Author: Mr. Lakhaney

TOK Teacher

Your Brain Is Primed To Reach False Conclusions

February 23, 2015

“Paul Offit likes to tell a story about how his wife, pediatrician Bonnie Offit, was about to give a child a vaccination when the kid was struck by a seizure. Had she given the injection a minute sooner, Paul Offit says, it would surely have appeared as though the vaccine had caused the seizure and probably no study in the world would have convinced the parent otherwise.”

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/your-brain-is-primed-to-reach-false-conclusions/

Hollywood at War: An unrepentant whitewash of murder and occupation, American Sniper shouldn’t be up for any Oscars tonight.

February 23, 2015

“Great art is always ambiguous. Rather than giving us answers, it forces us to ask new questions; complexity is its hallmark. None of this applies to American Sniper, a truly abhorrent film that cannot be confused with art, much less great art.”

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/american-sniper-war-violence-oscars/

How can we measure the effectiveness in charitable giving?

February 22, 2015

Much of our charitable giving is governed by emotions. We are far more often to give to a cause if the story or cause grabs our attention by moving us emotionally. Sometimes the charities are effective at branding themselves or their cause and sometimes we personally identify with the cause.

There are some people who want to change the way we think about charitable giving by identifying the “return on investment” of each dollar donated rather than letting our emotions decide for us. What happens when we decide to figure out the most effective use of our charitable dollars? How can we measure the impact? What criteria do we look at? Do we focus on saving lives or improving quality of life? Is it possible to even quantify these things?

Much of the approach these people use try to apply mathematical approaches to identify effectiveness. How can we use math to help us determine truth? What are the assumptions built into these mathematical models? Does quantifying this stuff to determine effectiveness dehumanize charitable work?

What if it was “mathematically proven” that the the most effective approach to charity were to give money away with no conditions or strings attached to the recipients? Would your emotional or intuitive revulsion to such an idea keep you from donating? How do you decide what is right when different ways of knowing conflict with one another?

Sometimes people prefer to donate to causes that build tangible structures like schools in foreign countries though it turns out that building schools may not actually that effective based on the cost.

Below are some links to evaluate this topic and these questions.

1. Is It Nuts to Give to the Poor Without Strings Attached?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/is-it-nuts-to-give-to-the-poor-without-strings-attached.html

2. Planet Money Podcast: The Charity That Just Gives People Money

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/16/212645252/episode-480-the-charity-that-just-gives-people-money

3.Measuring the Bang of Every Donated Buck

Scoring charitable work is evolving from an art into a science

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703787304575075340954767332

4. Give Well: Real Change for Your Dollar

Homepage for an organization that seeks to quantify the impact of various charities.

http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/criteria/cost-effectiveness

5. Smart Aid for the World’s Poor

How can rich countries best help poor ones? Matt Ridley identifies five priorities

http://www.wsj.com/articles/smart-aid-for-the-worlds-poor-1406326677

6. Freakonomics Podcast:Fixing the World, Bang-for-the-Buck Edition

http://freakonomics.com/2014/10/02/fixing-the-world-bang-for-the-buck-edition-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

7.Don’t Build Schools in Afghanistan

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/05/dont_build_schools_in_afghanistan.html

8.Poker Players Use Science To Effectively Give To Charities

http://www.npr.org/2014/12/24/372837159/poker-players-use-science-to-effectively-give-to-charities

Should we judge the practices of other cultures?

February 22, 2015

When discussing the practices of other cultures, debates coalesce around two positions:

Moral Relativism: Rights are culturally dependent and there are no moral principles that should apply to all people. Societies should be able to do whatever they want and we shouldn’t judge them.

Moral Universalism: There are certain absolute moral truths (i.e. Human rights) and we should hold people accountable to those truths.

This debate has existed for a long time and in an increasingly global world, these arguments will not go away. Below are some interesting and in some cases, disturbing, examples of cultural practices that go from strange (ritually marrying a dog) to terrifying (burning witches and killing albino).

Is there a moral position from which to judge these if they are from radically different cultures from ours? If so, is there a reciprocal right others have to judge our practices? Can we act upon our judgments? What if acting on these judgments involved intervention in other cultures that don’t want it?

1. Girl marries stray dog to ward off evil spirit

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2741901/The-husband-s-real-hound-Girl-18-marries-stray-dog-bizarre-Indian-tribal-ritual-designed-ward-evil-spirit.html

2.Papua New Guinea Is Still Burning “Sorcerers” at the Stake

http://www.vice.com/read/papua-new-guinea-are-still-burning-witches-at-the-stake

3. Tanzanian gangs hack off limbs of albinos for traditional rituals

http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-tanzania-albinos-20150219-story.html

The Monty Hall Problem: Probability, intuition, and Math.

February 22, 2015

LET'S MAKE A DEALThe old game show, Let’s Make a Deal, featured a segment in which contestants could choose the prize behind one of three doors. “Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the other doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, ‘Do you want to pick door No. 2?’ Is it to your advantage to take the switch?”

This case provided an interesting case of conflict between our intuitive beliefs and math. This problem was so simple yet confusing, even math professors and other experts got it wrong. Below is an article about the whole story and below that is a link to play an online version of the game in which you can choose a door and then decide whether to switch. The site tallies your overall effectiveness at winning the prize.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/21/us/behind-monty-hall-s-doors-puzzle-debate-and-answer.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08monty.html

This American Life Podcast: Cops See it Differently

February 21, 2015

A really amazing two part podcast about policing in the United States. Through the different parts of this podcast, we hear from police departments and officers around the country and how they’re dealing with the challenges they face. What’s fascinating about this is the role of perspective and how different experiences affect how people see different situations. Part 2 Act 2 discusses the implicit association test and what a police department is doing about how to deal with implicit bias while policing. Part 2 Prologue is an interesting and short bit about a reporter watching the Eric Garner video with a friend who is a police officer and how the two of them see completely different things and interpret the video in very different ways.

Below are links for the full episodes.

Part I

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/547/cops-see-it-differently-part-one

Part II

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/548/cops-see-it-differently-part-two