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silveiragu

Noam Chomsky Calls Postmodern Critiques of Science Over-Inflated "Polysyllabic Truisms"... - 0 views

www.openculture.com/...ated-polysyllabic-truisms.html

chomsky science

shared by silveiragu on 07 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • we recently featured an interview in which Noam Chomsky slams postmodernist intellectuals like Slavoj Zizek and Jacques Lacan as “charlatans” and posers.
  • The turn against postmodernism has been long in coming,
  • Chomsky characterizes leftist postmodern academics as “a category of intellectuals who are undoubtedly perfectly sincere”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • in his critique, such thinkers use “polysyllabic words and complicated constructions” to make claims that are “all very inflated” and which have “a terrible effect on the third world.
  • It’s considered very left wing, very advanced. Some of what appears in it sort of actually makes sense, but when you reproduce it in monosyllables, it turns out to be truisms. It’s perfectly true that when you look at scientists in the West, they’re mostly men, it’s perfectly true that women have had a hard time breaking into the scientific fields, and it’s perfectly true that there are institutional factors determining how science proceeds that reflect power structures.
  • you don’t get to be a respected intellectual by presenting truisms in monosyllables.
  • Chomsky’s cranky contrarianism is nothing new, and some of his polemic recalls the analytic case against “continental” philosophy or Karl Popper’s case against pseudo-science, although his investment is political as much as philosophical.
  • silveiragu on 07 Jun 16
     
    An interesting synopsis and analysis, linked to a relatively short interview with a great thinker.
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,
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
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • 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.
silveiragu

Economists tested 7 welfare programs to see if they made people lazy. They didn't. - Vox - 0 views

www.vox.com/...welfare-cash-transfer-work

research bias welfare

shared by silveiragu on 21 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • For as long as there have been government programs designed to help the poor, there have been critics insisting that helping the poor will keep them from working. But the evidence for this proposition has always been rather weak.
  • And a recent study from MIT and Harvard economists
  • found "no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • he programs covered in the study have a pretty wide geographic spread. There are four in Latin America (two in Mexico, one each in Nicaragua and Honduras), two in Southeast Asia (Philippines and Indonesia), and one in Morocco
  • . The 95 percent confidence interval for how the programs affected the employment rate ranged from a 1.6 percentage point decline to a 0.9 point increase. There just isn't any change happening here
  • Some other studies find that cash encourages work
  • But it's worth being skeptical about welfare queen claims in rich countries as well.
  • There's a substantial body of evidence showing that the EITC encourages work
  • But even unrestricted cash programs aren't likely to have a major effect on work in rich countries
  • . A number of studies in the US in the 1970s examined "negative income tax" programs
  • The studies found very mild declines in work
  • A much better experiment in Canada, where an entire town got a guaranteed income by way of a negative income tax, found even milder reductions in wor
  • There's no doubt that poorly designed social programs can deter work. Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the pre–welfare reform welfare program, was found to decrease hours worked by 10 to 50 percen
  • Who would work under that condition
silveiragu

As A Father's Alzheimer's Progresses, Family Learns To Love Him As He Is : Shots - Heal... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...lf-when-your-brain-betrays-you

alzheimer brain science

shared by silveiragu on 05 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • O'Brien was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease in 2009.
  • The first time I interviewed Greg O'Brien, back in January, I asked him what he was most afraid of. "I'm afraid of the in-between," he said.
  • "He's more open," she tells me. "We just talk about hard stuff that we used to maybe put off or avoid."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Some changes are hard, but the family is learning to love Greg as he is — not as he was yesterday, or as he might have been if he'd never gotten Alzheimer's.
  • "You're still funny," his son Conor told him recently. "You're slightly different, but you're still funny."
  • silveiragu on 05 Oct 15
     
    Interesting, and saddening, to consider the situations when our brains completely abandon us.
silveiragu

College Scorecard Sandbags Equity in Higher Education | Patricia McGuire - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...orecard-sandbag_b_8129780.html

research higher_education bias

shared by silveiragu on 23 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • the "haves" in higher education have quite a lot; the "have nots" struggle mightily. And this economic chasm is seriously influenced by gender, race and social class -- issues on which the College Scorecard is silent, but which affect just about every factoid presented
  • The reality is that even smart wonks educated at some of the best of the "haves" can be blind to social reality; their monument to algorithmic gymnastics in the College Scorecard obscures some of the most important and painful facts about college life and American society today.
  • The administration presents the collegiate earnings data as if it were value-neutral, not only with no reference to the mission of institutions that may have different values from those the administration apparently exalts, but even more devastatingly, with no reference to the pernicious effects of gender and race discrimination on career opportunities and earnings.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • I am not a wonk, but I did prepare this chart based on data in the College Scorecard and the federal data system IPEDS
  • The value-neutral approach to the collegiate earnings data ignores the facts of life about women and families.
  • 74% of all undergraduates have at least one "non-traditional" characteristic, and more than 55% have two or more non-traditional characteristics such as having children, being a caregiver, delaying college enrollment, attending part-time, working full-time.
  • But the College Scorecard completely ignores the increasingly non-traditional nature of the nation's undergraduate student body today, and instead, presents data as if most college students are privileged children whiling away four years in some grove of academic luxury
  • The Obama administration claims that the new College Scorecard will provide more "transparent" data to students and families trying to decide which college to attend. Unfortunately, by presenting some data in value-neutral or misleading ways, and ignoring other truly important questions in the college choice process
  • the administration presents a data mashup with limited utility for consumers but large potential for misrepresentation of social realities.
silveiragu

How the Hawaiian word 'hapa' came to be used by people of mixed heritage | Public Radio... - 0 views

www.pri.org/...-be-used-people-mixed-heritage

word language knowledge

shared by silveiragu on 23 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • she calls herself “hapa," that is, half Asian, half something else. Julie had never questioned this definition before until one day she was at the market and she met a women who she thought was hapa like herself
  • what does hapa really mean
  • 8:14    How did the word come to be used by non-Hawaiians?
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 8:54    "It’s not like mulatto. It’s not like saying you’re a mongrel or a mutt."
  • 29:50  Stephen: “It’s just another box.
silveiragu

Obama on 'coddled' college students - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/oddled-college-students-2015-9

education confirmation_bias

shared by silveiragu on 21 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • President Barack Obama held a town hall on college access and affordability in Des Moines, Iowa, Monday
  • said students should not be "coddled" from opposing political viewpoints.
  • "That's not the way we learn, either," he said.
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