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Why the Old Order Crumbles - 0 views

cloudculturecontent.blogspot.com/...why-old-order-crumbles.html longgame
shared by anonymous on 08 Apr 10 - Cached
  • This is all well and good, but what happens when the situation changes?  Say you suddenly have a widely applicable technology that is halving in price and doubling in power every 18 months and continues to do so for decades.  There will be ramifications to this that the existing institutions will not be prepared to take full advantage of.
  • Walk with me through the following thought experiment: you have a society that faces the same situation for five hundred years.  There are no disruptions through war or political uprising, technology does not improve, and the environment remains, for the most part, the same.
  • We are still living in the very early days of the coupling of the microchip revolution with the internet revolution.
  • anonymous on 08 Apr 10
     
    By Adam Gurri in Cloud Culture on April 7, 2010. About how institutions sometimes *can't* adapt in the face of innovation.
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Animals That Live Without Oxygen - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...shot-animals-that-live-wi.html layscience
shared by anonymous on 07 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Scientists have found the first multicellular animals that apparently live entirely without oxygen.
  • The creature's cells apparently lack mitochondria, the organelles that use oxygen to power a cell. Instead they are rich in what seem to be hydrogenosomes, organelles that can do a similar job in anaerobic (or oxygen free) environments. The find could help scientists understand what life might have looked like in the earth's early oceans, which also had very little oxygen.
  • anonymous on 07 Apr 10
     
    Incredible implications here: animals that live without oxygen.
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Is the iPhone generative? - 0 views

www.hyperorg.com/...is-the-iphone-generative ideas reflections technology
shared by anonymous on 12 Apr 10 - Cached
  • JZ defines “generativity” as “a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.” (p. 70)
  • Steve suggests that we instead judge generativity by the type of results we see, not by the nature of the software or hardware environment on which they run
  • the generativity of the iPhone and the iPad is — to use JZ’s word — seductive. Steve Berlin is right that they have unleashed a torrent of creativity. But it is creativity within bounds.
  • anonymous on 12 Apr 10
     
    On April 12, 2010. A look at what exactly makes something generative independent of whether it's an open platform or not.
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Disintermediation: The disruption to come for Education 2.0 - O'Reilly Radar - 0 views

radar.oreilly.com/...termediation-risks-trends.html
shared by anonymous on 17 May 10 - Cached
  • There will always be physical schools - students need to go somewhere during the day to enable the engine of modern economic progress: two parents working. But these schools will evolve into things that look more like civic centers - hubs for community involvement and rich relationship-building
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 May 10
       
      My mind drifts to a calm, blue place when I read this. The process of learning strikes me as almost arbitrary now that the technology of the Internet has lodged itself in the world. Not only would this "community center" idea be great for learning, but it could nourish the soul a bit more. There are few of what you might consider "secular" churches out there: places where you can share your feelings. The religious world seems to have a monopoly on that. I can see that gap being filled by enriched education environments.
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Russia, Turkey: A Grand Energy Bargain? - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ia_turkey_grand_energy_bargain geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 14 May 10 - Cached
  • Since Russia and Turkey are both resurgent powers in the region, the energy issue can turn quite thorny at times, particularly as the West is leaning on Turkey to keep its distance from Moscow. But Russia and Turkey are not looking for an energy brawl at the moment. Tensions exist between these historic rivals, but the current geopolitical environment is pushing the two sides to work with — instead of against — each other.
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Europe: The New Plan - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...20101220-europe-new-plan europe geopolitics euro
shared by anonymous on 21 Dec 10 - Cached
  • the euro, has suffered from two core problems
  • the lack of a parallel political union
  • the issue of debt
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Taxation and appropriation — who pays how much to whom — are essentially political acts. One cannot have a centralized fiscal authority without first having a centralized political/military authority capable of imposing and enforcing its will.
  • the checkbook is not the ultimate power in the galaxy. The ultimate power comes from the law backed by a gun.
  • Americans fought the bloodiest war in their history from 1861 to 1865 over the issue of central power versus local power.
  • Northern Europe is composed of advanced technocratic economies, made possible by the capital-generating capacity of the well-watered North European Plain and its many navigable rivers
  • a people that identifies with its brethren throughout the river valleys and in other areas linked by what is typically omnipresent infrastructure. This crafts a firm identity at the national level rather than local level and assists with mass-mobilization strategies.
  • Southern Europe, in comparison, suffers from an arid, rugged topography and lack of navigable rivers.
  • identity is more localized; southern Europeans tend to be more concerned with family and town than nation, since they do not benefit from easy transport options or the regular contact that northern Europeans take for granted.
  • southern European economies are highly dependent upon a weak currency
  • While states of this grouping often plan together for EU summits, in reality the only thing they have in common is a half-century of lost ground to recover, and they need as much capital as can be made available.
  • European Union is now made up of 27 different nationalities
  • With Europe having such varied geographies, economies and political systems, any political and fiscal union would be fraught with complications and policy mis-prescriptions from the start. In short, this is a defect of the euro that is not going to be corrected, and to be blunt, it isn’t one that the Europeans are trying to fix right now.
  • The ECB’s primary (and only partially stated) mission is to foster long-term stable growth in the eurozone’s largest economy — Germany — working from the theory that what is good for the continent’s economic engine is good for Europe.
  • Smaller, poorer economies are more volatile, since even tiny changes in the international environment can send them through either the floor or the roof.
  • The question is not “whither the euro” but how to provide a safety net for the euro’s less desirable, debt-related aftereffects.
  • When the not-so-desperate eurozone states step in with a few billion euros — 223 billion euros so far, to be exact — they want not only their money back but also some assurance that such overindulgences will not happen again.
  • The second is that the Dec. 16 agreement is only an agreement in principle.
  • Three complications exist,
  • First, when a bailout is required, it is clearly because something has gone terribly wrong.
  • The third complication is that the bailout mechanism is actually only half the plan. The other half is to allow states to at least partially default on their debt
  • tates that just squeaked by in 2010 must run a more difficult gauntlet in 2011 — particularly if they depend heavily on foreign investors for funding their budget deficits.
  • anonymous on 21 Dec 10
     
    "Europe is on the cusp of change. An EU heads-of-state summit Dec. 16 launched a process aimed to save the common European currency. If successful, this process would be the most significant step toward creating a singular European power since the creation of the European Union itself in 1992 - that is, if it doesn't destroy the euro first."
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WikiLeaks cables: Saudi Arabia cannot pump enough oil to keep a lid on prices - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-reserves-overstated-wikileaks
shared by anonymous on 09 Feb 11 - Cached
  • The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.
  • According to the cables, which date between 2007-09, Husseini said Saudi Arabia might reach an output of 12m barrels a day in 10 years but before then – possibly as early as 2012 – global oil production would have hit its highest point. This crunch point is known as "peak oil".
  • anonymous on 09 Feb 11
     
    "US diplomat convinced by Saudi expert that reserves of world's biggest oil exporter have been overstated by nearly 40%"
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China's Military Comes Into Its Own - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...-chinas-military-comes-its-own geopolitics generations china
shared by anonymous on 18 Jan 11 - Cached
  • The Chinese fear a potential U.S. blockade of their coast. While this may not seem a likely scenario, the Chinese look at their strategic vulnerability, at their rising power and at the U.S. history of thwarting regional powers, and they see themselves as clearly at risk.
  • For Beijing, it is critical to keep the U.S. Navy as far from Chinese waters as possible and delay its approach by maximizing the threat environment in the event of a conflict.
  • The Chinese role for the J-20 is based on a different set of realities than those the Soviets and Americans faced during the Cold War, meaning the J-20 prototype should not be judged solely by the American standards for fifth-generation aircraft. More than having the most advanced aircraft in the sky, the Chinese value the ability to maintain high sortie rates from many bases along the country’s coast to overwhelm with numbers the superior U.S. combat aircraft, which would be expected to be operated from aircraft carriers or from more distant land bases.
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  • Chinese defense and security officials also closely monitor such boards, but the officials chose not to shut them down — clearly indicating Beijing’s intent to draw attention to the test.
  • anonymous on 18 Jan 11
     
    "Chinese President Hu Jintao is visiting the United States, perhaps his last state visit as president before China begins its generational leadership transition in 2012. Hu's visit is being shaped by the ongoing China-U.S. economic dialogue, by concerns surrounding stability on the Korean Peninsula and by rising attention to Chinese defense activity in recent months. For example, China carried out the first reported test flight of its fifth-generation combat fighter prototype, dubbed the J-20, during U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates' visit to China the previous week."
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Never Fight a Land War in Asia - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...0228-never-fight-land-war-asia
shared by anonymous on 01 Mar 11 - Cached
  • First, why is fighting a land war in Asia a bad idea? Second, why does the United States seem compelled to fight these wars? And third, what is the alternative that protects U.S. interests in Asia without large-scale military land wars?
  • Let’s begin with the first question, the answer to which is rooted in demographics and space. The population of Iraq is currently about 32 million. Afghanistan has a population of less than 30 million. The U.S. military, all told, consists of about 1.5 million active-duty personnel (plus 980,000 in the reserves), of whom more than 550,000 belong to the Army and about 200,000 are part of the Marine Corps. Given this, it is important to note that the United States strains to deploy about 200,000 troops at any one time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many of these troops are in support rather than combat roles. The same was true in Vietnam, where the United States was challenged to field a maximum of about 550,000 troops (in a country much more populous than Iraq or Afghanistan) despite conscription and a larger standing army. Indeed, the same problem existed in World War II.
  • When the United States fights in the Eastern Hemisphere, it fights at great distances, and the greater the distance, the greater the logistical cost. More ships are needed to deliver the same amount of materiel, for example. That absorbs many troops. The logistical cost of fighting at a distance is that it diverts numbers of troops (or requires numbers of civilian personnel) disproportionate to the size of the combat force.
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  • Regardless of the number of troops deployed, the U.S. military is always vastly outnumbered by the populations of the countries to which it is deployed. If parts of these populations resist as light-infantry guerrilla forces or employ terrorist tactics, the enemy rapidly swells to a size that can outnumber U.S. forces, as in Vietnam and Korea. At the same time, the enemy adopts strategies to take advantage of the core weakness of the United States — tactical intelligence. The resistance is fighting at home. It understands the terrain and the culture. The United States is fighting in an alien environment. It is constantly at an intelligence disadvantage. That means that the effectiveness of the native forces is multiplied by excellent intelligence, while the effectiveness of U.S. forces is divided by lack of intelligence.
  • The United States compensates with technology,
  • from space-based reconnaissance and air power to counter-battery systems and advanced communications. This can make up the deficit but only by massive diversions of manpower from ground-combat operations. Maintaining a helicopter requires dozens of ground-crew personnel. Where the enemy operates with minimal technology multiplied by intelligence, the United States compensates for lack of intelligence with massive technology that further reduces available combat personnel. Between logistics and technological force multipliers, the U.S. “point of the spear” shrinks. If you add the need to train, relieve, rest and recuperate the ground-combat forces, you are left with a small percentage available to fight.
  • The paradox of this is that American forces will win the engagements but may still lose the war.
  • the United States is well-suited for the initial phases of combat, when the task is to defeat a conventional force. But after the conventional force has been defeated, the resistance can switch to methods difficult for American intelligence to deal with.
  • The example of the capitulation of Germany and Japan in World War II is frequently cited
  • The back of the Wehrmacht was broken by the Soviets on their own soil with the logistical advantages of short supply lines.
  • The Germans had no appetite for continuing a resistance against the Russians and saw surrendering to the Americans and British as sanctuary from the Russians.
  • As for Japan, it was not ground forces but air power, submarine warfare and atomic bombs that finished them — and the emperor’s willingness to order a surrender.
  • Had the Japanese emperor been removed, I suspect that the occupation of Japan would have been much more costly.
  • Neither Germany nor Japan are examples in which U.S. land forces compelled capitulation and suppressed resistance.
  • The problem the United States has in the Eastern Hemisphere is that the size of the force needed to occupy a country initially is much smaller than the force needed to pacify the country.
  • Some people argue that the United States is insufficiently ruthless in prosecuting war, as if it would be more successful without political restraints at home.
  • The guerrilla has built-in advantages in warfare for which brutality cannot compensate.
  • Given all this, the question is why the United States has gotten involved in wars in Eurasia four times since World War II.
  • In each case it is obvious: for political reasons.
  • In each case, the military was given an ambiguous mission. This was because a clear outcome — defeating the enemy — was unattainable.
  • There are two problems with American strategy.
  • The first is using the appropriate force for the political mission.
  • Moreover, it requires an offensive mission. Defensive missions (such as Vietnam and Korea) by definition have no terminal point or any criteria for victory.
  • Having destroyed the conventional forces of Iraq, the United States was unprepared for the Iraqi response, which was guerrilla resistance on a wide scale.
  • The purpose of a military is to defeat enemy conventional forces. As an army of occupation against a hostile population, military forces are relatively weak.
  • By having an unclear mission, you have an uncertain terminal point. When does it end?
  • Donald Rumsfeld once said, “You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” I think that is a fundamental misunderstanding of war. You do not engage in war if the army you have is insufficient.
  • Diplomacy can find the common ground between nations. It can also be used to identify the hostility of nations and use that hostility to insulate the United States by diverting the attention of other nations from challenging the United States.
  • Diplomacy for the United States is about maintaining the balance of power and using and diverting conflict to manage the international system. Force is the last resort, and when it is used, it must be devastating.
  • The argument I have made, and which I think Gates is asserting, is that at a distance, the United States cannot be devastating in wars dependent on land power. That is the weakest aspect of American international power and the one the United States has resorted to all too often since World War II, with unacceptable results.
  • An elective war in which the criteria for success are unclear and for which the amount of land force is insufficient must be avoided. That is Gates’ message
  • As with the Monroe Doctrine, it should be elevated to a principle of U.S. foreign policy, not because it is a moral principle but because it is a very practical one.
  • anonymous on 01 Mar 11
     
    "U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking at West Point, said last week that "Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.""
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Corruption: Why Texas Is Not Mexico - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...orruption-why-texas-not-mexico geopolitics mexico
shared by anonymous on 29 May 11 - No Cached
  • The guns that flow southward along with the cash, according to the narrative, are largely responsible for Mexico’s violence. As one looks at other countries lying to the south of Mexico along the smuggling routes from South America to the United States, they too seem to suffer from the same maladies.
  • As borderlands, these entities — referred to as states in the U.S. political system — find themselves caught between the supply of drugs flowing from the south and the large narcotics markets to their north. The geographic location of these states results in large quantities of narcotics flowing northward through their territory and large amounts of cash likewise flowing southward. Indeed, this illicit flow has brought with it corruption and violence, but when we look at these U.S. states, their security environments are starkly different from those of Mexican states on the other side of the border.
  • While the desert regions along the border do provide a bit of a buffer between the two countries — and between the Mexican core and its northern territories — there is no geological obstacle separating the two countries. Even the Rio Grande is not so grand, as the constant flow of illicit goods over it testifies.
  • anonymous on 29 May 11
     
    As one studies Mexico's cartel war, it is not uncommon to hear Mexican politicians - and some people in the United States - claim that Mexico's problems of violence and corruption stem largely from the country's proximity to the United States. According to this narrative, the United States is the world's largest illicit narcotics market, and the inexorable force of economic demand means that the countries supplying the demand, and those that are positioned between the source countries and the huge U.S. market, are trapped in a very bad position. Because of this market and the illicit trade it creates, billions of dollars worth of drugs flow northward through Mexico (or are produced there) and billions of dollars in cash flow back southward into Mexico. The guns that flow southward along with the cash, according to the narrative, are largely responsible for Mexico's violence. As one looks at other countries lying to the south of Mexico along the smuggling routes from South America to the United States, they too seem to suffer from the same maladies.
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Images capture moment brain goes unconscious - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...science-environment-13751783 layscience neurology
shared by anonymous on 14 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • As the patient goes under, different parts of the brain seem to be "talking" to each other, a team told the European Anaesthesiology Congress in Amsterdam.
  • they caution that more work is needed to understand what is going on.
  • unconsciousness is a process by which different areas of the brain inhibit each other as the brain shuts down.
  • anonymous on 14 Jun 11
     
    "For the first time researchers have monitored the brain as it slips into unconsciousness. The new imaging method detects the waxing and waning of electrical activity in the brain moments after an anaesthetic injection is administered."
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David Sedaris: Chicken toenails, anyone? - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...-chinese-food-chicken-toenails sedaris nonfiction
shared by anonymous on 01 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Everyone swore that the food in Beijing and Chengdu would be different from what I'd had in the US. "It's more real," they said, meaning, it turned out, that I could dislike it more authentically.
  • I saw wads of phlegm glistening like freshly shucked oysters on staircases and escalators. I saw them frozen into slicks on the sidewalk and oozing down the sides of walls. It often seemed that if people weren't spitting, they were coughing without covering their mouths, or shooting wads of snot out of their noses. This was done by plugging one nostril and using the other as a blowhole. "We Chinese think it's best just to get it out," a woman told me over dinner one night. She said that, in her opinion, it's disgusting that a westerner would use a handkerchief and then put it back into his pocket.
  • "Last month I saw a kid shit in the produce aisle of our Chengdu Walmart," a young woman named Bridget told me.
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  • In the men's room of a Beijing subway station, I watched a man walk past the urinal, lift his three-year-old son into the air and instruct him to pee into the sink – the one we were supposed to wash our hands in.
  • My trip reminded me that we are all just animals, that stuff comes out of every hole we have, no matter where we live or how much money we've got.
  • It was while eating my second duck tongue that the man at the next table hacked up a loud wad of phlegm and spat it on to the floor. "I think I'm done," I said.
  • I remember reading a few years ago about a restaurant in the Guangdong province that was picketed and shut down because it served cat. The place was called The Fangji Cat Meatball Restaurant, which isn't exactly hiding anything.
  • It's like eating poultry but taking a moral stand against those chocolate chicks they sell at Easter. "A sea horse is not related to an actual horse," I said. "They're fish, and you eat fish all the time. Are you objecting to this one because of its shape?"
  • He said he couldn't eat sea horses because they were friendly and never did anyone any harm, this as opposed to those devious, bloodthirsty lambs whose legs we so regularly roast with rosemary and new potatoes.
  • This, for many, is flat-out evil but the rest of the world isn't like America, where it's become virtually impossible to throw a dinner party. One person doesn't eat meat, while another is lactose intolerant, or can't digest wheat. You have vegetarians who eat fish and others who won't touch it. Then there are vegans, macrobiotics and a new group, flexitarians, who eat meat if not too many people are watching.
  • I'll say that for China, though – offer to pay and before you can stab a rooster with a rusty screwdriver someone has taken you up on it. I think they want to catch you before you get sick, but whatever the reason, within minutes you're back on the street, searching the blighted horizon and wondering where your next meal might be coming from.
  • anonymous on 01 Aug 11
     
    "I have to go to China." I told people this in the way I might say, "I need to insulate my crawl space" or, "I've got to get these moles looked at." That's the way it felt, though. Like a chore. What initially put me off was the food. I'll eat it if the alternative means starving, but I've never looked forward to it, not even when it seemed exotic to me. [Read more]
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Could You Modify It 'To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?' - 0 views

www.cato-at-liberty.org/ts-from-becoming-this-advanced education
shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 11 - Cached
  • This attitude is a natural outgrowth of our decision to operate education as a monopoly.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 11
       
      I disagree. This attitude is a natural outgrown of our decision to operate education in an inflexible, bureaucratic way. I attended a whole mess of private schools that were no different from public schools in that regard.
  • In a competitive marketplace, educators have incentives to serve each individual child to the best of their ability, because each child can easily be enrolled elsewhere if they fail to do so.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 11
       
      I'm also not convinced. There are all kinds of economic and geographic limitations that would exist in this mythical 'free market' education environment.
  • It’s easier just to feed children through the system on a uniform conveyor belt based on when they were born.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 11
       
      Again: Private schools would be no different, in this regard. All that said, I totally agree that what Khan's doing is marvelous and wonderful. I just don't see how CATO can shoehorn the libertarian idealism into it so perfectly.
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 11
     
    Money: Khan's programmer, Ben Kamens, has heard from teachers who've seen Khan Academy presentations and loved the idea but wondered whether they could modify it "to stop students from becoming this advanced."
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Pakistan's Uneasy Relationship with the United States - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...asy-relationship-united-states geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 12 Apr 11 - Cached
  • Pasha’s central demand in the meeting with his American counterpart was reportedly that the United States hand over more responsibility for operations currently carried out by the CIA over Pakistani soil.
  • this point is rendered moot by the fact that Washington would almost certainly never allow the ISI – seen as a hostile intelligence agency – to have access to some of America’s most secret technology.
  • These demands reflect the general Pakistani complaint that it is not seen as an equal by the U.S. government.
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  • The United States knows that Pakistan is a critical ally in the Afghan War due to the intelligence it can provide on the various strands of Taliban operating in the country, but it simply does not trust the Pakistanis enough to hand over UAV technology or control over UAV strikes to Islamabad.
  • The Pakistanis see an opportunity in the current geopolitical environment to garner concessions from Washington that it would otherwise not be able to demand. Washington is distracted by myriad crises in the Arab world at the moment and AfPak is no longer the main course on its plate, as was the case for some time in the earlier days of the Obama presidency.
  • anonymous on 12 Apr 11
     
    "Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha visited Washington on Monday and met with CIA Director Leon Panetta. The trip gave Islamabad a chance to express its anger over the Raymond Davis affair. The CIA contractor's shooting on the streets of Lahore of two Pakistani citizens - followed by his lengthy detention and subsequent release - has generated waves of criticism amid the Pakistani populace, and has plunged the ISI-CIA relationship into a state of tension that surpasses the normal uneasiness that has always plagued the alliance between Washington and Islamabad."
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The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science - 0 views

motherjones.com/106166 criticalthinking
shared by anonymous on 20 Apr 11 - Cached
  • In the annals of denial, it doesn't get much more extreme than the Seekers. They lost their jobs, the press mocked them, and there were efforts to keep them away from impressionable young minds. But while Martin's space cult might lie at on the far end of the spectrum of human self-delusion, there's plenty to go around. And since Festinger's day, an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called "motivated reasoning [3]" helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, "death panels," the birthplace and religion of the president [4] (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.
  • The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience [5] (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia [6] of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.
  • a subconscious negative response to the new information—and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations formed in the conscious mind. "They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs," says Taber, "and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what they're hearing."
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  • But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn't take place in an emotional vacuum.
  • In other words, when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing.
  • That's not to suggest that we aren't also motivated to perceive the world accurately—we are. Or that we never change our minds—we do. It's just that we have other important goals besides accuracy—including identity affirmation and protecting one's sense of self—and often those make us highly resistant to changing our beliefs when the facts say we should.
  • Ironically, in part because researchers employ so much nuance and strive to disclose all remaining sources of uncertainty, scientific evidence is highly susceptible to selective reading and misinterpretation.
  • people's deep-seated views about morality, and about the way society should be ordered, strongly predict whom they consider to be a legitimate scientific expert in the first place—and thus where they consider "scientific consensus" to lie on contested issues.
  • In Kahan's research [13] (PDF), individuals are classified, based on their cultural values, as either "individualists" or "communitarians," and as either "hierarchical" or "egalitarian" in outlook.
  • The results were stark: When the scientist's position stated that global warming is real and human-caused, for instance, only 23 percent of hierarchical individualists agreed the person was a "trustworthy and knowledgeable expert." Yet 88 percent of egalitarian communitarians accepted the same scientist's expertise.
  • people rejected the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views—and thus the relative risks inherent in each scenario.
  • head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts—they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever.
  • A key question—and one that's difficult to answer—is how "irrational" all this is. On the one hand, it doesn't make sense to discard an entire belief system, built up over a lifetime, because of some new snippet of information. "It is quite possible to say, 'I reached this pro-capital-punishment decision based on real information that I arrived at over my life,'" explains Stanford social psychologist Jon Krosnick [21]. Indeed, there's a sense in which science denial could be considered keenly "rational." In certain conservative communities, explains Yale's Kahan, "People who say, 'I think there's something to climate change,' that's going to mark them out as a certain kind of person, and their life is going to go less well."
  • people gravitate toward information that confirms what they believe, and they select sources that deliver it. Same as it ever was, right? Maybe, but the problem is arguably growing more acute, given the way we now consume information
  • a higher education correlated with an increased likelihood of denying the science on the issue.
  • one insidious aspect of motivated reasoning is that political sophisticates are prone to be more biased than those who know less about the issues.
  • It all raises the question: Do left and right differ in any meaningful way when it comes to biases in processing information, or are we all equally susceptible?
  • Some researchers have suggested that there are psychological differences between the left and the right that might impact responses to new information—that conservatives are more rigid and authoritarian, and liberals more tolerant of ambiguity. Psychologist John Jost of New York University has further argued that conservatives are "system justifiers": They engage in motivated reasoning to defend the status quo.
  • What can be done to counteract human nature itself?
  • Given the power of our prior beliefs to skew how we respond to new information, one thing is becoming clear: If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to them in a context that doesn't trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.
  • Kahan infers that the effect occurred because the science had been written into an alternative narrative that appealed to their pro-industry worldview.
  • You can follow the logic to its conclusion: Conservatives are more likely to embrace climate science if it comes to them via a business or religious leader, who can set the issue in the context of different values than those from which environmentalists or scientists often argue. Doing so is, effectively, to signal a détente in what Kahan has called a "culture war of fact." In other words, paradoxically, you don't lead with the facts in order to convince. You lead with the values—so as to give the facts a fighting chance.
  • anonymous on 20 Apr 11
     
    In the annals of denial, it doesn't get much more extreme than the Seekers. They lost their jobs, the press mocked them, and there were efforts to keep them away from impressionable young minds. But while Martin's space cult might lie at on the far end of the spectrum of human self-delusion, there's plenty to go around. And since Festinger's day, an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called "motivated reasoning [3]" helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, "death panels," the birthplace and religion of the president [4] (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.
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The End of Consensus Politics in China - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...end-consensus-politics-china
shared by anonymous on 05 Aug 14 - Cached
  • What is the fundamental purpose of Xi's anti-corruption campaign? An attempt to answer this question will not tell us China's political future, but it will tell us something about Xi's strategy -- not only for consolidating his personal influence within the Party, government and military apparatuses, but also and more important, for managing the immense social, economic, political and international pressures that are likely to come to a head in China during his tenure.
  • The announcement July 29 of a formal investigation into retired Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang marked something of an end to the first major phase of Xi's anti-corruption campaign.
  • Zhou was known to sit at the apex of at least these three power bases, and his influence likely extended deep into many more, making him not only a formidable power broker but also, at least in the case of his oil industry ties, a major potential obstacle to reform.
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  • Now begins another phase. There are indications that it will center on the military. There are other signs that it will target Shanghai, the primary power base of Jiang Zemin and the locus of financial sector reform in China.
  • the formation of a unified National Security Council chaired by Xi himself and his apparent wresting of the reins of economic and social reform from Premier Li Keqiang, suggest that some other and deeper shift is underway
  • Stratfor believes this shift involves nothing less than an attempt to rework not only the way the Communist Party operates but also the foundations of its political legitimacy.
  • China is in the midst of an economic transformation that is in many ways unprecedented. The core of this transformation is the shift from a growth model heavily reliant on low-cost, low value-added exports and state-led investment into construction to one grounded in a much greater dependence on high value-added industries, services and above all, domestic consumption.
  • China is not the first country to attempt this. Others, including the United States, achieved it long ago. But China has unique constraints: its size, its political system and imperatives, and its profound regional geographic and social and economic imbalances. These constraints are exacerbated by a final and perhaps greatest limit: time
  • China is attempting to make this transition, one which took smaller and more geographically, socially and politically cohesive countries many decades to achieve, in less than 20 years.
  • For the past six years, the Chinese government has kept the economy on life support in the form of massively expanded credit creation, government-directed investment into urban and transport infrastructure development and, most important, real estate construction. In the process, local governments, banks and businesses across China have amassed extraordinary levels of debt. Outstanding credit in China is now equivalent to 251 percent of the country's gross domestic product, up from 147 percent in 2008. Local governments alone owe more than $3 trillion. It is unknown -- deliberately so, most likely -- what portion of outstanding debts are nonperforming, but it is likely far higher than the official rate of 1 percent. 
  • Despite claims that China's investment drive was and is irresponsible -- and certainly there are myriad anecdotal cases of gross misallocation of capital -- it nonetheless fulfills the essential role of jumpstarting the country's effort to "rebalance" to a new, more urban and more consumption-based economic model.
  • This means that in the next few years, China faces inexorable and potentially very rapid decline in the two sectors that have underpinned economic growth and social and political stability for the past two or more decades: exports and construction.
  • And it does so in an environment of rapidly mounting local government and corporate debt, rising wages and input costs, rising cost of capital and falling return on investment (exacerbated by new environmental controls and efforts to combat corruption) and more.
  • Chinese household consumption is extraordinarily weak. In 2013, it was equivalent to only 34 percent of gross domestic product, compared to 69-70 percent in the United States, 61 percent in Japan, 57 percent in Germany and 52 percent in South Korea.
  • Whatever the Chinese government's stated reform goals, it is very difficult to see how economic rebalancing toward a consumption- and services-based economy succeeds within the decade. It is very difficult to see how exports recover. And it is very difficult, but slightly less so, to see how the government maintains stable growth through continued investment into housing and infrastructure construction, especially as the real estate market inevitably cools.
  • The pressures stemming from China's economy -- and emanating upward through Chinese society and politics -- will remain paramount over the next 5-10 years.
  • The above has described only a very small selection of the internal social and economic constraints facing China's government today. It completely neglects public anger over pollution, the myriad economic and industrial constraints posed by both pollution and pervasive low-level corruption, the impact of changes in Chinese labor flows and dynamics, rising education levels and much more. It completely neglects the ambivalence with which many ordinary Chinese regard the Communist Party government.
  • It also neglects external pressures and risks, whether economic or military.
  • Xi knows this. He and his advisers know China's virtually insurmountable challenges better than anyone.
  • The anti-corruption campaign is one of those steps. It serves many overlapping functions: to clear out potential opponents, ideological or otherwise
  • Underlying and encompassing these, we see the specter of something else. The consensus-based model of politics that Deng built in order to regularize decision-making and bolster political stability during times of high growth and that effectively guided China throughout the post-Deng era is breaking down.
  • anonymous on 05 Aug 14
     
    "Chinese President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign is the broadest and deepest effort to purge, reorganize and rectify the Communist Party leadership since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the rise of Deng Xiaoping two years later. It has already probed more than 182,000 officials across numerous regions and at all levels of government. It has ensnared low-level cadres, mid-level functionaries and chiefs of major state-owned enterprises and ministries. It has deposed top military officials and even a former member of the hitherto immune Politburo Standing Committee, China's highest governing body. More than a year after its formal commencement and more than two years since its unofficial start with the downfall of Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, the campaign shows no sign of relenting."
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Turkey's Geographical Ambition - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...urkeys-geographical-ambition-0
shared by anonymous on 12 Aug 14 - Cached
  • Erdogan knows that Turkey must become a substantial power in the Near East in order to give him leverage in Europe. Erdogan's problem is that Turkey's geography between East and West contains as many vulnerabilities as it does benefits. This makes Erdogan at times overreach. But there is a historical and geographical logic to his excesses.
  • Because Ottoman Turkey was on the losing side of that war (along with Wilhelmine Germany and Hapsburg Austria), the victorious allies in the Treaty of Sevres of 1920 carved up Turkey and its environs, giving territory and zones of influence to Greece, Armenia, Italy, Britain and France.
  • Turkey's reaction to this humiliation was Kemalism, the philosophy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (the surname "Ataturk" means "Father of the Turks"), the only undefeated Ottoman general, who would lead a military revolt against the new occupying powers and thus create a sovereign Turkish state throughout the Anatolian heartland.
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  • Gone, in fact, was the entire multicultural edifice of the Ottoman Empire.
  • Kemalism not only rejected minorities, it rejected the Arabic script of the Turkish language.
  • Kemalism was a call to arms: the martial Turkish reaction to the Treaty of Sevres, to the same degree that Putin's neo-czarism was the authoritarian reaction to Boris Yeltsin's anarchy of 1990s Russia.
  • The problem was that Ataturk's vision of orienting Turkey so firmly to the West clashed with Turkey's geographic situation, one that straddled both West and East. An adjustment was in order. Turgut Ozal, a religious Turk with Sufi tendencies who was elected prime minister in 1983, provided it.
  • In Ozal's mind, Turkey did not have to choose between East and West. It was geographically enshrined in both and should thus politically embody both worlds. Ozal made Islam publicly respected again in Turkey, even as he enthusiastically supported U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the last phase of the Cold War.
  • Ozal used the cultural language of Islam to open the door to an acceptance of the Kurds.
  • there were many permutations in Islamic political thought and politics in Turkey between Ozal and Erdogan, but one thing stands clear: Both Ozal and Erdogan were like two bookends of the period.
  • Remember that in the interpretation of one of the West's greatest scholars of Islam, the late Marshall G.S. Hodgson of the University of Chicago, the Islamic faith was originally a merchants' religion, which united followers from oasis to oasis, allowing for ethical dealing.
  • In Islamic history, authentic religious connections across the Middle East and the Indian Ocean world could -- and did -- lead to wholesome business connections and political patronage. Thus is medievalism altogether relevant to the post-modern world.
  • Turkey may be trying its best to increase trade with its eastern neighbors, but it still does not come close to Turkey's large trade volumes with Europe, now mired in recession.
  • The root of the problem is partly geographic.
  • Turkey constitutes a bastion of mountains and plateau, inhabiting the half-island of the Anatolian land bridge between the Balkans and the Middle East. It is plainly not integral to a place like Iraq, for example, in the way that Iran is; and its Turkic language no longer enjoys the benefit of the Arabic script, which might give it more cultural leverage elsewhere in the Levant. But most important, Turkey is itself bedeviled by its own Kurdish population, complicating its attempts to exert leverage in neighboring Middle Eastern states.
  • The de facto breakup of Iraq has forced Turkey to follow a policy of constructive containment with Iraq's Kurdish north, but that has undermined Turkey's leverage in the rest of Iraq -- thus, in turn, undermining Turkey's attempts to influence Iran.
  • Turkey wants to influence the Middle East, but the problem is that it remains too much a part of the Middle East to extricate itself from the region's complexities.
  • Erdogan knows that he must partially solve the Kurdish problem at home in order to gain further leverage in the region. He has even mentioned aloud the Arabic word, vilayet, associated with the Ottoman Empire. This word denotes a semi-autonomous province -- a concept that might hold the key for an accommodation with local Kurds but could well reignite his own nationalist rivals within Turkey.
  • anonymous on 12 Aug 14
     
    "At a time when Europe and other parts of the world are governed by forgettable mediocrities, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister for a decade now, seethes with ambition. Perhaps the only other leader of a major world nation who emanates such a dynamic force field around him is Russia's Vladimir Putin, with whom the West is also supremely uncomfortable."
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