The herd mentality is all around us - 0 views
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“Personal space” and the idea of being left alone with one’s thoughts can almost be seen as modern add-ons to what humanity is like, and perhaps more typical of WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) societies than others
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WEIRD-ness being the coinage of Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist at Harvard and the author of “The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.” Reviewing the book for The Times, the Tufts University philosophy professor Daniel Dennett described Henrich’s concept thusly:The world today has billions of inhabitants who have minds strikingly different from ours. Roughly, we weirdos are individualistic, think analytically, believe in free will, take personal responsibility, feel guilt when we misbehave and think nepotism is to be vigorously discouraged, if not outlawed.
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They (the non-WEIRD majority) identify more strongly with family, tribe, clan and ethnic group, think more “holistically,” take responsibility for what their group does (and publicly punish those who besmirch the group’s honor), feel shame — not guilt — when they misbehave and think nepotism is a natural duty.
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Why the very concept of 'general knowledge' is under attack | Times2 | The Times - 0 views
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why has University Challenge lasted, virtually unchanged, for so long?
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The answer may lie in a famous theory about our brains put forward by the psychologist Raymond Cattell in 1963
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Cattell divided intelligence into two categories: fluid and crystallised. Fluid intelligence refers to basic reasoning and other mental activities that require minimal learning — just an alert and flexible brain.
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Is sanity returning to the trans debate? | The Spectator - 0 views
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Mermaids, the UK charity for, in their own words, ‘gender variant and transgender children’ is under the spotlight. Following investigations by the Telegraph and Mail newspapers, as well as demands from critics concerned about child safeguarding, the Charity Commission has launched a regulatory compliance case and have said that they have written to the organisation’s trustees
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The investigations found that Mermaids has been offering breast binders to girls reportedly as young as 13, and despite children saying their parents opposed the practice. Binding can often cause breathing difficulties, back pain and broken ribs. It was also uncovered that kids have been ‘congratulated’ online for identifying as transgender by staff and volunteers on the charity’s online help centre, with teenagers being advised that puberty blockers are safe and ‘totally reversible’.
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Mermaids has been given half a million pounds in total from the National Lottery, and lauded by the likes of Emma Watson, Jameela Jamil and even Harry and Meghan. In other words, the charity has had powerful supporters and been like Teflon for a very long time. Starbucks did a fundraiser for them, more than 40 schools invited them in to educate teachers and kids about ‘gender identity’, and a number of corporates sponsor the charity.
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Why it's as hard to escape an echo chamber as it is to flee a cult | Aeon Essays - 0 views
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there are two very different phenomena at play here, each of which subvert the flow of information in very distinct ways. Let’s call them echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Both are social structures that systematically exclude sources of information. Both exaggerate their members’ confidence in their beliefs.
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they work in entirely different ways, and they require very different modes of intervention
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An epistemic bubble is when you don’t hear people from the other side. An echo chamber is what happens when you don’t trust people from the other side.
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Whistleblower: Twitter misled investors, FTC and underplayed spam issues - Washington Post - 0 views
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Twitter executives deceived federal regulators and the company’s own board of directors about “extreme, egregious deficiencies” in its defenses against hackers, as well as its meager efforts to fight spam, according to an explosive whistleblower complaint from its former security chief.
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The complaint from former head of security Peiter Zatko, a widely admired hacker known as “Mudge,” depicts Twitter as a chaotic and rudderless company beset by infighting, unable to properly protect its 238 million daily users including government agencies, heads of state and other influential public figures.
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Among the most serious accusations in the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is that Twitter violated the terms of an 11-year-old settlement with the Federal Trade Commission by falsely claiming that it had a solid security plan. Zatko’s complaint alleges he had warned colleagues that half the company’s servers were running out-of-date and vulnerable software and that executives withheld dire facts about the number of breaches and lack of protection for user data, instead presenting directors with rosy charts measuring unimportant changes.
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How Kevins Got a Bad Rap in France | The New Yorker - 0 views
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Traditionally, the bourgeoisie dictated the fashions for names, which then percolated down the social scale to the middle and working classes. By looking out, rather than up, for inspiration, the parents of Kevins—along with Brandons, Ryans, Jordans, and other pop-culture-inspired names that took off in France in the nineteen-nineties—asserted the legitimacy of their tastes and their unwillingness to continue taking cues from their supposed superiors
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I asked Coulmont if he could think of any other first name that provoked such strong feelings. “The name Mohamed, perhaps,” he replied. “But Kevin triggers reactions from people who reject the cultural autonomy of the popular classes, while Mohamed triggers the reactions of xenophobes.”
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Kévin Fafournoux received some three hundred messages from Kevins around the country, testifying to their ordeals. Some told of being shunned after introducing themselves at bars, or zapped on dating apps as soon as their names popped up. One Kevin, a psychologist, said that he had agonized about whether to put his full name on the plaque outside his office building. “We find people who have a sense of malaise and who have real problems,” Fafournoux said. Coulmont found that students named Kevin perform proportionally worse on the baccalaureate exam, not because of a stigma surrounding the name but because Kevins tend to be, as he put it, of a “lower social origin.”
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Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Who else can’t read cursive? I asked the class. The answer: about two-thirds. And who can’t write it? Even more. What did they do about signatures? They had invented them by combining vestiges of whatever cursive instruction they may have had with creative squiggles and flourishes.
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Most of my students remembered getting no more than a year or so of somewhat desultory cursive training, which was often pushed aside by a growing emphasis on “teaching to the test.” Now in college, they represent the vanguard of a cursiveless world.
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the decline in cursive seems inevitable. Writing is, after all, a technology, and most technologies are sooner or later surpassed and replaced.
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Why Being Interrupted Is So Irritating, and Tips for Dealing With It - The New York Times - 0 views
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Why is it so annoying when people interrupt? For many of us, it can feel diminishing and condescending, said Maria Venetis, an associate professor of communication at Rutgers University. Sometimes it’s even “enraging,” she added, “because it suggests that my ideas or my participation aren’t valid.”
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Interrupters often have more “achieved or ascribed power” and are used to having people quiet down when they want to speak
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If you decide to cut in, Swann suggested “lifting your hand up ever so slightly and saying, ‘Hold on, I’d like to finish my thought.’”
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Opinion | Your Angry Uncle Wants to Talk About Politics. What Do You Do? - The New York... - 0 views
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In our combined years of experience helping people talk about difficult political issues from abortion to guns to race, we’ve found most can converse productively without sacrificing their beliefs or spoiling dinner
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It’s not merely possible to preserve your relationships while talking with folks you disagree with, but engaging respectfully will actually make you a more powerful advocate for the causes you care about.
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The key to persuasive political dialogue is creating a safe and welcoming space for diverse views with a compassionate spirit, active listening and personal storytelling
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'I Am Sorry': Harvard President Gay Addresses Backlash Over Congressional Testimony on ... - 0 views
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“I am sorry,” Gay said in an interview with The Crimson on Thursday. “Words matter.”“When words amplify distress and pain, I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret,” Gay added.
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But Stefanik pressed Gay to give a yes or no answer to the question about whether calls for the genocide of Jews constitute a violation of Harvard’s policies.“Antisemitic speech when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct and we do take action,” Gay said.
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“Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth,” Gay added
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The Perks of Taking the High Road - The Atlantic - 0 views
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hat is the point of arguing with someone who disagrees with you? Presumably, you would like them to change their mind. But that’s easier said than done
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Research shows that changing minds, especially changing beliefs that are tied strongly to people’s identity, is extremely difficult
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this personal attachment to beliefs encourages “competitive personal contests rather than collaborative searches for the truth.”
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To a growing number of scientists, climate change is an 'emergency' - The Washington Post - 0 views
Google's Relationship With Facts Is Getting Wobblier - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Misinformation or even disinformation in search results was already a problem before generative AI. Back in 2017, The Outline noted that a snippet once confidently asserted that Barack Obama was the king of America.
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This is what experts have worried about since ChatGPT first launched: false information confidently presented as fact, without any indication that it could be totally wrong. The problem is “the way things are presented to the user, which is Here’s the answer,” Chirag Shah, a professor of information and computer science at the University of Washington, told me. “You don’t need to follow the sources. We’re just going to give you the snippet that would answer your question. But what if that snippet is taken out of context?”
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Responding to the notion that Google is incentivized to prevent users from navigating away, he added that “we have no desire to keep people on Google.
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Every Annoying Letterboxd Behavior - Freddie deBoer - 0 views
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as a social network it’s a) made up of humans who are b) trying to stand out from the crowd like a goth at the homecoming pep rally.
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Here’s a list of some of the many annoying things people do
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Like-whoring by writing tweets instead of reviews. Like-whoring is the basic problem with every social network depraved enough to have a “like” function, of course. The most obvious like-whoring behavior on Letterboxd is the shoehorned-in one-liner review. On rare occasions, these are funny and apt and really say something; mostly, they’re people desperately trying to appear witty to strangers and succeeding only in appearing desperate
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9 Subtle Ways Technology Is Making Humanity Worse - 0 views
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This poor posture can lead not only to back and neck issues but psychological ones as well, including lower self-esteem and mood, decreased assertiveness and productivity, and an increased tendency to recall negative things
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Intense device usage can exhaust your eyes and cause eye strain, according to the Mayo Clinic, and can lead to symptoms such as headaches, difficulty concentrating, and watery, dry, itchy, burning, sore, or tired eyes. Overuse can also cause blurred or double vision and increased sensitivity to light.
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Using your devices too much before bedtime can lead to insomnia.
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