Skip to main content

Home/ TOK Friends/ Group items tagged role

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Javier E

Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html

climate change science research motivated reasoning bias

shared by Javier E on 22 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.
  • One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming.
  • He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding.
  • “The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate,” said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University and the co-author of “Merchants of Doubt,” a book about such campaigns. “Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater.”
  • Environmentalists have long questioned Dr. Soon’s work, and his acceptance of funding from the fossil-fuel industry was previously known. But the full extent of the links was not; the documents show that corporate contributions were tied to specific papers and were not disclosed, as required by modern standards of publishing.
  • “What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change,” said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, a group funded by foundations seeking to limit the risks of climate change.
  • Many experts in the field say that Dr. Soon uses out-of-date data, publishes spurious correlations between solar output and climate indicators, and does not take account of the evidence implicating emissions from human behavior in climate change.
  • Though often described on conservative news programs as a “Harvard astrophysicist,” Dr. Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard. He is a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering. He has received little federal research money over the past decade and is thus responsible for bringing in his own funds, including his salary.
  • Though he has little formal training in climatology, Dr. Soon has for years published papers trying to show that variations in the sun’s energy can explain most recent global warming. His thesis is that human activity has played a relatively small role in causing climate change.
  • As the oil-industry contributions fell, Dr. Soon started receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars through DonorsTrust, an organization based in Alexandria, Va., that accepts money from donors who wish to remain anonymous, then funnels it to various conservative causes.
  • Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, a NASA division that studies climate change, said that the sun had probably accounted for no more than 10 percent of recent global warming and that greenhouse gases produced by human activity explained most of it.“The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless,” Dr. Schmidt said.
  • Dr. Soon has found a warm welcome among politicians in Washington and state capitals who try to block climate action. United States Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who claims that climate change is a global scientific hoax, has repeatedly cited Dr. Soon’s work over the years.
  • Dr. Oreskes, the Harvard science historian, said that academic institutions and scientific journals had been too lax in recent decades in ferreting out dubious research created to serve a corporate agenda.
sissij

10 Reasons the Moon Landings Could Be a Hoax - Listverse - 1 views

listverse.com/...-moon-landings-could-be-a-hoax

hoax psychology social media

shared by sissij on 09 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • The theory that the moon landings were hoaxed by the US government to assert their victory in the space race over Russia, is something which has grown in popularity over time.
  • sissij on 09 Jan 17
     
    I don't know if the first Moon Landing is real or not, but this article reminds me of the conspiracy theory we learned in TOK. After reading through those reasons and evidences, the credibility of the first moon landing decreases. However, there are still possibilities that the moon landing is real. Confirmation bias may also play a role because I only noticed the "strange" part of the photo after I read the writing below. And also, I think that Richard Nixon must be one of the reason why people don't believe in the first moon landing. --Sissi (1/8/2017)
sissij

Which Trump Will the World See? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-trump-will-the-world-see.html

new york times social media

shared by sissij on 21 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • By advocating an expansive budget through tax cuts and infrastructure spending, Mr. Trump’s plan would most likely lower national savings and propel the United States dollar ever higher, creating the very conditions to widen rather than to narrow the trade deficit.
  • He is doing so in the unrealistic hope that these policies will cause the economy to accelerate from its present 2 percent growth rate to between 3 and 4 percent. And he is counting on such faster economic growth to generate additional tax revenue.
  • A further basic weakness of Mr. Trump’s budget proposal is that it would add stimulus to the economy at the very time that the economy is at or very close to full employment.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • If he does go down that path, he will risk inviting trade retaliation by our trade partners, which could lead the global economy down the road to the beggar-thy-neighbor policies of the 1930s.
  • sissij on 21 Dec 16
     
    This article discussed flaws in Trump's economic policy and his relationship with foreign countries. It's surprising for me to see that tax plays a very complicated role in diplomacy. Increasing or decreasing the tax revenue affects how much money the government has. Mr. Trump is definitely a very successful entrepreneur, but earning money for a government is more complicated than eating money for a company because you have to take care of the benefit of your people, not only yourself. --Sissi (12/20/2016)
sissij

Scientists have a theory on why you break eye contact | Fox News - 1 views

www.foxnews.com/...-on-why-break-eye-contact.html

fox news science psychology brain science

shared by sissij on 31 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • they write that eye contact actually "disrupts resources available to cognitive control processes during verb generation." In other words, when you need to come up with certain words under certain circumstances, maintaining eye contact depletes the very brain resources you need to find the word.
  • but Scientific American suggests that if looking away while thinking is cross-cultural, "perhaps cultures with less emphasis on eye contact enable deeper thinking during a given conversation."
  • sissij on 31 Dec 16
     
    The hypothesis that people with different culture may have different habits is very interesting. People always avoid eye contact with unfamiliar people. Probably in our nature, we think that making eye contact is an action of provocation. When I am speaking, I seldom make eye contact with others and eye contacts make me nervous and I sometimes feel that my brain was shut down and couldn't come up with a word. I feel like the primitive human nature still plays a huge role on our brain and reaction. --Sissi (12/31/2016)
oliviaodon

Optimism Among Small-Business Owners Highest in Eight Years | Gallup - 0 views

www.gallup.com/...wners-highest-eight-years.aspx

optimism owners science research

shared by oliviaodon on 04 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Small-business owners' optimism improved to its highest level in eight years after the 2016 presidential election.
  • oliviaodon on 04 Jan 17
     
    I found this article interesting as Trump's political jargon appears to be making a significant impact on the morale of small business owners. This article outlines the effects of simple yet effective words and phrases coined by the president-elect without a clear display of action. Confirmation bias may play a role in this increase in optimism.
sissij

Flossing and the Art of Scientific Investigation - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-scientific-investigation.html

new york times science bias research

shared by sissij on 31 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • the form of definitive randomized controlled trials, the so-called gold standard for scientific research.
  • Yet the notion has taken hold that such expertise is fatally subjective and that only randomized controlled trials provide real knowledge.
  • the evidence-based medicine movement, which placed such trials atop a hierarchy of scientific methods, with expert opinion situated at the bottom.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • each of these is valuable in its own way.
  • The cult of randomized controlled trials also neglects a rich body of potential hypotheses.
  • sissij on 31 Jan 17
     
    This article talks about the bias within Scientific method. As we learned in TOK, scientific method is very much based on experiments. Definitive randomized controlled trials are the gold standard for scientific research. But as argued in this article, are randomized controlled trials the only source of support that's worth believing? Advise and experience of an expert is also very important. Why can't machine completely replace the role of a doctor? That's because human are able to analysis and evaluate their experience and the patterns they recognize, but machines are only capable to organizing data, they couldn't design a unique prescription that fit with the particular patient. Expert opinion shouldn't be completely neglected and underestimate, since science always needs a leap of imagination that only human, not machines, can generate. --Sissi (1/30/2017)
Javier E

A Harvard Scholar on the Enduring Lessons of Chinese Philosophy - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-philosophy-harvard-puett.html

psychology philosophy self good liberation self-help

shared by Javier E on 10 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Since 2006, Michael Puett has taught an undergraduate survey course at Harvard University on Chinese philosophy, examining how classic Chinese texts are relevant today. The course is now one of Harvard’s most popular, third only to “Introduction to Computer Science” and “Principles of Economics.”
  • So-called Confucianism, for example, is read as simply being about forcing people to accept their social roles, while so-called Taoism is about harmonizing with the larger natural world. So Confucianism is often presented as bad and Taoism as good. But in neither case are we really learning from them.
  • we shouldn’t domesticate them to our own way of thinking. When we read them as self-help, we are assuming our own definition of the self and then simply picking up pieces of these ideas that fit into such a vision
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • these ideas are not about looking within and finding oneself. They are about overcoming the self. They are, in a sense, anti-self-help.
  • Today, we are often told that our goal should be to look within and find ourselves, and, once we do, to strive to be sincere and authentic to that true self, always loving ourselves and embracing ourselves for who we are. All of this sounds great and is a key part of what we think of as a properly “modern” way to live.
  • But what if we’re, on the contrary, messy selves that tend to fall into ruts and patterns of behavior? If so, the last thing we would want to be doing is embracing ourselves for who we are — embracing, in other words, a set of patterns we’ve fallen into. The goal should rather be to break these patterns and ruts, to train ourselves to interact better with those around us.
  • Certainly some strains of Chinese political theory will take this vision of the self — that we tend to fall into patterns of behavior — to argue for a more paternalistic state that will, to use a more recent term, “nudge” us into better patterns.
  • many of the texts we discuss in the book go the other way, and argue that the goal should be to break us from being such passive creatures — calling on us to do things that break us out of these patterns and allow us to train ourselves to start altering our behavior for the better.
  • You argue that Chinese philosophy views rituals as tools that can liberate us from these ruts.
  • Rituals force us for a brief moment to become a different person and to interact with those around us in a different way. They work because they break us from the patterns that we fall into and that otherwise dominate our behavior.
  • In the early Han dynasty, for example, we have examples of rituals that called for role reversals. The father would be called upon to play the son, and the son would play the father. Each is forced to see the world from the other’s perspective, with the son learning what it’s like to be in a position of authority and the father remembering what it was like to be the more subservient one
  • We tend to think that we live in a globalized world, but in a lot of ways we really don’t. The truth is that for a long time only a very limited number of ideas have dominated the world, while ideas that arose elsewhere were seen as “traditional” and not worth learning from.
  • imagine future generations that grow up reading Du Fu along with Shakespeare, and Confucius along with Plato. Imagine that type of world, where great ideas — wherever they arose — are thought about and wrestled with.
  • There’s a very strong debate going on in China about values — a sense that everything has become about wealth and power, and a questioning about whether this should be rethought. And among the ideas that are being brought into the debate are these earlier notions about the self and about how one can lead a good life. So, while the government is appropriating some of these ideas in particular ways, the broader public is debating them, and certainly with very different interpretations.
Javier E

Social Media and the Devolution of Friendship: Full Essay (Pts I & II) » Cybo... - 1 views

thesocietypages.org/...friendship-full-essay-pts-i-ii

friendship devolution social media social culture

shared by Javier E on 01 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • social networking sites create pressure to put time and effort into tending weak ties, and how it can be impossible to keep up with them all. Personally, I also find it difficult to keep up with my strong ties. I’m a great “pick up where we left off” friend, as are most of the people closest to me (makes sense, right?). I’m decidedly sub-awesome, however, at being in constant contact with more than a few people at a time.
  • the devolution of friendship. As I explain over the course of this essay, I link the devolution of friendship to—but do not “blame” it on—the affordances of various social networking platforms, especially (but not exclusively) so-called “frictionless sharing” features.
  • I’m using the word here in the same way that people use it to talk about the devolution of health care. One example of devolution of health care is some outpatient surgeries: patients are allowed to go home after their operations, but they still require a good deal of post-operative care such as changing bandages, irrigating wounds, administering medications, etc. Whereas before these patients would stay in the hospital and nurses would perform the care-labor necessary for their recoveries, patients must now find their own caregivers (usually family members or friends; sometimes themselves) to perform free care-labor. In this context, devolution marks the shift of labor and responsibility away from the medical establishment and onto the patient; within the patient-medical establishment collaboration, the patient must now provide a greater portion of the necessary work. Similarly, in some ways, we now expect our friends to do a greater portion of the work of being friends with us.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Through social media, “sharing with friends” is rationalized to the point of relentless efficiency. The current apex of such rationalization is frictionless sharing: we no longer need to perform the labor of telling our individual friends about what we read online, or of copy-pasting links and emailing them to “the list,” or of clicking a button for one-step posting of links on our Facebook walls. With frictionless sharing, all we have to do is look, or listen; what we’ve read or watched or listened to is then “shared” or “scrobbled” to our Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or whatever other online profiles. Whether we share content actively or passively, however, we feel as though we’ve done our half of the friendship-labor by ‘pushing’ the information to our walls, streams, and tumblelogs. It’s then up to our friends to perform their halves of the friendship-labor by ‘pulling’ the information we share from those platforms.
  • We’re busy people; we like the idea of making one announcement on Facebook and being done with it, rather than having to repeat the same story over and over again to different friends individually. We also like not always having to think about which friends might like which stories or songs; we like the idea of sharing with all of our friends at once, and then letting them sort out amongst themselves who is and isn’t interested. Though social media can create burdensome expectations to keep up with strong ties, weak ties, and everyone in between, social media platforms can also be very efficient. Using the same moment of friendship-labor to tend multiple friendships at once kills more birds with fewer stones.
  • sometimes we like the devolution of friendship. When we have to ‘pull’ friendship-content instead of receiving it in a ‘push’, we can pick and choose which content items to pull. We can ignore the baby pictures, or the pet pictures, or the sushi pictures—whatever it is our friends post that we only pretend to care about
  • I’ve been thinking since, however, on what it means to view our friends as “generalized others.” I may now feel like less of like “creepy stalker” when I click on a song in someone’s Spotify feed, but I don’t exactly feel ‘shared with’ either. Far as I know, I’ve never been SpotiVaguebooked (or SubSpotified?); I have no reason to think anyone is speaking to me personally as they listen to music, or as they choose not to disable scrobbling (if they make that choice consciously at all). I may have been granted the opportunity to view something, but it doesn’t follow that what I’m viewing has anything to do with me unless I choose to make it about me. Devolved friendship means it’s not up to us to interact with our friends personally; instead it’s now up to our friends to make our generalized broadcasts personal.
  • While I won’t go so far as to say they’re definitely ‘problems,’ there are two major things about devolved friendship that I think are worth noting. The first is the non-uniform rationalization of friendship-labor, and the second is the depersonalization of friendship-labor.
  • In short, “sharing” has become a lot easier and a lot more efficient, but “being shared with” has become much more time-consuming, demanding, and inefficient (especially if we don’t ignore most of our friends most of the time). Given this, expecting our friends to keep up with our social media content isn’t expecting them to meet us halfway; it’s asking them to take on the lion’s share of staying in touch with us. Our jobs (in this role) have gotten easier; our friends’ jobs have gotten harder.
  • The second thing worth noting is that devolved friendship is also depersonalized friendship.
  • Personal interaction doesn’t just happen on Spotify, and since I was hoping Spotify would be the New Porch, I initially found Spotify to be somewhat lonely-making. It’s the mutual awareness of presence that gives companionate silence its warmth, whether in person or across distance. The silence within Spotify’s many sounds, on the other hand, felt more like being on the outside looking in. This isn’t to say that Spotify can’t be social in a more personal way; once I started sending tracks to my friends, a few of them started sending tracks in return. But it took a lot more work to get to that point, which gets back to the devolution of friendship (as I explain below).
  • Within devolved friendship interactions, it takes less effort to be polite while secretly waiting for someone to please just stop talking.
  • When we consider the lopsided rationalization of ‘sharing’ and ‘shared with,’ as well as the depersonalization of frictionless sharing and generalized broadcasting, what becomes clear is this: the social media deck is stacked in such a way as to make being ‘a self’ easier and more rewarding than being ‘a friend.’
  • It’s easy to share, to broadcast, to put our selves and our tastes and our identity performances out into the world for others to consume; what feedback and friendship we get in return comes in response to comparatively little effort and investment from us. It takes a lot more work, however, to do the consumption, to sift through everything all (or even just some) of our friends produce, to do the work of connecting to our friends’ generalized broadcasts so that we can convert their depersonalized shares into meaningful friendship-labor.
  • We may be prosumers of social media, but the reward structures of social media sites encourage us to place greater emphasis on our roles as share-producers—even though many of us probably spend more time consuming shared content than producing it. There’s a reason for this, of course; the content we produce (for free) is what fuels every last ‘Web 2.0’ machine, and its attendant self-centered sociality is the linchpin of the peculiarly Silicon Valley concept of “Social” (something Nathan Jurgenson and I discuss together in greater detail here). It’s not super-rewarding to be one of ten people who “like” your friend’s shared link, but it can feel rewarding to get 10 “likes” on something you’ve shared—even if you have hundreds or thousands of ‘friends.’ Sharing is easy; dealing with all that shared content is hard.
  • t I wonder sometimes if the shifts in expectation that accompany devolved friendship don’t migrate across platforms and contexts in ways we don’t always see or acknowledge. Social media affects how we see the world—and how we feel about being seen in the world—even when we’re not engaged directly with social media websites. It’s not a stretch, then, to imagine that the affordances of social media platforms might also affect how we see friendship and our obligations as friends most generally.
kushnerha

Islamist extremism: Why young people are being drawn to it - BBC News - 1 views

www.bbc.com/...world-europe-35060020

bbc ISIS youth social media terrorism

shared by kushnerha on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • While the majority of jihadists around the world are not teenagers, official figures show that their involvement in violent Islamism is growing.The number of under-18s arrested for alleged terror offences in the UK almost doubled from eight to 15 from 2013-14 to 2014-15.
  • Experts say this bears out fears that more and more young people are being drawn to extremism, with followers in their early teens among them. "We are seeing this kind of thing happening more and more with the rise of Islamic State," says Charlie Winter, an expert in jihadist militancy.
  • The main target for groups like Islamic State is said to be young people between 16 and 24 years old.However the radicalisation process can start as early as 11 or 12
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Younger members are less valuable in terms of potential to carry out terror operations, he says, but they are used to spread ideology and influence others.And they are easier to access. "Adolescents and teenagers are indeed easier to impress and lure into relationships with recruiters."
  • IS produces an average of 30 to 40 high-quality videos per day in almost every language," says Mr Koehler."They have an estimated Twitter network of 30,000 to 40,000 accounts, and guides for carrying out jihad or how to join IS are easily available online."
  • "Real or perceived grievances in the hands of a recruiter can reach fever pitch."
  • "While the internet does play an important role, what is different with IS is that it is much more outward facing,"
  • They have also been shown to heavily rely on other social media platforms such as Ask.FM, which are visited by a large proportion of younger users.
  • This aspirational nature can appeal to some adolescents who have high ideals and ambitions but are frustrated by their families or societies.The feeling of marginalisation also drives membership
  • He says one of the greatest draws for young followers is the promise of belonging to a collective."IS is really trying to push this idea of a counter culture. They have crafted this idea of state building, of democratic jihad."
  • While the internet is certainly an important tool for recruiters, both direct, real-life contact with radical groups in their home countries is equally vital."What we have seen a lot of times is people being enlisted by friendship groups,"
  • Members who have fought in Syria are encouraged to share information as a way of bringing other people in.Experiences are whitewashed to hide the iniquities and hypocrisies of the group's mission.
  • young people are more accustomed to seeing violence in the media than adults, and this plays a role in their growing involvement in violent Islamism.
  • about personal backgrounds and trajectories combined with opportunities and situations
dicindioha

Chinese Scientist Blasts Trump's Climate-Change Talk - China Real Time Report - WSJ - 1 views

blogs.wsj.com/...0127cpollute

shared by dicindioha on 09 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • A global-warming skeptic, Mr. Trump has vowed to cancel the accord, which the Obama administration helped broker, in his first 100 days as president.
  • “I think he is cute, saying whatever comes to his mind. I think the U.S. is a cute country too, because a person like him became the president,” said Prof. Ding.
  • The president said in a 2012 tweet that the Chinese created “the concept of global warming.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • His argument: that a per capita count of emissions would be more equitable and treat all people the same.
  • One cannot both enjoy the benefits of industrialization and completely avoid the damages of it, he said.
  • “Steel made in China is sold to the U.S. The emission is done in China but the consumption happens in the U.S. It’s unfair to attribute that emission to China,” he said.
  • Unlike in the U.S., climate-change skeptics in China are an extremely rare breed—something that Mr. Ding posited was the result of better science education.
  • urged other nations to stick to the Paris agreement, calling it a “responsibility we must assume for future generations.”
  • dicindioha on 09 Feb 17
     
    I previously bookmarked an article about Australia's role in the Paris accords, and then I did not realize the world is in jeopardy of losing the U.S.'s involvement in it. We are one of the leading producers of gas emissions in the world, so that is scary to think about. It is interesting to see that people in such power as the leader of a forefront country do not trust the science that supports global warming, and it is kind of scary. I think it was also interesting that Prof. Ding said steel made in China is sold to the US, where people use it, so it's unfair to attribute the emission to China. That is an interesting argument considering they are making it in order to sell it, but yes we are using it, so it seems both are at fault here, possibly not just to the US. This climate change argument is all over and after our discussions about trusting science it is amazing to see the different sides up for debate that should be difficult to debate unless people debating are expert scientists in global warming/climate change.
sissij

The Purpose of Sleep? To Forget, Scientists Say - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...p-memory-brain-forgetting.html

new york times science social media

shared by sissij on 04 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Some have argued that it’s a way to save energy. Others have suggested that slumber provides an opportunity to clear away the brain’s cellular waste. Still others have proposed that sleep simply forces animals to lie still, letting them hide from predators.
  • It turns out, for example, that neurons can prune their synapses — at least in a dish.
  • Dr. Diering and his colleagues then searched for the molecular trigger for this change. They found that hundreds of proteins increase or decrease inside of synapses during the night. But one protein in particular, called Homer1A, stood out.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “Once you know a little bit of what happens at the ground-truth level, you can get a better idea of what to do for therapy,” Dr. Tononi said.
  • sissij on 04 Feb 17
     
    I find this article very interesting. Everyday, there are all sorts of articles alleges that scientist says this and that. Sometimes, they even contradicts each other. I feel like the science today on the newspaper is hardly reliable. Since science is a social project that's only accessible for a community of specialists. The general population usually plays a role of acceptors. Then many mass media uses the name of science to put up claims that mislead the people. It's really hard for us, the general population, to make sure what we read about on newspaper science section is really science, not another piece of fake news. --Sissi (2/4/2017)
sissij

Keeping the Boardroom Out of the Bedroom - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rdroom-out-of-the-bedroom.html

new york times social media education

shared by sissij on 25 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • I never allowed myself to be vulnerable with my husband because I didn’t realize that it was a requirement for an intimate, connected relationship. Back then, I didn’t even know what an intimate, connected relationship was. I only thought in terms of tasks and achievements.
  • Surely, I had thought, my firefighter boyfriend would wait an hour or two for me without complaint. But if he had, would we still be together today?
  • It has been said that we teach people how to treat us.
  • sissij on 25 Mar 17
     
    I found this article very interesting. The author was a strong woman and she wasn't able to switch her mode between her role as a successful businesswoman and a wife. People always tend to be eccentric. Although everybody knows that we have to stand from the perspective of other to make a better decision. It reminded me of that my mom complained to me many times that I didn't followed the time that she was going to pick me up. However, I was only thinking in my perspective and even think about how tired my mom was after a day of work. People should contribute equally to maintain a good relationship. --Sissi (3/24/2017)
Javier E

The Science Behind Dreaming: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

dreaming emotion memory anxiety

shared by Javier E on 09 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • these findings suggest that the neurophysiological mechanisms that we employ while dreaming (and recalling dreams) are the same as when we construct and retrieve memories while we are awake.
  • the researchers found that vivid, bizarre and emotionally intense dreams (the dreams that people usually remember) are linked to parts of the amygdala and hippocampus. While the amygdala plays a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the hippocampus has been implicated in important memory functions, such as the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory.
  • it was not until a few years ago that a patient reported to have lost her ability to dream while having virtually no other permanent neurological symptoms. The patient suffered a lesion in a part of the brain known as the right inferior lingual gyrus (located in the visual cortex). Thus, we know that dreams are generated in, or transmitted through this particular area of the brain, which is associated with visual processing, emotion and visual memories.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • a reduction in REM sleep (or less “dreaming”) influences our ability to understand complex emotions in daily life – an essential feature of human social functioning
  • Dreams seem to help us process emotions by encoding and constructing memories of them. What we see and experience in our dreams might not necessarily be real, but the emotions attached to these experiences certainly are. Our dream stories essentially try to strip the emotion out of a certain experience by creating a memory of it. This way, the emotion itself is no longer active.  This mechanism fulfils an important role because when we don’t process our emotions, especially negative ones, this increases personal worry and anxiety.
  • In short, dreams help regulate traffic on that fragile bridge which connects our experiences with our emotions and memories.
charlottedonoho

How Scientists Engage the Public | Pew Research Center - 0 views

www.pewinternet.org/...how-scientists-engage-public

science technology society communication

shared by charlottedonoho on 02 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • American scientists believe they face a challenging environment and the vast majority of them support the idea that participation in policy debates and engagement with citizens and journalists is necessary to further their work and careers.
  • A survey of 3,748 American-based scientists connected with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) finds that 87% agree with the statement “Scientists should take an active role in public policy debates about issues related to science and technology.”
  • These findings come at a time when science topics are increasingly part of the public debate. Pew Research findings from this survey reported last month showed an overall drop among AAAS scientists in how they rate the state of science in general and their particular scientific field. Scientists also express concerns about the precarious state of research funding, some of the influences on how funding is allocated, and difficulties they feel hinder the capacity of science disciplines to attract the best talent to the field.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Nearly all the AAAS scientists (98%) say they have some level of interaction with citizens at least from time to time, and 51% have at least some contact with reporters about research findings. In addition, nearly half of AAAS scientists – 47% – use social media to talk about science or read about scientific developments at least some of the time.
  • The scientists who are most likely to be involved in public activities show distinct patterns by age, by the level of public debate and public interest they perceive in their specialty, and by discipline. Virtually all scientists engage with citizens. Mid-career and older scientists are especially likely to speak to reporters. Younger scientists are more likely to use social media. And blogging is something that equally spans the generations under age 65.
charlottedonoho

Smarter Every Year? Mystery of the Rising IQs - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...y-of-the-rising-iqs-1432737750

education society memory social science

shared by charlottedonoho on 28 May 15 - No Cached
  • That’s because absolute performance on IQ tests—the actual number of questions people get right—has greatly improved over the last 100 years. It’s called the Flynn effect, after James Flynn, a social scientist at New Zealand’s University of Otago who first noticed it in the 1980s.
  • They found that the Flynn effect is real—and large. The absolute scores consistently improved for children and adults, for developed and developing countries. People scored about three points more every decade, so the average score is 30 points higher than it was 100 years ago.
  • The pace jumped in the 1920s and slowed down during World War II. The scores shot up again in the postwar boom and then slowed down again in the ’70s. They’re still rising, but even more slowly. Adult scores climbed more than children’s.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Genes couldn’t change that swiftly, but better nutrition and health probably played a role. Still, that can’t explain why the change affected adults’ scores more than children’s. Economic prosperity helped, too—IQ increases correlate significantly with higher gross domestic product.
  • The fact that more people go to school for longer likely played the most important role—more education also correlates with IQ increases. That could explain why adults, who have more schooling, benefited most.
  • The best explanation probably depends on some combination of factors. Dr. Flynn himself argues for a “social multiplier” theory. An initially small change can set off a benign circle that leads to big effects. Slightly better education, health, income or nutrition might make a child do better at school and appreciate learning more. That would motivate her to read more books and try to go to college, which would make her even smarter and more eager for education, and so on.
  • “Life history” is another promising theory. A longer period of childhood correlates with better learning abilities across many species.
  • The thing that really makes humans so smart, throughout our history, may be that we can invent new kinds of intelligence to suit our changing environments.
Javier E

Psych, Lies, and Audiotape: The Tarnished Legacy of the Milgram Shock Experiments | - 2 views

lareviewofbooks.org/...-the-milgram-shock-experiments

research psychology authority experiment

shared by Javier E on 05 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • subjects — 780 New Haven residents who volunteered — helped make an untenured assistant professor named Stanley Milgram a national celebrity. Over the next five decades, his obedience experiments provided the inspiration for films, fiction, plays, documentaries, pop music, prime-time dramas, and reality television. Today, the Milgram experiments are considered among the most famous and most controversial experiments of all time. They are also often used in expert testimony in cases where situational obedience leads to crime
  • Perry’s evidence raises larger questions regarding a study that is still firmly entrenched in American scientific and popular culture: if Milgram lied once about his compromised neutrality, to what extent can we trust anything he said? And how could a blatant breach in objectivity in one of the most analyzed experiments in history go undetected for so long?
  • the debate has never addressed this question: to what extent can we trust his raw data in the first place? In her riveting new book, Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments, Australian psychologist Gina Perry tackles this very topic, taking nothing for granted
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Her chilling investigation of the experiments and their aftereffects suggests that Milgram manipulated results, misled the public, and flat out lied in order to deflect criticism and further the thesis for which he would become famous
  • She contends that serious factual inaccuracies cloud our understanding of Milgram’s work, inaccuracies which she believes arose “partly because of Milgram’s presentation of his findings — his downplaying of contradictions and inconsistencies — and partly because it was the heart-attack variation that was embraced by the popular media
  • Perry reveals that Milgram massaged the facts in order to deliver the outcome he sought. When Milgram presented his finding — namely, high levels of obedience — both in early papers and in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority, he stated that if the subject refused the lab coat’s commands more than four times, the subject would be classified as disobedient. But Perry finds that this isn’t what really happened. The further Milgram got in his research, the more he pushed participants to obey.
  • only after criticism of his ethics surfaced, and long after the completion of the studies, did Milgram claim that “a careful post-experimental treatment was administered to all subjects,” in which “at the very least all subjects were told that the victim had not received dangerous electric shocks.” This was, quite simply, a lie. Milgram didn’t want word to spread through New Haven that he was duping his subjects, which could taint the results of his future trials.
  • If the Milgram of Obedience to Authority were the narrator in a novel, I wouldn’t have found him terribly reliable. So why had I believed such a narrator in a work of nonfiction?
  • The answer, I found, was disturbingly simple: I trust scientists
  • I do trust them not to lie about the rules or results of their experiments. And if a scientist does lie, especially in such a famous experiment, I trust that another scientist will quickly uncover the deception. Or at least I used to.
  • At the time, Milgram was 27, fresh out of grad school and needing to make a name for himself in a hyper-competitive department, and Perry suggests that his “career depended on [the subjects’] obedience; all his preparations were aimed at making them obey.”
  • Milgram’s studies — which suggest that nearly two-thirds of subjects will, under certain conditions, administer dangerously powerful electrical shocks to a stranger when commanded to do so by an authority figure — have become a staple of psychology departments around the world. They have even helped shape the rules that govern experiments on human subjects. Along with Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford prison experiment, which showed that college students assigned the role of “prison guard” quickly started abusing college students assigned the role of “prisoner,” Milgram’s experiments are the starting point for any meaningful discussion of the “I was only following orders” defense, and for determining how the relationship between situational factors and obedience can lead seemingly good people to do horrible things.
  • While Milgram’s defenders point to subsequent recreations of his experiments that have replicated his findings, the unethical nature, not to mention the scope and cost, of the original version have not allowed for full duplications.
grayton downing

BBC News - Light shed on how genes shape face - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...science-environment-24654707

genes face science research

shared by grayton downing on 24 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Working on mice, researchers have identified thousands of small regions of DNA that influence the way facial features develop.
  • The findings, published in Science, could also help researchers to learn how facial birth defects arise.
  • "Somewhere in there there must be that blueprint that defines what our face looks like."
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The international team has found more than 4,000 "enhancers" in the mouse genome that appear to play a role in facial appearance.
  • "In the mouse embryos we can see where exactly, as the face develops, this switch turns on the gene that it controls.
  • "These mice looked pretty normal, but it is really hard for humans to see differences in the face of mice," explained Prof Visel.
  • "What this really tells us is that this particular switch also plays a role in development of the skull and can affect what exactly the skull looks like," he explained.
  • Understanding this could also help to reveal why and how things can go wrong as embryos develop in the womb, leading to facial birth defects.
  • "And they have severe implications for the kids that are affected. They affect feeding, speech, breathing, they can require extensive surgery and they have psychological implications."
  • Professor Visel added that scientists were just at the beginning of understanding the processes that shape the face, but their early results suggested it was an extremely complex process.
Ellie McGinnis

The Dangers of Pseudoscience - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...the-dangers-of-pseudoscience

pseudoscience science research

shared by Ellie McGinnis on 24 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • “demarcation problem,” the issue of what separates good science from bad science and pseudoscience
  • Demarcation is crucial to our pursuit of knowledge; its issues go to the core of debates on epistemology and of the nature of truth and discovery
  • our society spends billions of tax dollars on scientific research, so it is important that we also have a good grasp of what constitutes money well spent in this regard
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • pseudoscience is not — contrary to popular belief — merely a harmless pastime of the gullible; it often threatens people’s welfare, sometimes fatally so
  • in the area of medical treatments that the science-pseudoscience divide is most critical, and where the role of philosophers in clarifying things may be most relevant
  • What makes the use of aspirin “scientific,” however, is that we have validated its effectiveness through properly controlled trials, isolated the active ingredient, and understood the biochemical pathways through which it has its effects
  • Popper’s basic insight: the bad habit of creative fudging and finagling with empirical data ultimately makes a theory impervious to refutation. And all pseudoscientists do it, from parapsychologists to creationists and 9/11 Truthers.
  • Philosophers of science have long recognized that there is nothing wrong with positing unobservable entities per se, it’s a question of what work such entities actually do within a given theoretical-empirical framework.
  • we are attempting to provide explanations for why some things work and others don’t. If these explanations are wrong, or unfounded as in the case of vacuous concepts like Qi, then we ought to correct or abandon them.
  • no sharp line dividing sense from nonsense, and moreover that doctrines starting out in one camp may over time evolve into the other.
  • inaccessibility of the famous Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle postulated by physicists to play a crucial role in literally holding the universe together (it provides mass to all other particles)
  • The open-ended nature of science means that there is nothing sacrosanct in either its results or its methods.
  • The borderlines between genuine science and pseudoscience may be fuzzy, but this should be even more of a call for careful distinctions, based on systematic facts and sound reasoning
Ellie McGinnis

Role of Humanities, in School and Life - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nities-in-school-and-life.html

humanities school education knowledge

shared by Ellie McGinnis on 10 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • the major value of a college curriculum, and the reason an undergraduate degree is still preferable to a random menu of massive online open courses, is the opportunity it offers students through a variety of disciplines and the different skills specific to each
  • most colleges do not view humanities and sciences as in competition with each other. Today’s students need to develop the capacity for open-ended inquiry cultivated by the liberal arts, and also the problem-solving skills associated with science and technology.
  • a major factor that’s reshaped humanities education since 1970, when the decline began: postmodernism.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • I fled my passion, literature, for a practical and rational-minded career in medicine.
  • More important, studying the humanities helps us make sense of our lives and our world, whether the times are good or bad.
  • But the humanities are not on life support. They are alive and well, and remain vitally important in preparing graduates to lead meaningful, considered lives, to flourish in multiple careers and to be informed, engaged citizens of our democracy and our rapidly evolving world
  • While the professors justifiably cite inadequate funding and marketplace demand for scientists and engineers as causes of the marginalization of the humanities, they also ought to look inward at their profession’s rejection of the rational ideals that make the educated world go round.
  • The narrow focus on STEM education can produce a well-trained work force. What the country and the world need are well-educated citizens.
« First ‹ Previous 41 - 60 of 486 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page