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Stalin, Russia's New Hero - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...in-vladimir-putins-russia.html history memory politics nationalism bias ethics propaganda
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 13 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Polls show a gradual improvement in perceptions of Stalin, who led the Soviet Union from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. A survey released on March 1 by the Levada Center, a research organization based in Moscow, found that 40 percent of Russians thought the Stalin era brought “more good than bad,” up from 27 percent in 2012. In an annual Levada survey published in January 2015, a majority of Russians (52 percent) said Stalin “probably” or “definitely” played a positive role in the country.
  • School textbooks and state television programs, even if they briefly mention his human rights abuses, celebrate Stalin as a great leader.
  • Why is Stalin now gaining popularity? For one, people remember less and less about his purges and prison camps — which in Russia began to be thoroughly investigated and openly discussed only in the 1980s. As the sharp edges of Stalin’s image have gone out of focus, he has become what Ilya Budraitskis, a leftist thinker and activist, described to me as an “empty shell that can be filled with different meanings.”
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'Son of Saul,' Kierkegaard and the Holocaust - NYTimes.com - 0 views

mobile.nytimes.com/...-kierkegaard-and-the-holocaust TOK philosophy ethics arts
shared by markfrankel18 on 09 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • There are generally two, radically different ways to relate to the world: objective and subjective. Objectivity is an orientation towards reality based on abstracting away, in various degrees, from subjective experience, and from individual points of view. A subjective orientation, on the other hand, is based on an attunement to the inner experience of feeling, sensing, thinking and valuing that unfolds in our day-to-day living. This distinction has been brought into contemporary philosophical discourse most notably by Thomas Nagel, in a number of his essays, most famously in “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”The spectacular success of science in the past 300 years has raised hopes that it also holds the key to guiding human beings towards a good life. Psychology and neuroscience has become a main source of life advice in the popular media. But philosophers have long held reservations about this scientific orientation to how to live life. The 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, for instance, famously pointed out, no amount of fact can legislate value, moral or otherwise. You cannot derive ought from is. But there is another, in some way more radical concern, expressed in Western philosophy most forcefully by Kierkegaard, and in literature by Dostoyevsky — two religiously inspired thinkers — namely that our experience of life matters in ineffable ways that no objective understanding of the world can capture.
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BBC - Culture - The Instagram artist who fooled thousands - 3 views

www.bbc.com/...am-artist-who-fooled-thousands TOK arts technology gender
shared by markfrankel18 on 09 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Artist Amalia Ulman created an online persona and recorded it on Instagram to ask questions about gender online. Cadence Kinsey asks what her project tells us about our own social media identities. facebook Twitter reddit WhatsApp Google + Email
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'Son of Saul,' Kierkegaard and the Holocaust - The New York Times - 1 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...-kierkegaard-and-the-holocaust holocaust arts ethics philosophy subjectivity objectivity science film history
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 07 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • The spectacular success of science in the past 300 years has raised hopes that it also holds the key to guiding human beings towards a good life. Psychology and neuroscience has become a main source of life advice in the popular media. But philosophers have long held reservations about this scientific orientation to how to live life.
  • The 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, for instance, famously pointed out, no amount of fact can legislate value, moral or otherwise. You cannot derive ought from is.
  • Science is the best method we have for approaching the world objectively. But in fact it is not science per se that is the problem, from the point of view of subjectivity. It is objectivizing, in any of its forms. One can frame a decision, for example, in objective terms. One might decide between career choices by weighing differences in workloads, prestige, pay and benefits between, say, working for an advanced technology company versus working for a studio in Hollywood. We are often encouraged to make choices by framing them in this way. Alternatively, one might try to frame the decision more in terms of what it might be like to work in either occupation; in this case, one needs to have the patience to dwell in experience long enough for one’s feelings about either alternative to emerge. In other words, one might deliberate subjectively.
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  • Most commonly, we turn our back on subjectivity to escape from pain. Suffering, one’s own, or others’, might become bearable, one hopes, when one takes a step back and views it objectively, conceptually, abstractly. And when it comes to something as monumental as the Holocaust, one’s mind cannot help but be numbed by the sheer magnitude of it. How could one feel the pain of all those people, sympathize with millions? Instead one is left with the “facts,” the numbers.
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Why are so many smart people such idiots about philosophy? - Quartz - 0 views

qz.com/...e-such-idiots-about-philosophy TOK philosophy reason
shared by markfrankel18 on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Philosophy is important for more than just a while, and has serious, practical uses for all of society. There are countless examples of philosophy of mind theories’ relevance to neuroscientists, or cases where political philosophers have shaped politicians.
  • The 18th century philosopher David Hume’s argument that we don’t have a reasonable understanding of causation at all, but only presume cause and effect when two things have been observed as conjoined in the past, is notoriously difficult to refute. The problem underlies much of physics and is hardly insignificant.
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Germany struggles with remnants of the Reich - CSMonitor.com - 0 views

m.csmonitor.com/...les-with-remnants-of-the-Reich TOK history memory
shared by markfrankel18 on 05 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Nuremberg is not alone in dealing anew with its Nazi heritage. The entire country has been swept into a debate this year about the release of a new edition of “Mein Kampf,” the first time Hitler’s book has been published in Germany in 70 years. Both clashes come as Germany faces the reemergence of xenophobia that has flared as the country sits at the center of Europe’s refugee crisis. Some worry that both the book and the buildings, if renovated, will become rallying points for today’s neo-Nazis. 
  • The debates in Germany highlight a fundamental question that many countries in the world struggle with: What do you do with symbols of a past that many people today find abhorrent?In the United States, fights over the display of the Confederate flag in public places surface almost weekly. Ukraine is systematically removing statues of Vladimir Lenin and other totems of the country’s Soviet past. In Spain, where authorities in Madrid are renaming streets that commemorate Francisco Franco, divisions simmer over demands to remove the late dictator’s body from the vast monument named  Valley of the Fallen that glorifies his reign.The Rising Sun flag – a controversial symbol of Japan’s imperial history – is still used by the country’s Maritime Self-Defense Force, much to the anger of Japan’s neighbors. Britain has been embroiled in a controversy over whether to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes – for whom the prestigious Rhodes scholarship is named – from a college at Oxford University because of critics’ concerns about his ties to Southern Africa’s colonial and racist past. The university says it will stay right where it is.
  • Yet in few places do historical symbols evoke more sensitivity than in Germany. 
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New Critique Sees Flaws in Landmark Analysis of Psychology Studies - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-reproducibility-project.html psychology reproducibility replicability statistics human sciences
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 04 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • A landmark 2015 report that cast doubt on the results of dozens of published psychology studies has exposed deep divisions in the field, serving as a reality check for many working researchers but as an affront to others who continue to insist the original research was sound. On Thursday, a group of four researchers publicly challenged the report, arguing that it was statistically flawed and, as a result, wrong.The 2015 report, called the Reproducibility Project, found that less than 40 studies in a sample of 100 psychology papers in leading journals held up when retested by an independent team. The new critique by the four researchers countered that when that team’s statistical methodology was adjusted, the rate was closer to 100 percent.
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'Cheating watches' warning for exams - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...education-35716523 ethics cheating education
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 04 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Teachers have complained about "cheating watches" being sold online to give students an unfair advantage in exams.These digital watches include an "emergency button" to quickly switch from hidden text to a clock face.The watches hold data or written information which can be read in exams.But a deputy head from Bath has warned about the scale of this "hidden market" and says it could tempt stressed students into cheating.
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Unreliable research: Trouble at the lab | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...alarming-degree-it-not-trouble TOK science errors replicability peer-review results
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 28 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things wrong. But they also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over time as other scientists try to take the work further.
  • Evidence that many more dodgy results are published than are subsequently corrected or withdrawn calls that much-vaunted capacity for self-correction into question. There are errors in a lot more of the scientific papers being published, written about and acted on than anyone would normally suppose, or like to think.
  • Various factors contribute to the problem. Statistical mistakes are widespread. The peer reviewers who evaluate papers before journals commit to publishing them are much worse at spotting mistakes than they or others appreciate. Professional pressure, competition and ambition push scientists to publish more quickly than would be wise. A career structure which lays great stress on publishing copious papers exacerbates all these problems.
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  • The idea that the same experiments always get the same results, no matter who performs them, is one of the cornerstones of science’s claim to objective truth. If a systematic campaign of replication does not lead to the same results, then either the original research is flawed (as the replicators claim) or the replications are (as many of the original researchers on priming contend). Either way, something is awry.
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 08 Nov 13
     
    "Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things wrong. But they also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over time as other scientists try to take the work further. Evidence that many more dodgy results are published than are subsequently corrected or withdrawn calls that much-vaunted capacity for self-correction into question. There are errors in a lot more of the scientific papers being published, written about and acted on than anyone would normally suppose, or like to think."
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What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...to-build-the-perfect-team.html human sciences psychology communication
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Five years ago, Google — one of the most public proselytizers of how studying workers can transform productivity — became focused on building the perfect team. In the last decade, the tech giant has spent untold millions of dollars measuring nearly every aspect of its employees’ lives. Google’s People Operations department has scrutinized everything from how frequently particular people eat together (the most productive employees tend to build larger networks by rotating dining companions) to which traits the best managers share (unsurprisingly, good communication and avoiding micromanaging is critical; more shocking, this was news to many Google managers).The company’s top executives long believed that building the best teams meant combining the best people. They embraced other bits of conventional wisdom as well, like ‘‘It’s better to put introverts together,’’ said Abeer Dubey, a manager in Google’s People Analytics division, or ‘‘Teams are more effective when everyone is friends away from work.’’ But, Dubey went on, ‘‘it turned out no one had really studied which of those were true.’’In 2012, the company embarked on an initiative — code-named Project Aristotle — to study hundreds of Google’s teams and figure out why some stumbled while others soared.
  • As they struggled to figure out what made a team successful, Rozovsky and her colleagues kept coming across research by psychologists and sociologists that focused on what are known as ‘‘group norms.’’
  • As the researchers studied the groups, however, they noticed two behaviors that all the good teams generally shared. First, on the good teams, members spoke in roughly the same proportion, a phenomenon the researchers referred to as ‘‘equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.’’ On some teams, everyone spoke during each task; on others, leadership shifted among teammates from assignment to assignment. But in each case, by the end of the day, everyone had spoken roughly the same amount. ‘‘As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well,’’ Woolley said. ‘‘But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.’’Second, the good teams all had high ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ — a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues. One of the easiest ways to gauge social sensitivity is to show someone photos of people’s eyes and ask him or her to describe what the people are thinking or feeling — an exam known as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. People on the more successful teams in Woolley’s experiment scored above average on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. They seemed to know when someone was feeling upset or left out. People on the ineffective teams, in contrast, scored below average. They seemed, as a group, to have less sensitivity toward their colleagues.
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BBC - Earth - Black holes made simple with Stephen Hawking - 1 views

www.bbc.com/...n-anything-escape-a-black-hole science physics cosmology astronomy space universe
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Fact can be stranger than fiction. This is especially true of black holes, as Prof Stephen Hawking explains.For instance as soon as you entered the black hole, reality would split in two. "In one, you would be instantly incinerated, and in the other you would plunge on into the black hole utterly unharmed," as we have previously explored.In the 2016 Reith lectures broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Prof Hawking further examines and challenges the latest scientific thinking about black holes.
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The Ethical Quandaries You Should Think About The Next Time You Look At Your Phone | Fa... - 3 views

www.fastcompany.com/...bout-the-next-time-you-look-at ethics technology
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • To what extent can we and should we aspire to create machines that can outthink us? For example, Netflix has an algorithm that can predict what movies you will like based on the ones you've already seen and rated. Suppose a dating site were to develop a similar algorithm—maybe even a more sophisticated one—and predict with some accuracy which partner would be the best match for you. Whose advice would you trust more? The advice of the smart dating app or the advice of your parents or your friends?
  • The question, it seems to me, is should we use new genetic technologies only to cure disease and repair injury, or also to make ourselves better-than-well. Should we aspire to become the masters of our natures to protect our children and improve their life prospects?AdvertisementAdvertisement This goes back to the role of accident. Is the unpredictability of the child an important precondition of the unconditional love of parents for children? My worry is that if we go beyond health, we run the risk of turning parenthood into an extension of the consumer society.
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The Bitter Fight Over the Benefits of Bilingualism - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...462114 language human sciences SocialScience psychology linguistics bilingualism reproducibility replicability experiment brain neuroscience bias confirmation bias publication bias
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • It’s an intuitive claim, but also a profound one. It asserts that the benefits of bilingualism extend well beyond the realm of language, and into skills that we use in every aspect of our lives. This view is now widespread, heralded by a large community of scientists, promoted in books and magazines, and pushed by advocacy organizations.
  • But a growing number of psychologists say that this mountain of evidence is actually a house of cards, built upon flimsy foundations.
  • Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language, was one of them. In two large studies, involving 360 and 504 children respectively, he found no evidence that Basque kids, raised on Basque and Spanish at home and at school, had better mental control than monolingual Spanish children.
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  • Similar controversies have popped up throughout psychology, fueling talk of a “reproducibility crisis” in which scientists struggle to duplicate classic textbook results. In many of these cases, classic psychological phenomena that seem to be backed by years of supportive evidence, suddenly become fleeting and phantasmal. The causes are manifold. Journals are more likely to accept positive, attention-grabbing papers than negative, contradictory ones, which pushes scientists towards running small studies or tweaking experiments on the fly—practices that lead to flashy, publishable discoveries that may not actually be true.
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The Wrong Way to Teach Math - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-wrong-way-to-teach-math.html math education paradigm
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • HERE’S an apparent paradox: Most Americans have taken high school mathematics, including geometry and algebra, yet a national survey found that 82 percent of adults could not compute the cost of a carpet when told its dimensions and square-yard price.
  • In fact, what’s needed is a different kind of proficiency, one that is hardly taught at all. The Mathematical Association of America calls it “quantitative literacy.” I prefer the O.E.C.D.’s “numeracy,” suggesting an affinity with reading and writing.
  • Many students fall by the wayside. It’s not just the difficulty of the classes. They can’t see how such formulas connect with the lives they’ll be leading.
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  • Finally, we talk about how math can help us think about reorganizing the world around us in ways that make more sense. For example, there’s probably nothing more cumbersome than how we measure time: How quickly can you compute 17 percent of a week, calibrated in hours (or minutes, or seconds)? So our class undertook to decimalize time.
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The Excrement Experiment - The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...excrement-experiment science experiment research biology
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Crohn’s disease affects as many as seven hundred thousand Americans, but, like other autoimmune disorders, it remains poorly understood and is considered incurable. (Autoimmune disorders are thought to arise when the immune system attacks healthy tissue, mistaking it for a threat.) The standard treatments for Crohn’s often don’t work, or work only temporarily, and many have serious side effects.
  • His mother showed him an article from the Times about a man who had been nearly bedridden by ulcerative colitis—a condition related to Crohn’s—and who had largely recovered after a month or so of fecal transplants. Gravel found a how-to book on Amazon and bought the recommended equipment: a blender, a rectal syringe, saline solution, surgical gloves, Tupperware containers. His wife agreed to be his donor.
  • New research suggests that the microbes in our guts—and, consequently, in our stool—may play a role in conditions ranging from autoimmune disorders to allergies and obesity, and reports of recoveries by patients who, with or without the help of doctors, have received these bacteria-rich infusions have spurred demand for the procedure. A year and a half ago, a few dozen physicians in the United States offered FMT. Today, hundreds do, and OpenBiome, a nonprofit stool bank founded last year by graduate students at M.I.T., ships more than fifty specimens each week to hospitals in thirty-six states. The Cleveland Clinic named fecal transplantation one of the top ten medical innovations for 2014, and biotech companies are competing to put stool-based therapies through clinical trials and onto the market. In medicine, at any rate, human excrement has become a precious commodity.
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Up All Night - The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...up-all-night-2 science research sleep
shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • In the nineteen-eighties, Allan Rechtschaffen and Bernard Bergmann, both, like Kleitman, sleep researchers at the University of Chicago, performed what is now considered to be one of the classic experiments in the field. It showed that rats, when totally deprived of sleep, would, after two or three weeks, drop dead. But Rechtschaffen and Bergmann could never figure out the precise cause of the rats’ deaths, and so, they wrote in a follow-up paper in 2002, even “that dramatic symptom did not tell us much about why sleep was necessary.” Rechtschaffen has observed that “if sleep doesn’t serve an absolutely vital function, it is the greatest mistake evolution ever made.”
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