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charlottedonoho

Gender and racial bias can be 'unlearnt' during sleep, new study suggests | Science | T... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...uring-sleep-new-study-suggests

gender race memory biases sleep science

shared by charlottedonoho on 02 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Now scientists have found a more noble purpose for the technique in a study that suggests deep-rooted biases about race and gender could be “unlearnt” during a short nap. The findings appear to confirm the idea that sleeping provides a unique window for accessing and altering fundamental beliefs – even prejudices that we don’t know we have.
  • Simply playing auditory cues while people slept partially undid racial and gender bias, the study found, and the effects were still evident at least a week later.
  • “These biases are well-learned,” said Hu. “They can operate efficiently even when we have the good intention to avoid such biases. Moreover, we are often not aware of their influences on our behaviour.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The study, published in Science, began with two Pavlovian-style conditioning exercises designed to counter race and gender biases.
  • However, they caution that the use of the technique in future would need strict ethical guidelines. “Sleep is a state in which the individual is without wilful consciousness and therefore vulnerable to suggestion,” they add.
  • Scientists believe the technique works because we consolidate memories by replaying them during sleep and transferring the information from the brain’s temporary storage to long-term memory. Hearing the distinctive sound would trigger the memory to be replayed repeatedly, the scientists said, enhancing the learning process.
  • “We call this Targeted Memory Reactivation, because the sounds played during sleep could produce relatively better memory for information cued during sleep compared to information not cued during sleep.
Javier E

Decoding the Rules of Conversation - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-rules-of-conversation.html

france uk conversation wil discourse irony language

shared by Javier E on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Life at Versailles was apparently a protracted battle of wits. You gained status if you showed “esprit” — clever, erudite and often caustic wit, aimed at making rivals look ridiculous. The king himself kept abreast of the sharpest remarks, and granted audiences to those who made them. “Wit opens every door,” one courtier explained.If you lacked “esprit” — or suffered from “l’esprit de l’escalier” (thinking of a comeback only once you had reached the bottom of the staircase) — you’d look ridiculous yourself.
  • But many modern-day conversations — including the schoolyard cries of “Bim!” — make more sense once you realize that everyone around you is in a competition not to look ridiculous
  • Many children train for this at home. Where Americans might coo over a child’s most inane remark, to boost his confidence, middle-class French parents teach their kids to be concise and amusing, to keep everyone listening. “I force him or her to discover the best ways of retaining my attention,” the anthropologist Raymonde Carroll wrote in her 1987 book “Cultural Misunderstandings: The French-American Experience.”
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  • Jean-Benoît Nadeau, a Canadian who co-wrote a forthcoming book on French conversation, told me that the penchant for saying “no” or “it’s not possible” is often a cover for the potential humiliation of seeming not to know something. Only once you trust someone can you turn down the wit and reveal your weaknesses
  • At least it’s not boring. Even among friends, being dull is almost criminal. A French entrepreneur told me her rules for dinner-party topics: no kids, no jobs, no real estate. Provocative opinions are practically required. “You must be a little bit mean but also a little bit vulnerable,” she said.
  • It’s dizzying to switch to the British conversational mode, in which everyone’s trying to show they don’t take themselves seriously. The result is lots of self-deprecation and ironic banter. I’ve sat through two-hour lunches in London waiting for everyone to stop exchanging quips so the real conversation could begin. But “real things aren’t supposed to come up,” my husband said. “Banter can be the only mode of conversation you ever have with someone.”
  • Earnestness makes British people gag
  • After being besieged by British irony and French wit, I sometimes yearn for the familiar comfort of American conversations, where there are no stupid questions. Among friends, I merely have to provide reassurance and mirroring: No, you don’t look fat, and anyway, I look worse.
  • It might not matter what I say, since some American conversations resemble a succession of monologues. A 2014 study led by a psychologist at Yeshiva University found that when researchers crossed two unrelated instant-message conversations, as many as 42 percent of participants didn’t notice
  • A lot of us — myself included — could benefit from a basic rule of improvisational comedy: Instead of planning your next remark, just listen very hard to what the other person is saying. Call it “mindful conversation,” if you like. That’s what the French tend to do
silveiragu

BBC - Future - The man who studies the spread of ignorance - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...tudies-the-spread-of-ignorance

research knowledge ignorance science social media

shared by silveiragu on 09 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • is the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour.
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 09 Jan 16
       
      Interesting data point on the irrationality of words: individuals invent words all the time, purposefully or not. Additionally, this word is USEFUL, as it reveals a clear deficiency in public understanding of, say, the tobacco industry. So, why have I not been able to find any dictionary recognizing its existence? 
  • Ignorance is power
  • Agnotology is as important today as it was back when Proctor studied
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  • politically motivated doubt was sown over US President Barack Obama’s nationality for many months by opponents until he revealed his birth certificate in 2011.
  • ignorance can often be propagated under the guise of balanced debate. For example, the common idea that there will always be two opposing views does not always result in a rational conclusion.
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 09 Jan 16
       
      What's the exploited heuristic? There must be one.
  • a false picture of the truth, hence ignorance.
  • For example, says Proctor, many of the studies linking carcinogens in tobacco were conducted in mice initially, and the tobacco industry responded by saying that studies into mice did not mean that people were at risk,
  • Even though knowledge is ‘accessible’, it does not mean it is accessed, he warns
  • often comes from faith or tradition, or propaganda
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 09 Jan 16
       
      If there are Ways of Knowing, what are the Ways of Not Knowing?
  • a scientifically illiterate society will probably be more susceptible to the tactics used by those wishing to confuse and cloud the truth.
  • It’s not just about the facts, it’s about what is imagined to flow from and into such facts,
  • Another academic studying ignorance is David Dunning, from Cornell University.
  • "While some smart people will profit from all the information now just a click away, many will be misled into a false sense of expertise
  • US presidential candidate Donald Trump's solutions that are either unworkable or unconstitutional are an example of agnotology, says Dunning
    • silveiragu
      silveiragu on 09 Jan 16
       
      Or, rather, the analysis of US Presidential candidate Donald Trump...is.
  • today the need for both a word and the study of human ignorance is as strong as ever
  • 1979, a secret memo from the tobacco industry was revealed to the public.
  • How do people or companies with vested interests spread ignorance and obfuscate knowledge? Georgina Kenyon finds there is a term which defines this phenomenon.
  • it revealed many of the tactics employed by big tobacco to counter “anti-cigarette forces
  • “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”
  • revelation piqued the interest of Robert Proctor, a science historian from Stanford University
  • led him to create a word for the study of deliberate propagation of ignorance: agnotology.
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