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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Yes I agree, and just because there is a methodology doesn’t make the result not arbitrary. Can you explain what number four means? How do I assess it, what’s a 0, what’s a 5 and what’s a 10? How does number 2 relate to bias, isn’t that a factuality rating thing , why is it in the bias rubric? It’s a joke, each rating is totally arbitrary as there is no definition of what each one means beyond some vague description of the category. It’s essentially pick a number, feels based.

    I have worked with qualitive rubrics before and this one is barely worthy of the name honestly. Two people could take this rubric away and come to completely opposite conclusions based on their own biases.



  • The placement of the yellow dot is determined through a composite score derived from four distinct categories: Biased Wording/Headlines, Factual/ Sourcing, Story Choices, and Political Affiliation. Each category is rated on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0. indicating a lack of bias and 10 representing extreme bias. The average of these four scores is then plotted on the scale to indicate the source’s overall Left-Right bias.

    I wouldn’t call picking four numbers 'a whole lot more ’ personally. If you actually read some of the bias analysis it becomes more obvious how arbitrary it is.






  • Having a methodology or a standard and writing about how you came to your conclusion doesn’t absolve you of being completely subjective. It also doesn’t mean that it’s not arbitrary. My methodology could be that I roll a dice, a one is left leaning and a six is right leaning. I can be totally transparent and have a clear methodology, but it’s arbitrary.

    MBFC’s methodology is totally subjective and arbitrary. It’d be almost a miracle if two people independently followed their methodology and came to the same conclusion. I think I showed how flawed it is with my previous comment, but if you think otherwise I’d be really interested to understand your reasoning.





  • The problem is that it doesn’t matter if they publish how they came to their conclusions if how they come to their conclusions is nonsense. Your link is a perfect example. In the bias section there is a paragraph consisting mostly of cruft followed by two sentences attempting to justify a left rating:

    Editorially, opinion pieces tend to slightly favor the left, such as this Adopt green hydrogen strategy now, Swiss cantons tell Bern. In general, SWI is fact-based and hold slight left-leaning editorial biases.

    One opinion piece on green hydrogen is apparently enough justification for MBFC. I actually can’t even tell if it’s an opinion piece because it doesn’t seem to have the author’s opinion in it anywhere, it’s quoting reporting from elsewhere and a letter.

    Doesn’t that seem pretty paper thin? I don’t think they even bother referencing any of the categories from their own methodology in this one.

    I feel like I’m the only one that has actually read any of their bias justifications because after you read one I don’t see how can take them seriously at all. Maybe I’m missing something though, or I’m just going mad because lots of folks keep referring to MBFC as a serious organisation.




  • I dunno, it’s already pretty good at writing code and only going to get better. I agree with your conclusion though, mainly because as a software engineer writing code is actually not even the most complicated part of the job. If an AI could write perfect code every time it’d make my job a lot easier but I’d still have to do a significant amount of work such as:

    • Figuring out which code to write in the first place! Work discovery if I’m senior enough or clarifying requirements.
    • Co-ordination with other teams. Depending on the exact work this becomes more or less important
    • Managing the lifecycle of a change including testing, deployment, monitoring and triaging issues.
    • Ongoing maintenance. Staying on top of upcoming changes in adjacent or foundational teams, making sure our stuff will keep in working.
    • Architecture design. You mentioned this in your post, understanding interactions with adjacent systems and how to organise our own systems to meet current and (reasonable) future requirements.
    • Conducting non project work such as interviews, involvement in working groups to help decide overall technical direction of my group, upskilling myself and those around me.

    That’s just off the top of my head, I’m sure I’ve missed some things. As much as I love writing code I honestly feel like if an AI could do that part it’d just take stress out of my day and give me more time to focus on those other parts of the job. Of course in reality more work would probably just be piled on but that’s just life I guess.