" political term by the second, as it connotes a particular political perspective.

        I didn't make this stuff up, check definition 1a in M-W: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias#h1

        [1] The discussion is about search terms, btw. Not "data points", which sort of confounds your analysis.

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