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The motivating force for the change came from the macro side, with modern macroeconomics being far more explicit than old-fashioned monetary theory about fluctuations in income and employment (as well as the price level).

Many different distortions can create similar anomalies. If cotton is subsidized, the price farmers get will exceed, by the amount of the subsidy, the value to consumers. Society thus stands to gain by eliminating the subsidy and moving to a price that is the same for both buyers and sellers.

Public finance (see public choice) looks at how the government enters the scene. Traditionally, its focus was on taxes, which automatically introduce “wedges” (differences between the price the buyer pays and the price the seller receives) and cause inefficiency.

A Life Spent Focused on What Computers Are Doing to Us

We are, she fears, in danger of producing an emotionally sterile society more akin to that of the robots coming down the road.

Turkle was born in 1948 into a lower-middle-class family that raised her to assume she would ace every test she ever took and marry a nice Jewish boy with whom she would raise a brood of children to ensure the survival of the Jewish people.

But it is not just conservatives who question scientific authority in the United States. Alarm at many applications of biological research, for example, crosses party lines. This impulse usually targets genetic engineering and biotechnology, but it also fosters skepticism toward vaccination and other medical practices. Across the political spectrum, citizens tend to pick and choose among scientific theories and applications based on preexisting commitments. They are frequently suspicious of basic research procedures as well; many believe that peer review and other internal policing mechanisms fail to remove powerful biases. Conservatives often charge that peer review enforces liberal groupthink, while some progressives say it leaves conventional social norms unexamined.

Even as individuals, scientists face growing skepticism. Concern about scientific misconduct is widespread, and most Americans doubt that the perpetrators face serious repercussions. Significant numbers trust the experts who apply knowledge more than those who produce it.

The logic is supposed to be that only someone of Gorman’s race, and optimally gender, can effectively translate her expression into another language. But is that true? And are we not denying Gorman and black people basic humanity in – if I may jump the gun – pretending that it is?

Notice I didn’t mention Shakespeare translated into other languages. According to the Critical Race Theory paradigm that informs this performative take on translating Gorman, Shakespeare being a white man means that white translators of his work are akin to him, while non-white ones, minted in a world where they must always grapple with whiteness “centered,” are perfect bilinguals of a sort.

There are, however, others who declare that these claims are not of the Natural Sciences. A knowledge claim in the natural sciences needs to be falsifiable in order to be tested, and claims regarding a multiverse are not falsifiable. This view of science is most closely associated with the philosopher of science Karl Popper and more recently by Neil Degrasse Tyson. Tyson claims that the multiverse theory, and others like it, do not fall under “science”, but “philosophy”. He claims that in physics, for example, a concept constitutes knowledge if it accurately predicts the future and can be tested empirically. Questions about why certain models work can be discussed and debated over dinner, but those ‘why’ questions are not scientific. We can predict where the moon will be at any given time on the strength of our equations, but questions about why those equations work are for philosophers if they cannot be answered with a falsifiable claim.

The natural sciences rely heavily on reason, in particular inductive reasoning. The statement, “all bodies observed so far obey Newton’s law of gravity” has been used to justify a believe in Newton’s law of gravity. Belief structures like this are the backbone of Natural Science, but there are notable philosophers of science who are quick to point out the fallacy of induction. David Hume, for example, questioned the assumption he referred to as the “uniformity of nature”. In short, simply because all observed bodies follow a pattern tell us nothing of unobserved bodies, and the “uniformity of nature” (the belief that nature behaves uniformly) cannot be proven. This brings us to....

In the study of TOK in DP-1 (11th grade), I have learnt about the ways of knowing, and two of the areas of knowledge - natural sciences and human sciences. Of all the discussions and explorations done into these areas of knowledge, there can be patterns observed in the methods of experimentation, data collection, data analysis and also assumptions being made when generalizing situations. In some of the above points, human sciences is similar to natural sciences, while in the others, the ideologies and working is different.

Natural sciences and human sciences for instance both use experiments as a form of data collection but the methods and outputs are different. Natural scientists have lesser moral values to take care of compared to human scientists such as psychologists. Psychologists are directly dealing with humans and hence need to take more ethical implications into consideration. Secondly, human scientists conduct experiments on a large set of people - not limited to one race or gender unless it is required. Natural scientists do not require survey type data. Here, a single scientist conducts the experiments. Both the types of experiments are empirical based though, direct experimentation is more in natural sciences while human sciences are more observation based. But experiments in human sciences have more unpredictable results due to what is known as the Hawthorne effect. This effect explains that when a particular group comes to know that they are under observation for a experiment or an analysis, they tend to be more productive. These cause errors in results of human science experiments especially the ones of psychology.

"Psychology and economics are both interested in how people make decisions, but have different theories and methods. In our work with economists at Northwestern, Michigan, the Federal Reserve and elsewhere, we have found ways to complement each other's expertise," said Wändi Bruine de Bruin, professor of behavioral decision making at Leeds' University Business School, who received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, where she is collaborating professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy.

Confirmation Bias is the tendency to look for information that supports, rather than rejects, one’s preconceptions, typically by interpreting evidence to confirm existing beliefs while rejecting or ignoring any conflicting data (American Psychological Association).

experiment by Peter Watson (1960) in which the subjects were to find the experimenter’s rule for sequencing numbers.Its results showed that the subjects chose responses that supported their hypotheses while rejecting contradictory evidence, and even though their hypotheses were not correct, they became confident in them quickly (Gray, 2010, p. 356).Though such evidence of the confirmation bias has appeared in psychological literature throughout history, the term ‘confirmation bias’ was first used in a 1977 paper detailing an experimental study on the topic (Mynatt, Doherty, & Tweney, 1977).

This type of confirmation bias explains people’s search for evidence in a one-sided way to support their hypotheses or theories.Experiments have shown that people provide tests/questions that are designed to yield “yes” if their favored hypothesis was true, and ignore alternative hypotheses that are likely to give the same result.This is also known as congruence heuristic (Baron, 2000, p.162-64). Though the preference for affirmative questions itself may not be bias, there are experiments that have shown that congruence bias does exist.

Confirmation bias is a ubiquitous phenomenon, the effects of which have been traced as far back as Pythagoras’ studies of harmonic relationships in the 6th century B.C. (Nickerson, 1998), and is referenced in the writings of William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon (Risinger, Saks, Thompson, & Rosenthal, 2002). It is also a problematic phenomenon, having been implicated in “a significant fraction of the disputes, altercations, and misunderstandings that occur among individuals, groups, and nations” throughout human history, including the witch trials of Western Europe and New England, and the perpetuation of inaccurate medical diagnoses, ineffective medical treatments, and erroneous scientific theories (Nickerson, 1998, p. 175).

For over a century, psychologists have observed that people naturally favor information that is consistent with their beliefs or desires, and ignore or discount evidence to the contrary. In an article titled “The Mind’s Eye,” Jastrow (1899) was among the first to explain how the mind plays an active role in information processing, such that two individuals with different mindsets might interpret the same information in entirely different ways (see also Boring, 1930). Since then, a wealth of empirical research has demonstrated that confirmation bias affects how we perceive visual stimuli (e.g., Bruner & Potter, 1964; Leeper, 1935), how we gather and evaluate evidence (e.g., Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979; Wason, 1960), and how we judge—and behave toward—other people (e.g., Asch, 1946; Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1966; Snyder & Swann, 1978).

Confirmation bias (Wason, 1960) occurs when people seek out or evaluate information in a way that fits with their existing thinking and preconceptions. The domain of science, where theories should advance based on both falsifying and supporting evidence, has not been immune to bias, which is often associated with people processing hypotheses in ways that end up confirming them (Oswald & Grosjean, 2004). Similarly, a consumer who likes a particular brand and researches a new purchase may be motivated to seek out customer reviews on the internet that favor that brand. Confirmation bias has also been related to unmotivated processes, including primacy effects and anchoring, evident in a reliance on information that is encountered early in a process (Nickerson, 1998).

n mid-October I asked two people I’d never met to give me their Facebook account passwords for three weeks leading up to and after Election Day. I wanted to immerse myself in the feeds of a type of person who has become a trope of sorts in our national discussion about politics and disinformation: baby boomers with an attachment to polarizing social media.

Despite Facebook’s reputation as a leading source for conspiracy theories and misinformation, what goes on in most average Americans’ news feeds is nearly impossible for outsiders to observe.

Soya’s fame illustrated a simple truth: that social media is less a reflection of who we are, and more a performance of who we want to be.

It also seemed to herald a darker future where our fundamental senses of reality are under siege: The AI that allows anyone to fabricate a face can also be used to harass women with “deepfake” pornography, invent fraudulent LinkedIn personas and digitally impersonate political enemies.

As the photos began receiving hundreds of likes, Soya’s personality and style began to come through. She was relentlessly upbeat. She never sneered or bickered or trolled. She explored small towns, savored scenic vistas, celebrated roadside restaurants’ simple meals.

As with almost every mass shooter in recorded U.S. history, both of the suspects in the recent attacks are men.

"Men just are generally more violent," said the group's president, Jillian Peterson, a forensic psychologist and professor of criminology and criminal justice at Hamline University. "There are many theories as to why that is."

And when women do choose violence, guns are not typically their weapon of choice.

These questions touch on all the major controversies in the study of mind, with important implications for politics, law and religion.

The idea that language might shape thought was for a long time considered untestable at best and more often simply crazy and wrong. Now, a flurry of new cognitive science research is showing that in fact, language does profoundly influence how we see the world.

Dr. Chomsky proposed that there is a universal grammar for all human languages—essentially, that languages don't really differ from one another in significant ways. And because languages didn't differ from one another, the theory went, it made no sense to ask whether linguistic differences led to differences in thinking.

Human beings often act in irrational and unexpected ways when it comes to business decisions, money, and finance.

Behavioral finance tries to explain the difference between what economic theory predicts people will do and what they actually do in the heat of the moment. 

There are two main types of biases that people commit causing them to deviate from rational decision-making: cognitive and emotional.

Paradigm shifts come along maybe once in a generation. They create a profound realignment across the globe, across industries, across economies and across populations.

“Paradigm shifts arise when the dominant paradigm under which normal science operates is rendered incompatible with new phenomena, facilitating the adoption of a new theory or paradigm.”

COVID-19 is creating a paradigm shift that is realigning every system in every industry across the global at once – in an instant.

Byzantium – or more properly, the medieval Roman Empire – controlled much of the Mediterranean at the height of its territorial rule in the mid-sixth century.

His premise is that when Rome fell, the Byzantine Empire went on to preserve a white-European civilization. This isn’t true.

Mentions of Byzantium are scattered across message boards frequented by both white supremacists and QAnon enthusiasts – who spout conspiracy theories about a deep-state cabal of Satan-worshipping, blood-drinking pedophiles running the world.

Facebook is the world’s most influential source of news.That’s true according to every available measure of size — the billion-plus people who devour its News Feed every day, the cargo ships of profit it keeps raking in, and the tsunami of online traffic it sends to other news sites.

But Facebook has also acquired a more subtle power to shape the wider news business. Across the industry, reporters, editors and media executives now look to Facebook the same way nesting baby chicks look to their engorged mother — as the source of all knowledge and nourishment, the model for how to behave in this scary new-media world. Case in point: The New York Times, among others, recently began an initiative to broadcast live video. Why do you suppose that might be? Yup, the F word. The deal includes payments from Facebook to news outlets, including The Times.

Yet few Americans think of Facebook as a powerful media organization, one that can alter events in the real world. When blowhards rant about the mainstream media, they do not usually mean Facebook, the mainstreamiest of all social networks. That’s because Facebook operates under a veneer of empiricism. Many people believe that what you see on Facebook represents some kind of data-mined objective truth unmolested by the subjective attitudes of fair-and-balanced human beings.

For many years, Rosen has been a leading critic of what he calls The View From Nowhere, or the conceit that journalists bring no prior commitments to their work. On his long-running blog, PressThink, he's advocated for "The View From Somewhere"—an effort by journalists to be transparent about their priors, whether ideological or otherwise.  Rosen is just one of several voices who'll shape NewCo. Still, the new venture may well be a practical test of his View from Somewhere theory of journalism. I chatted with Rosen about some questions he'll face. 

The View from Nowhere won’t be a requirement for our journalists. Nor will a single ideology prevail. NewCo itself will have a view of the world: Accountability journalism, exposing abuses of power, revealing injustices will no doubt be part of it. Under that banner many “views from somewhere” can fit.

The way "objectivity" evolves historically is out of something much more defensible and interesting, which is in that phrase "Of No Party or Clique." That's the founders of The Atlantic saying they want to be independent of party politics. They don't claim to have no politics, do they? They simply say: We're not the voice of an existing faction or coalition. But they're also not the Voice of God.

Tainter seemed calm. He walked me through the arguments of the book that made his reputation, “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” which has for years been the seminal text in the study of societal collapse, an academic subdiscipline that arguably was born with its publication in 1988

It is only a mild overstatement to suggest that before Tainter, collapse was simply not a thing.

His own research has moved on; these days, he focuses on “sustainability.”