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kortanekev

'Less Than Human': The Psychology Of Cruelty : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...eir-victims-as-less-than-human

psychology labeling language prejudice

shared by kortanekev on 06 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • it's important to define and describe dehumanization, because it's what opens the door for cruelty and genocide.
  • it can be helpful to understand what it is that allows human beings "to overcome the very deep and natural inhibitions they have against treating other people like game animals or vermin or dangerous predators."
  • Mostly, they were seen as "soulless animals." And that dramatic dehumanization made it possible for great atrocities to take place.
  • kortanekev on 06 Nov 16
     
    The use of dehumanizing labels has allowed for the mind to perceive the world in vast oversimplifications -- in recognizing every member of a group as exhibiting certain socially manufactured characteristics  -- and to use this to rationalize one's treatment towards a certain group. Language in this way (through mental short cuts and deep rooted prejudice) has posed the greatest threat to human rights, abuse of power, and their lasting effects on our culture today. 
anonymous

U.S. Disaster Costs Doubled in 2020, Reflecting Costs of Climate Change - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...2020-disaster-costs.html

shared by anonymous on 12 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters across the United States caused $95 billion in damage last year, according to new data, almost double the amount in 2019 and the third-highest losses since 2010.
  • Those losses occurred during a year that was one of the warmest on record
  • “Climate change plays a role in this upward trend of losses,”
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • continued building in high-risk areas had also contributed to the growing losses.Image
  • Topping the list was Hurricane Laura, which caused $13 billion in damage when it struck Southwestern Louisiana in late August.
  • The storms caused $43 billion in losses, almost half the total for all U.S. disasters last year.
  • In addition to the number of storms, the 2020 hurricane season was unusually devastating because climate change is making storms more likely to stall once they hit land
  • The next costliest category of natural disasters was convective storms, which includes thunderstorms, tornadoes, hailstorms and derechos, and caused $40 billion in losses last year.
  • Wildfires caused another $16 billion in losses. Last year’s wildfires stood out not just because of the numbers of acres burned or houses destroyed
  • Homeowners and governments around the United States need to do a better job of making buildings and communities more resilient to natural disasters
  • “We can’t, as an industry, continue to just collect more and more money, and rebuild and rebuild and rebuild in the same way,” Mr. Griffin said in an interview. “We’ve got to place an emphasis on preventing and reducing loss.”
  • The single costliest disaster of 2020 was a series of floods that hit China last summer, which according to Munich Re caused $17 billion worth of damage.
  • Of the $67 billion in losses from natural disasters across Asia last year, only $3 billion, or 4.5 percent, was covered by insurance.
huffem4

Accommodating Children's Anxiety Can Do More Harm Than Good | Psychology Today - 1 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...-anxiety-can-do-more-harm-good

psychology research emotion

shared by huffem4 on 25 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • Parents face great challenges raising kids in our increasingly complex, frightening and uncertain world. The CDC reports that anxiety is on the rise among children, affecting 7.1 percent of children 6 to 17 years of age, about 4.4 million U.S. kids. The majority are untreated.
  • Children face myriad challenges—bullying, developmental trauma, information overload, global political upheavals and conflict, climate change, high rates of family breakup, and so on.
  • Learning to ride out anxiety and negotiate firm-but-flexible boundaries is a language much harder to learn in adulthood.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Parental consistency can help protect children from emotional problems. Children can and do become caught in the middle between parents who aren’t getting along. Such "triangulation" distracts children from addressing their own needs. Compassion buffers empathy, allowing parents to tolerate their children's distress without getting overwhelmed, numbing out, or becoming enraged. Parents are encouraged to engage their curiosity when they feel the urge to accommodate or try to overpower children.
  • Perception was important for mothers. Mothers who reported that their children showed more severe symptoms were more likely to use accommodation, but maternal accommodation was unrelated to the mothers' own reported distress and emotional state. It may be that mothers wish to spare their children anticipated distress, and that this desire is different from overall distress. Including measures of empathy and parental distress due specifically to child's distress could tease this apart in future studies.
  • Accommodation increases anxiety because youngsters never have a chance to fail and persist. This can stunt self-efficacy, preventing “fear extinction” and “habituation” to anxiety-provoking situations. It's a vicious cycle, increasing the chance of giving up too easily with future challenges, though innate resilience, related to child temperament, can mitigate the effects of problematic environmental factors.
  • Higher child distress and emotional dysregulation, as measured by parents, was associated with increased parental accommodation. Parental accommodation was not correlated with child-reported distress and emotional dysregulation.
  • maternal accommodation was correlated with child anxiety and externalizing behaviors (in which emotions are directed outward, typically in aggressive or destructive ways, rather than processed in healthy ways or bottled up)
  • Accommodation fixes problems short-term—for instance when a parent "gives in" to a child's tantrums to get them to stop screaming, or bribes a child to do something rather than building intrinsic motivation with a longer-term process of rewarding effort and building an inner sense of confidence
ilanaprincilus06

Is addiction really a disease? | Life and style | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...is-addiction-really-a-disease

addiction drugs disease learned behaviors

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Treating addiction as if it is a learned pattern of thinking gives addicts the chance to stay clean
  • Many are coming to see addiction as a learned pattern of thinking and acting – a pattern that can be unlearned.
    • ilanaprincilus06
      ilanaprincilus06 on 03 Nov 20
       
      Since it can be unlearned, are there some people just not willing to either help a person with addiction because of the societal norm that it is not always "completely unlearned"?
  • I recognise that the brain changes with addiction, but I see those changes as an expression of ongoing plasticity in an organ designed to change with strong emotions and repeated experiences.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • I see addiction as an attitude or self-concept that grows and crystallises with experience, often initiated by difficulties in childhood or adolescence. Indeed, addiction is in some ways like a disease, but that’s only half the story.
  • Many take comfort in the disease label, because it helps them make sense of how difficult it is to quit. But for others, the disease label isn’t just wrong, it’s repugnant – it’s a rationale for helplessness and an obstacle to healing.
  • “I am not diseased… I don’t have a disease. I had past traumas, environmental factors and learned behaviours… I feel I have learned new things… new skills opened up… new pathways that were underdeveloped.”
  • Several studies have shown that a belief in the disease concept of addiction increases the probability of relapse.
  • If we can acknowledge that addiction is like a disease in some ways and very much unlike a disease in other ways, maybe we can stop trying to label it and pay more attention to the best means for overcoming it.
caelengrubb

No, You're Not Left-Brained or Right-Brained | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...u-re-not-left-brained-or-right

shared by caelengrubb on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • there’s no such thing as right-brained or left-brained.
  • The left cerebral hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and about 90 percent of people prefer to write with their right hand, indicating left brain motor dominance.
  • language skills are left lateralized, or largely controlled by the left hemisphere, in over 90 percent of people. That includes 78 percent of people who are not right-handed.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • The left cerebral hemisphere is to the “right-brained” poet or novelist as the hamstrings and quadriceps are to a competitive sprinter
  • Because the ability to understand and produce language is focused in the left side of the brain in almost everyone, caricaturing these creative types as using their right brain more than their left brain is silly.
  • visual-spatial abilities—localized to the right cerebral hemisphere—are skills that are absolutely critical for “left-brained” talents like science or engineering.
  • But much of our obsession with the brain’s left and right cerebral hemispheres may have started with studies of split brain patients in the ‘50s. During this time, people who suffered multiple seizures a day underwent intense surgery to treat their epilepsy.
  • To calm the electrical storms that ravaged these patients’ brains, the nerve fibers connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain were cut. These fibers are collectively known as the corpus callosum
  • Once the corpus callosum is severed on the operating table, the new split brain patient appears astonishingly normal at first glance
  • But careful experiments reveal that this person is really two persons, two streams of consciousness in one body
  • only the left hemisphere can speak
  • The right hemisphere cannot speak, but it can point to words like “yes” or “no” to answer a question
  • Each hemisphere, it seems, maintains independent beliefs and personalities, challenging the notion that we are each an indivisible “self.”
  • We are all “brain-ambidextrous.”
kaylynfreeman

COVID-19 and Compassion Fatigue | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...ovid-19-and-compassion-fatigue

psychology brain science knowledge bias

shared by kaylynfreeman on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • “Researchers say our brains aren’t wired to make sense of big numbers.” A story about a single tragic death evokes waves of sadness and emotion in us. We focus on the individual’s details, their life story, and the circumstances of their death. As the number of victims increases, our ability to muster empathy fades, something often called compassion fatigue.
  • If we talk instead about multiple people like Constance Johnson at once or just give the numbers involved—about 4,200 women die every year from cervical cancer—the information loses its impact. We don’t comprehend a number like 4,200 the way we do the story of a single individual.
  • As the results of a study by Paul Slovic and colleagues in 2014 showed, the tendency to be charitable and feel compassion diminishes rapidly as the number of people involved increases from one.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In support of compassion fatigue, both self-report and physiological measures of affect showed that positive affect declined substantially when the group size was two or more.”
  • After several puffs of neurotransmitter are released, however, that channel may undergo a process called “desensitization” in which it closes and stops responding to signals from the presynaptic neuron.
  • “Observing that the tendency to mentalize with one person more than many people is built into our brains does not mean we should accept it as an excuse for acting passively when facing large-scale crises. This observation implies, however, that we can no longer rely on our moral intuitions.”
  • eople may cope with the enormity of the pandemic by trying to find ways to minimize or even dismiss it. Saying that there are other diseases that cause more deaths than COVID-19 could be one such emotional mechanism.
  • We need to tell more stories about real people who have had COVID-19 and experienced it as more than mild symptoms, including stories about people who have been killed by the disease. The stories need to be told one by one. That way, we will be harnessing what we know from cognitive neuroscience to bring the sad message home.
tongoscar

Singapore's climate change plan needs more ambition | ASEAN Today - 0 views

www.aseantoday.com/...hange-plan-needs-more-ambition

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Each person in Singapore produces more greenhouse gas emissions than their counterpart in Indonesia, China or the United Kingdom. The city-state may be responsible for just 0.11% of total global emissions, but Singapore ranks 27th out of 142 countries in terms of per capita emissions.
  • In 2015, Singapore pledged to reduce its emission intensity, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions for every dollar of gross domestic product (GDP), by 36% from 2005 levels come 2030. The city-state also committed to stabilising and capping its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.  
  • Countries are expected to update their climate pledges by the end of this year but do not necessarily have to submit completely new ones.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Singapore’s climate pledge in 2015 was deemed a “stretch target” that would not be easily met, as efforts towards sustainable development in the country were still in their nascent stages.
  • Singapore has installed large-scale floating solar panels in its reservoirs and coastal shorelines. Efforts are also being made towards making 80% of the buildings in the country green by 2030. Come 2040, only 10% of rush-hour commutes in Singapore will be made via private transportation.
  • Protecting Singapore against climate change will be costly. Up to S$100 billion will be poured into measures to cope with rising sea levels caused by climate change. Prevention is better than cure. Singapore, and countries around the world, must identify their vulnerabilities and undertake the actions required to defend their long-term national interests. But these measures should not become a substitute for ambitious efforts to reduce emissions and prevent temperatures from rising wherever possible.
katherineharron

Trump threatens to crack down on social media platforms after Twitter labels his tweets... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 27 May 20 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to "strongly regulate" or even shut down social media platforms after Twitter applied a fact-check to two of his tweets this week.
  • "Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen," Trump tweeted Wednesday
  • Trump's Twitter outburst followed an unprecedented decision by the platform on Tuesday evening to apply a fact-checking label to Trump's content for the first time.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Shortly after the labels were applied, Trump took to Twitter to claim the company "is interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election" and "stifling FREE SPEECH." He added that he "will not allow it to happen!"
  • "The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google," and promised, without specifics, that his administration would "remedy this illegal situation."
  • Meanwhile, major tech industry players remain under federal and state antitrust investigation. But antitrust probes tend to be highly technical and are usually limited to the impact of corporate conduct on competition in the marketplace.
blythewallick

School Start Times and Teens' Sleep Needs | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...rt-times-and-teens-sleep-needs

science psychology research brain science knowledge education

shared by blythewallick on 21 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that middle and high school start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. And just this week, California was the first state to pass into law school start times of no earlier than 8 a.m. for middle schools and 8:30 a.m.
  • We know that adolescents undergo significant biological changes that impact their circadian rhythm—as a result, their biological clocks shift so that their bodies naturally want to go to sleep later. However, in many communities, these biological shifts are at odds with school schedules which often have younger, elementary school age youth beginning school later, and older, high-school teens beginning school earlier.
  • As a result of the mismatch between biological changes and earlier school start times, teenagers are often unable to sleep the recommended 8-10 hours per night that is recommended for this age. In fact, national studies show that teenagers are one of the most sleep-deprived groups in the country with only 15 percent getting the recommended hours of sleep.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The research is clear that sleep is critical for healthy functioning and development at all points across the lifespan. Sleep disturbances have been linked to a host of outcomes including more difficulty concentrating and learning new material, lower academic performance, higher rates of obesity, increased inflammation, higher mortality, and compromised psychological health.
  • researchers found that students slept an average of 34 minutes more after the start time delay. Moreover, the increase in sleep duration was explained by students waking up later (that is, students were still going to bed around the same time). In addition, delaying school start times was also associated with higher grades, lower levels of daytime sleepiness, and fewer first-period tardies and absences. 
  • With California schools leading the way in implementing a delay at the state level, in the next three years, it is my hope that we will have more information and data about all the ways in which school start times impact all levels of a school system (e.g., bus drivers, teachers, students, parents, families, administrators) and for all students.  
sissij

Common Science Myths That Most People Believe | IFLScience - 0 views

www.iflscience.com/...ence-myths-most-people-believe

myths science knowledge

shared by sissij on 10 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • We only use 10% of our brains.ADVERTISINGinRead invented by TeadsADVERTISINGinRead invented by Teads It's true that there’s a great deal we don’t know about the brain, but we certainly do know that we use our entire brain.
  • Sugar makes children hyperactive. Attending any child’s birthday party where cake, ice cream, and sugary drinks about would make just about anyone a believer that sugar influences hyperactivity. There has not been much evidence to suggest that the so-called “sugar buzz” is actually real for children (aside from a small subset with an insulin disorder coupled with certain psychiatric disorders).
  • Antibiotics kill viruses.  This one pops up every cold and flu season. Antibiotics, by their very definition, kill bacteria.
  • sissij on 10 Jan 17
     
    This article really surprise me that some of my intuitions are wrong. I always thought that if we swallow the gum, then the gum will stick in our stomach and never go away. However, it will pass along as waste. This shows that for many people, some fields of science they learned about are usually second-handed. Many "scientific knowledge" we have are not first handed and they have been modified. Before we are using them as scientific knowledge, we need first to make sure that they are really science, not another myth. --Sissi (1/10/2017)
Javier E

Wielding Claims of 'Fake News,' Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...vatives-mainstream-media-.html

fake news right journalism fact-checking facts disinformation mainstream psychology language

shared by Javier E on 26 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • The C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the White House may all agree that Russia was behind the hacking that interfered with the election. But that was of no import to the website Breitbart News, which dismissed reports on the intelligence assessment as “left-wing fake news.”
  • Rush Limbaugh has diagnosed a more fundamental problem. “The fake news is the everyday news” in the mainstream media, he said on his radio show recently. “They just make it up.”
  • As reporters were walking out of a Trump rally this month in Orlando, Fla., a man heckled them with shouts of “Fake news!”
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online.
  • But conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that that fake stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda.
  • In defining “fake news” so broadly and seeking to dilute its meaning, they are capitalizing on the declining credibility of all purveyors of information, one product of the country’s increasing political polarization.
  • “Over the years, we’ve effectively brainwashed the core of our audience to distrust anything that they disagree with. And now it’s gone too far,” said John Ziegler, a conservative radio host, who has been critical of what he sees as excessive partisanship by pundits. “Because the gatekeepers have lost all credibility in the minds of consumers, I don’t see how you reverse it.”
  • Others see a larger effort to slander the basic journalistic function of fact-checking. Nonpartisan websites like Snopes and Factcheck.org have found themselves maligned when they have disproved stories that had been flattering to conservatives.
  • “Fake news was a term specifically about people who purposely fabricated stories for clicks and revenue,” said David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, the myth-busting website. “Now it includes bad reporting, slanted journalism and outright propaganda. And I think we’re doing a disservice to lump all those things together.”
  • The right’s labeling of “fake news” evokes one of the most successful efforts by conservatives to reorient how Americans think about news media objectivity: the move by Fox News to brand its conservative-slanted coverage as “fair and balanced.” Traditionally, mainstream media outlets had thought of their own approach in those terms, viewing their coverage as strictly down the middle. Republicans often found that laughable.
  • conservatives’ appropriation of the “fake news” label is an effort to further erode the mainstream media’s claim to be a reliable and accurate source.
  • Conservative news media are now awash in the “fake news” condemnations
  • Many conservatives are pushing back at the outrage over fake news because they believe that liberals, unwilling to accept Mr. Trump’s victory, are attributing his triumph to nefarious external factors.
  • Journalists who work to separate fact from fiction see a dangerous conflation of stories that turn out to be wrong because of a legitimate misunderstanding with those whose clear intention is to deceive. A report, shared more than a million times on social media, that the pope had endorsed Mr. Trump was undeniably false. But was it “fake news” to report on data models that showed Hillary Clinton with overwhelming odds of winning the presidency? Are opinion articles fake if they cherry-pick facts to draw disputable conclusions?
  • “They’re trying to float anything they can find out there to discredit fact-checking,”
  • There are already efforts by highly partisan conservatives to claim that their fact-checking efforts are the same as those of independent outlets like Snopes, which employ research teams to dig into seemingly dubious claims.
  • Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, has aired “fact-checking” segments on his program. Michelle Malkin, the conservative columnist, has a web program, “Michelle Malkin Investigates,” in which she conducts her own investigative reporting.
  • The market in these divided times is undeniably ripe. “We now live in this fragmented media world where you can block people you disagree with. You can only be exposed to stories that make you feel good about what you want to believe,” Mr. Ziegler, the radio host, said. “Unfortunately, the truth is unpopular a lot. And a good fairy tale beats a harsh truth every time.”
Javier E

China: A Modern Babel - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...hina-a-modern-babel-1487202893

china mandarin language

shared by Javier E on 19 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • The oft-repeated claim that we must all learn Mandarin Chinese, the better to trade with our future masters, is one that readers of David Moser’s “A Billion Voices” will rapidly end up re-evaluating.
  • In fact, many Chinese don’t speak it: Even Chinese authorities quietly admit that only about 70% of the population speaks Mandarin, and merely one in 10 of those speak it fluently.
  • Mr. Moser presents a history of what is more properly called Putonghua, or “common speech,” along with a clear, concise and often amusing introduction to the limits of its spoken and written forms.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • what Chinese schoolchildren are encouraged to think of as the longstanding natural speech of the common people is in fact an artificial hybrid, only a few decades old, although it shares a name—Mandarin—with the language of administration from imperial times. It’s a designed-by-committee camel of a language that has largely lost track of its past.
  • The idea of a national Chinese language began with the realization by the accidentally successful revolutionaries of 1911 that retaining control over a country speaking multiple languages and myriad dialects would necessitate reform. Long-term unification and the introduction of mass education would require a common language.
  • Whatever the province they originated from, the administrators of the now-toppled Great Qing Empire had all learned to communicate with one another in a second common language—Guanhua, China’s equivalent, in practical terms, of medieval Latin
  • To understand this highly compressed idiom required a considerable knowledge of the Chinese classics. Early Jesuit missionaries had labeled it Mandarin,
  • The committee decided that the four-tone dialect of the capital would be the base for a new national language but added a fifth tone whose use had lapsed in the north but not in southern dialects. The result was a language that no one actually spoke.
  • After the Communist victory of 1949, the process began all over again with fresh conferences, leading finally to the decision to use Beijing sounds, northern dialects and modern literature in the vernacular (of which there was very little) as a source of grammar.
  • This new spoken form is what is now loosely labeled Mandarin, still as alien to most Chinese as all the other Chinese languages.
  • A Latin alphabet system called Pinyin was introduced to help children learn to pronounce Chinese characters, but today it is usually abandoned after the first few years of elementary school.
  • The view that Mandarin is too difficult for mere foreigners to learn is essential to Chinese amour propre. But it is belied by the number of foreign high-school students who now learn the language by using Pinyin as a key to pronunciation —and who bask in the admiration they receive as a result.
  • Since 1949, the Chinese government, obsessed with promoting the image of a nation completely united in its love of the Communist Party, has decided that the Chinese people speak not several different languages but the same one in a variety of dialects. To say otherwise is to suggest, dangerously, that China is not one nation
  • Yet on Oct. 1, 1949, Mao Zedong announced the founding of the People’s Republic in a Hunan accent so thick that members of his audience subsequently differed about what he had said. He never mastered the Beijing sounds on which Putonghua is based, nor did Sichuanese-speaking Deng Xiaoping or most of his successors.
  • When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, many online commentators rejoiced. “At last! A Chinese leader who can speak Putonghua!” One leader down, only 400 million more common people to go.
sissij

How Intelligent Are Psychopaths? Study Examines the "Hannibal Lecter Myth" | Big Think - 0 views

bigthink.com/...ow-intelligent-are-psychopaths

psychopaths science brain science social media

shared by sissij on 09 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • We tend to think of psychopaths as dangerous, antisocial, lacking in key human emotions like empathy or remorse.
  • finding that whatever qualities they might have, high intelligence is not one of them. In fact, psychopaths were found to be less intelligent than average people.
  • referred by psychologists as the “Hannibal Lecter myth”. But that kind of Hollywoodized psychopath did not sit well with observed facts. 
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The researchers found that psychopaths scored lower on intelligence tests. A surprising result, according to Boutwell. 
  • The researchers hope that their finding will contribute to our understanding psychopathy, currently an untreatable condition. 
  • Further research might also change how psychopaths are treated by the criminal justice system. 
  • sissij on 09 Feb 17
     
    We tends to give labels and stereotypes to a group of people, and the psychopaths is just another group of people that has been incorrectly depicted. The social media plays a big part in this case. The Hollywood creates psychopaths as highly intelligent evil genius to make the characters and storyline more interesting. However, it is far from the actual fact, but the viewers and the general public take this image as a reality. Since people tend to be lazy, they eager to receive information rather than find the information themselves. Due to the exposure effect, the image of psychopaths being evil but highly intelligent becomes the mainstream impression on psychopaths. Correcting the image of psychopaths in our head can help us better understand their behaviors without making unfair judgments. --Sissi (2/9/2017)
sissij

The Phrase Putin Never Uses About Terrorism (and Trump Does) - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...in-donald-trump-terrorism.html

new york times language social media

shared by sissij on 02 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • once famously saying he would find Chechen terrorists sitting in the “outhouse” and “rub them out.”
  • He and President Trump, notably dismissive of political correctness, would seem to have found common language on fighting terrorism — except on one point of, well, language.
  • criticized President Obama for declining to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • He has never described terrorists as “Islamic” and has repeatedly gone out of his way to denounce such language.
  • a group he often refers to as “the so-called Islamic State,” to emphasize a distinction with the Islamic religion.
  • Mr. Putin spoke of terrorists who “cynically exploit religious feelings for political aims.”
  • and added that “their ideology is built on lies and blatant distortions of Islam.”
  • He was careful to add, “Muslim leaders are bravely and fearlessly using their own influence to resist this extremist propaganda.”
  • Instead, Russian counterterrorism strategy focused on financing and militarily backing moderate Muslim leaders
  • “He cannot say ‘Islamic terrorism’ for a simple reason. He doesn’t want to alienate millions of Russians.”
  • In a phone call on Friday, President Trump and Mr. Putin discussed “real cooperation” in fighting terrorist groups in Syria. They could agree on an enemy. But the Kremlin statement described a “priority placed on uniting forces in the fight against the main threat — international terrorism.”
  • sissij on 02 Feb 17
     
    I find this article very interesting because it does some analysis to the language president use in politics. It sort of related to the language topic we discussed in TOK. President is a job that has to make sure he get the majority right, so what language he uses is very important. In this article, Putin's language when he addresses the terrorism of Islamic extremists is very interesting. Russia is a country with a lot of Muslims, so he has to be careful about not to labeling the entire religious groups as terrorists. Whenever he describe the group, he carefully distinguish the moderates from the extremists to keep the support from the majority of Russian. Trump should do some thinking on the language he is using since he is a president now. --Sissi (2/2/2017)
sissij

We're More Likely to Trust Strangers Over People We Know, Study Suggests | Big Think - 0 views

bigthink.com/...y-motivates-us-to-trust-others

psychology research science brain science

shared by sissij on 11 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Social trust, the expectation that people will behave with good will and avoid harming others, is a concept that has long mystified both researchers and the general public alike.
  • evolution is about more than just rivalry, we need relationships.
  • What makes us inclined to give some people the benefit of the doubt, but occasionally cast a skeptical eye on others.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Substantial research has already been conducted in the realm of social trust, however, Freitag and Bauer contend that endemic methodological shortcomings have consistently yielded inconclusive data.
  • defined personality values using psychology's "Big Five" personality traits (agreeableness, openness to experience, extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism-emotional stability)
  • The study results showed that people often trust total strangers more than they trust their friends.
  • Freitag and Bauer did highlight the limitations of their research. They expressly cautioned that the role of education, our networks, and our trust in institutions, matter and cannot be underestimated.
  • sissij on 11 Apr 17
     
    I found it very interesting that social trust of human also follow the logic of revolution. "evolution is about more than just rivalry, we need relationships". As for my personal experience, sometimes I just have a natural impulse of doing some good. I feel like this impulse is completely out my control. Although many people would label me as a "kind" person, I don't think I am a kind person. I am "kind" because people seldom know me and I always keeps a distance with people. My parent obviously give a opposite comment about me. They know I am cruel and cold because we are not stranger. That's why I find keep distance with people is very convenient, such that they would never know the true side of you. --Sissi (4/11/2017)
Javier E

I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...captured_by_thrashing_hysteria

Fox News groupthink propaganda culture war

shared by Javier E on 09 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Old, white, wrinkled and angry, they are slipping from polite society in alarming numbers. We’re losing much of a generation.  They often sport hats or other clothing, some marking their status as veterans, Tea Partyers or “patriots” of some kind or another. They have yellow flags, bumper stickers and an unquenchable rage. They used to be the brave men and women who took on America’s challenges, tackling the ’60s, the Cold War and the Reagan years — but now many are terrified by the idea of slightly more affordable healthcare and a very moderate Democrat in the White House.
  • I enjoyed Fox News for many years, as a libertarian and frequent Republican voter. I used to share many, though not all, of my father’s values, but something happened over the past few years. As I drifted left, the white, Republican right veered into incalculable levels of conservative rage, arriving at their inevitable destination with the creation of the Tea Party movement.
  • My father sincerely believes that science is a political plot, Christians are America’s most persecuted minority and Barack Obama is a full-blown communist. He supports the use of force without question, as long as it’s aimed at foreigners. He thinks liberals are all stupid, ignorant fucks who hate America.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • I don’t recall my father being so hostile when I was growing up. He was conservative, to be sure, but conventionally and thoughtfully so. He is a kind and generous man and a good father, but over the past five or 10 years, he’s become so conservative that I can’t even find a label for it.
  • What has changed? He consumes a daily diet of nothing except Fox News. He has for a decade or more. He has no email account and doesn’t watch sports. He refuses to so much as touch a keyboard and has never been on the Internet, ever. He thinks higher education destroys people, not only because of Fox News, but also because I drifted left during and after graduate school.
  • I do not blame or condemn my father for his opinions. If you consumed a daily diet of right-wing fury, erroneously labeled “news,” you could very likely end up in the same place. Again, this is all by design. Let’s call it the Fox News effect. Take sweet, kindly senior citizens and feed them a steady stream of demagoguery and repetition, all wrapped in the laughable slogan of “fair and balanced.” Even watching the commercials on Fox, one is treated to sales pitches for gold and emergency food rations, the product cornerstones of the paranoid. To some people the idea of retirees yelling at the television all day may seem funny, but this isn’t a joke. We’re losing the nation’s grandparents, and it’s an American tragedy.
Javier E

'You Are Not So Smart': Why We Can't Tell Good Wine From Bad - David McRaney - The Atla... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...247240

expectations experience social science brain science bias confirmation bias psychology

shared by Javier E on 01 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • is the fancy world of wine tasting all pretentious bunk? Not exactly. The wine tasters in the experiments above were being influenced by the nasty beast of expectation. A wine expert's objectivity and powers of taste under normal circumstance might be amazing, but Brochet's manipulations of the environment misled his subjects enough to dampen their acumen. An expert's own expectation can act like Kryptonite on their superpowers. Expectation, as it turns out, is just as important as raw sensation. The build up to an experience can completely change how you interpret the information reaching your brain from your otherwise objective senses
  • In psychology, true objectivity is pretty much considered to be impossible. Memories, emotions, conditioning, and all sorts of other mental flotsam taint every new experience you gain. In addition to all this, your expectations powerfully influence the final vote in your head over what you believe to be reality.
  • People said they liked Pepsi, labeled M, better than Coke, labeled Q. Irritated by this, Coca-Cola did their own study and put Coke in both glasses. Again, M won the contest. It turned out it wasn't the soda; people just liked the letter M better than the letter Q.
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  • Taste is subjective, which is another way of saying you are not so smart when it comes to choosing one product over another. All things equal, you refer back to the advertising or the packaging or conformity with your friends and family. Presentation is everything.
  • Restaurants depend on this. Actually, just about every retailer depends on this. Presentation, price, good marketing, great service -- it all leads to an expectation of quality. The actual experience at the end of all this is less important. As long as it isn't total crap, your experience will match up with your expectations
  • Your expectations are the horse, and your experience is the cart. You get this backwards all the time because you are not so smart.
johnsonma23

BBC News - Antibiotics: US discovery labelled 'game-changer' for medicine - 0 views

www.bbc.com/health-30657486

Research Science discovery medicine

shared by johnsonma23 on 16 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Antibiotics: US discovery labelled 'game-changer' for medicine
  • The decades-long drought in antibiotic discovery could be over after a breakthrough by US scientists.
  • ielded 25 new antibiotics, with one deemed "very promising".
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The researchers, at the Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, turned to the source of nearly all antibiotics - soil.
  • It allowed the unique chemistry of soil to permeate the room, but kept the bacteria in place for study.
  • The scientists involved believe they can grow nearly half of all soil bacteria.
  • uncultured bacteria do harbour novel chemistry that we have not seen before. That is a promising source of new antimicrobials and will hopefully help revive the field of antibiotic discovery."
  • The researchers also believe that bacteria are unlikely to develop resistance to teixobactin.
  • There are limits to the discovery of the antibiotic teixobactin, which has yet to be tested in people.
silveiragu

BBC - Future - The countries that don't exist - 2 views

www.bbc.com/...-the-countries-that-dont-exist

bias countries

shared by silveiragu on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • In the deep future, every territory we know could eventually become a country that doesn’t exist.
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 17 Jan 16
       
      Contrary to the human expectation that situations remain constant. 
  • There really is a secret world of hidden independent nations
  • Middleton, however, is here to talk about countries missing from the vast majority of books and maps for sale here. He calls them the “countries that don’t exist”
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 17 Jan 16
       
      Reminds us of our strange relationship with nationalism-that we forget how artificial countries' boundaries are. 
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • a defined territory, a permanent population, a government, and “the capacity to enter into relations with other states”.
  • The globe, it turns out, is full of small (and not so small) regions that have all the trappings of a real country
  • and are ignored on most world maps.
  • Middleton, a geographer at the University of Oxford, has now charted these hidden lands in his new book, An Atlas of Countries that Don’t Exist
  • Middleton’s quest began, appropriately enough, with Narnia
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 17 Jan 16
       
      Interesting connection to imagination as a way of knowing.
  • The problem, he says, is that we don’t have a watertight definition of what a country is. “Which as a geographer, is kind of shocking
  • In Australia, meanwhile, the Republic of Murrawarri was founded in 2013, after the indigenous tribe wrote a letter to Queen Elizabeth II asking her to prove her legitimacy to govern their land.
  • Yet many countries that meet these criteria aren‘t members of the United Nations (commonly accepted as the final seal of a country’s statehood).
  • many of them are instead members of the “Unrepresented United Nations – an alternative body to champion their rights.
  • In fact, you have almost certainly, unknowingly, visited one.
  • The others are less famous, but they are by no means less serious
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 17 Jan 16
       
      By what criterion, "serious"?
  • One of the most troubling histories, he says, concerns the Republic of Lakotah (with a population of 100,000). Bang in the centre of the United States of America (just east of the Rocky Mountains), the republic is an attempt to reclaim the sacred Black Hills for the Lakota Sioux tribe.
  • Their plight began in the 18th Century, and by 1868 they had finally signed a deal with the US government that promised the right to live on the Black Hills. Unfortunately, they hadn’t accounted for a gold rush
  • Similar battles are being fought across every continent.
  • A handful of the names will be familiar to anyone who has read a newspaper: territories such as Taiwan, Tibet, Greenland, and Northern Cyprus.
  • Christiania, an enclave in the heart of Copenhagen.
  • On 26 September that year, they declared it independent, with its own “direct democracy”, in which each of the inhabitants (now numbering 850) could vote on any important matter.
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 17 Jan 16
       
      Interesting reminder that the label "country" does not only have to arise from military or economic struggles, as is tempting to think in our study of history. Also, interesting reminder that the label of "country"-by itself-means nothing. 
  • a blind eye to the activities
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 17 Jan 16
       
      That is really why any interest is demonstrated towards this topic. Not that some country named Christiania exists in the heart of Denmark, but that they can legitimately call themselves a nation. We have grown up, and our parents have grown up, with a rigid definition of nationalism, and the strange notion that the lines in an atlas were always there. One interpretation of the Danish government's response to Christiania is simply that they do not know what to think. Although probably not geopolitically significant, such enclave states represent a challenge our perception of countries, one which fascinates Middleton's readers because it disconcerts them. 
  • perhaps we need to rethink the concept of the nation-state altogether? He points to Antarctica, a continent shared peacefully among the international community
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 17 Jan 16
       
      A sign of progress, perhaps, from the industrialism-spurred cycle of divide land, industrialize, and repeat-even if the chief reason is the region's climate. 
  • The last pages of Middleton’s Atlas contain two radical examples that question everything we think we mean by the word ‘country’.
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 17 Jan 16
       
      That is really why any interest is demonstrated towards this topic. Not that some country named Christiania exists in the heart of Denmark, but that they can legitimately call themselves a nation. We have grown up, and our parents have grown up, with a rigid definition of nationalism, and the strange notion that the lines in an atlas were always there. These "nonexistent countries"-and our collective disregard for them-are reminiscent of the 17th and 18th centuries: then, the notion of identifying by national lines was almost as strange and artificial as these countries' borders seem to us today. 
  • “They all raise the possibility that countries as we know them are not the only legitimate basis for ordering the planet,
kushnerha

The Words That Killed Medieval Jews - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...that-killed-medieval-jews.html

new york time language religion violence history

shared by kushnerha on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • DO harsh words lead to violent acts? At a moment when hate speech seems to be proliferating, it’s a question worth asking.
  • worry that heated anti-Muslim political rhetoric would spark an increase in attacks against Muslims.
  • Some claim that last month’s mass shooting in Colorado Springs was provoked by Carly Fiorina’s assertion that Planned Parenthood was “harvesting baby parts”; Mrs. Fiorina countered that language could not be held responsible for the deeds of a “deranged” man.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • beating of a homeless Hispanic man in Boston, allegedly inspired by Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric, and by the shooting deaths of police officers in California, Texas and Illinois, which some have attributed to anti-police sentiment expressed at Black Lives Matter protests.
  • history does show that a heightening of rhetoric against a certain group can incite violence against that group, even when no violence is called for. When a group is labeled hostile and brutal, its members are more likely to be treated with hostility and brutality. Visual images are particularly powerful, spurring actions that may well be unintended by the images’ creators.
  • Official Christian theology and policy toward Jews remained largely unchanged in the Middle Ages. Over roughly 1,000 years, Christianity condemned the major tenets of Judaism and held “the Jews” responsible for the death of Jesus. But the terms in which these ideas were expressed changed radically.
  • Before about 1100, Christian devotions focused on Christ’s divine nature and triumph over death. Images of the crucifixion showed Jesus alive and healthy on the cross. For this reason, his killers were not major focuses in Christian thought. No anti-Jewish polemics were composed during these centuries
  • In an effort to spur compassion among Christian worshipers, preachers and artists began to dwell in vivid detail on Christ’s pain. Christ morphed from triumphant divine judge to suffering human savior. A parallel tactic, designed to foster a sense of Christian unity, was to emphasize the cruelty of his supposed tormentors, the Jews.
  • The “Goad of Love,” a retelling of the crucifixion that is considered the first anti-Jewish Passion treatise, was written around 1155-80. It describes Jews as consumed with sadism and blood lust. They were seen as enemies not only of Christ, but also of living Christians; it was at this time that Jews began to be accused of ritually sacrificing Christian children.
  • Ferocious anti-Jewish rhetoric began to permeate sermons, plays and polemical texts. Jews were labeled demonic and greedy. In one diatribe, the head of the most influential monastery in Christendom thundered at the Jews: “Why are you not called brute animals? Why not beasts?” Images began to portray Jews as hooknosed caricatures of evil.
  • the First Crusade had called only for an “armed pilgrimage” to retake Jerusalem from Muslims, the first victims of the Crusade were not the Turkish rulers of Jerusalem but Jewish residents of the German Rhineland. Contemporary accounts record the crusaders asking why, if they were traveling to a distant land to “kill and to subjugate all those kingdoms that do not believe in the Crucified,” they should not also attack “the Jews, who killed and crucified him?”
  • At no point did Christian authorities promote or consent to the violence. Christian theology, which applied the Psalm verse “Slay them not” to Jews, and insisted that Jews were not to be killed for their religion, had not changed. Clerics were at a loss to explain the attacks. A churchman from a nearby town attributed the massacres to “some error of mind.”
  • But not all the Rhineland killers were crazy. The crusaders set out in the Easter season. Both crusade and Easter preaching stirred up rage about the crucifixion and fear of hostile and threatening enemies.
  • Sometimes the perpetrators were zealous holy warriors, sometimes they were opportunistic business rivals, sometimes they were parents grieving for children lost to accident or crime, or fearful of the ravages of a new disease.
  • Some may well have been insane. But sane or deranged, they did not pick their victims in a vacuum. It was repeated and dehumanizing excoriation that led those medieval Christians to attack people who had long been their neighbors.
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