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markfrankel18

The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld (Part 1) - NYTimes.com - 2 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...inty-of-donald-rumsfeld-part-1

TOK reason evidence Iraq certainty history bias

shared by markfrankel18 on 28 Mar 14 - No Cached
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  • When I first met Donald Rumsfeld in his offices in Washington, D.C., one of the things I said to him was that if we could provide an answer to the American public about why we went to war in Iraq, we would be rendering an important service. He agreed. Unfortunately, after having spent 33 hours over the course of a year interviewing Mr. Rumsfeld, I fear I know less about the origins of the Iraq war than when I started. A question presents itself: How could that be? How could I know less rather than more? Was he hiding something? Or was there really little more than met the eye?
  • Few people today remember that Rumsfeld was ostensibly responding to Miklaszewski’s request for evidence. What evidence do you have that Iraq is supplying terrorists with W.M.D.? Rumsfeld’s answer was a non-answer — not just an evasion or a misdirection. Many people believe Rumsfeld’s reply was brilliant. I think otherwise.
  • These 17th century debates remind us that if you have an unshakable belief in something, then no amount of evidence (or lack of evidence) can convince you otherwise. (There are always anti-rationalist objections to everything and anything. It is curious, however, to hear them in the 21st century rather than in the 17th.)
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC News - Nimrud: Outcry as IS bulldozers attack ancient Iraq site - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-31760656

history memory religious knowledge systems archeology culture

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 06 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Archaeologists and officials have expressed outrage about the bulldozing of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud by Islamic State militants in Iraq.
  • IS says ancient shrines and statues are "false idols" that have to be smashed. "They are erasing our history," said Iraqi archaeologist Lamia al-Gailani.
  • Profile of Nimrud Ancient Assyrian city on the River Tigris Capital of Assyria for about 150 years First excavations in modern times undertaken by Europeans starting in the 1840s Treasures unearthed included sections of royal palaces, individual statues and smaller artefacts Investigations stopped for decades but in 1949 Sir Max Mallowan (husband of writer Agatha Christie) began fresh excavations Extensive photographic record of remaining treasures made in the 1970s
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • "There is absolutely no political or religious justification for the destruction of humanity's cultural heritage." Dr Gailani told the BBC:"Nimrud for us in Iraq and for me as an archaeologist is one of the most important [sites]. There are still quite a lot of things that are standing - the reliefs and the statues, the famous winged bulls. "They are erasing our history. I wish it was a nightmare and I could wake up."
markfrankel18

The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld (Part 4) - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...inty-of-donald-rumsfeld-part-4

TOK Iraq evidence history reason bias

shared by markfrankel18 on 03 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • What do I take from this? To me, progress hinges on our ability to discriminate knowledge from belief, fact from fantasy, on the basis of evidence. It’s not the known unknown from the known known, or the unknown unknown from the known unknown, that is crucial to progress. It’s what evidence do you have for X, Y or Z? What is the justification for your beliefs? When confronted with such a question, Rumsfeld was never, ever able to come up with an answer.
  • The history of the Iraq war is replete with false assumptions, misinterpreted evidence, errors in judgment. Mistakes can be made. We all make them. But Rumsfeld created a climate where mistakes could be made with little or no way to correct them. Basic questions about evidence for W.M.D. were replaced with equivocations and obfuscations. A hall of mirrors. An infinite regress to nowhere. What do I know I know? What do I know I know I know? What do I know I don’t know I don’t know? Ad infinitum. Absence of evidence could be evidence of absence or evidence of presence. Take your pick. An obscurantist’s dream. There’s a quotation I have never liked. It comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up. “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Not really. The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and know they are opposed.
  • Rumsfeld, too, may believe what he is saying. But believing something does not make it true. The question is why he believed what he believed. On the basis of what evidence? Mere belief is not enough.
Lawrence Hrubes

Why Do People Persist in Believing Things That Just Aren't True? : The New Yorker - 1 views

www.newyorker.com/...ings-that-just-arent-true.html

belief false beliefs science psychology identity errors TOK

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 22 May 14 - No Cached
  • Last month, Brendan Nyhan, a professor of political science at Dartmouth, published the results of a study that he and a team of pediatricians and political scientists had been working on for three years. They had followed a group of almost two thousand parents, all of whom had at least one child under the age of seventeen, to test a simple relationship: Could various pro-vaccination campaigns change parental attitudes toward vaccines? Each household received one of four messages: a leaflet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating that there had been no evidence linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (M.M.R.) vaccine and autism; a leaflet from the Vaccine Information Statement on the dangers of the diseases that the M.M.R. vaccine prevents; photographs of children who had suffered from the diseases; and a dramatic story from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about an infant who almost died of measles. A control group did not receive any information at all. The goal was to test whether facts, science, emotions, or stories could make people change their minds. The result was dramatic: a whole lot of nothing. None of the interventions worked.
  • Until recently, attempts to correct false beliefs haven’t had much success. Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Bristol whose research into misinformation began around the same time as Nyhan’s, conducted a review of misperception literature through 2012. He found much speculation, but, apart from his own work and the studies that Nyhan was conducting, there was little empirical research. In the past few years, Nyhan has tried to address this gap by using real-life scenarios and news in his studies: the controversy surrounding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the questioning of Obama’s birth certificate, and anti-G.M.O. activism. Traditional work in this area has focussed on fictional stories told in laboratory settings, but Nyhan believes that looking at real debates is the best way to learn how persistently incorrect views of the world can be corrected.
  • One thing he learned early on is that not all errors are created equal. Not all false information goes on to become a false belief—that is, a more lasting state of incorrect knowledge—and not all false beliefs are difficult to correct. Take astronomy. If someone asked you to explain the relationship between the Earth and the sun, you might say something wrong: perhaps that the sun rotates around the Earth, rising in the east and setting in the west. A friend who understands astronomy may correct you. It’s no big deal; you simply change your belief. But imagine living in the time of Galileo, when understandings of the Earth-sun relationship were completely different, and when that view was tied closely to ideas of the nature of the world, the self, and religion. What would happen if Galileo tried to correct your belief? The process isn’t nearly as simple. The crucial difference between then and now, of course, is the importance of the misperception. When there’s no immediate threat to our understanding of the world, we change our beliefs. It’s when that change contradicts something we’ve long held as important that problems occur.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC News - Are most victims of terrorism Muslim? - 1 views

www.bbc.com/...magazine-30883058

TOK statistics terrorism death casualties

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 20 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • After the Charlie Hebdo attack, a Paris imam went to the scene and condemned the murders. "These victims are martyrs, and I shall pray for them with all my heart," said Hassen Chalghoumi (above). He was also quoted as saying that 95% of victims of terrorism are Muslim. How accurate is this statistic?
  • When people in the West think of terrorist attacks, they may think of Charlie Hebdo, or the 7/7 London tube and bus bombs, the Madrid train bombs and of course 9/11 - and although some Muslims did die in these attacks, most of the victims wouldn't have been Muslim. The overall number of deadly terrorist attacks in France, the UK, Spain and the US, however, is very low by international standards. Between 2004-2013, the UK suffered 400 terrorist attacks, mostly in Northern Ireland, and almost all of them were non-lethal. The US suffered 131 attacks, fewer than 20 of which were lethal. France suffered 47 attacks. But in Iraq, there were 12,000 attacks and 8,000 of them were lethal.
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