Category: Knowledge and Politics

“Why facts don’t matter to Trump’s supporters” and “Why Bernie Sanders is Actually Winning”

August 6, 2016

Though it’s easy to pick on Donald Trump and his supporters, this cognitive bias is evident in humans in general and we see it in various situations. Below is one article and below that is an amusing video mocking Bernie Sanders supporters.

“Graves’s article examined the puzzle of why nearly one-third of U.S. parents believe that childhood vaccines cause autism, despite overwhelming medical evidence that there’s no such link. In such cases, he noted, “arguing the facts doesn’t help — in fact, it makes the situation worse.” The reason is that people tend to accept arguments that confirm their views and discount facts that challenge what they believe.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-facts-dont-matter-to-trumps-supporters/2016/08/04/924ece4a-5a78-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

The New Case for Hunting Hunters, tree-huggers, and animal welfare advocates should be allies.

April 14, 2016

“In the absence of people, nature would establish its own balance among species. But having shaped (and disrupted) the natural environment so extensively, humans can’t very well wash their hands of responsibility for what happens when certain species over-expand. Hunting is one way to keep wildlife numbers in check, for the good of people, plants, land and other animals.”

http://reason.com/archives/2013/12/05/the-new-case-for-hunting

The Politics of Bangladesh’s Genocide Debate

April 6, 2016

What does this article tell us about the role of history in creating a national identify? What does this tell us about how current circumstances shape our perceptions of the past?

Is it ever ethical to censor scholarship or the media? What if the three million figure was accurate? Inaccurate?

Is it ethical to make illegal debates and scholarship questioning the death toll of the Holocaust (it is illegal in much of Europe but not in the United States)?

“Where does the truth about the numbers lie? The three million figure was popularized by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the Awami League in 1971, the country’s first president and the father of the current prime minister. Mujib, as he is popularly known, is a revered figure, particularly within the Awami League. But his biographer, Sayyid A. Karim, who was also Sheikh Rahman’s first foreign secretary, viewed the number as ‘a gross exaggeration.'”

“For others, however, questions are necessary on this and other aspects of the 1971 war, including the widespread killings of members of the Bihari ethnic group, who supported the Pakistanis during the conflict, by Bengali nationalists. We should question this because nationalist narratives about the past often serve contemporary political interests, and we should beware of an orthodoxy being used to silence dissent.”

Is Voting Out of Self-Interest Wrong?

April 4, 2016

“Some philosophers argue that self-interested voting is always wrong and that we should vote instead for what we see as best for society as a whole (the “common good”). There may be cases where my self-interest happens to coincide with the common good. A tax cut or a minimum wage from which I profit may be good for the economy as a whole. But it’s naïve to think that’s true of every tax deduction and credit that serves a personal or corporate self-interest. It’s tempting, therefore, to think that I’m wrong to vote my self-interest when it’s opposed to the common good.”

Overreacting to Terrorism?

March 29, 2016

“The basic problem is this: The human brain evolved so that we systematically misjudge risks and how to respond to them. Our visceral fear of terrorism has repeatedly led us to adopt policies that are expensive and counterproductive, such as the invasion of Iraq.”

Poland plans to punish use of the phrase ‘Polish death camps’

February 21, 2016

“Poland has long sought to eliminate the misleading phrase from historical and newspaper accounts since it suggests the country, which was occupied by Nazi Germany during the second world war, was responsible for concentration camps on its territory.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/13/poland-plans-ban-phrase-polish-death-camps?CMP=twt_gu

Paris, Beirut, and the Language Used to Describe Terrorism

November 18, 2015

“Not all media coverage is created equal, and sometimes the difference is in a few words.”

“As in Paris, the attacks in Beirut were the deadliest in decades, committed by the same medieval perpetrators from outside. And yet major American and European media outlets did not treat the two incidents similarly, which in turn, I suspect, contributed to an environment in which terror in Paris spurred Facebook to action in a way bloodshed in Beirut didn’t.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/11/paris-beirut-media-coverage/416457/

South Korea to replace all school history books with single state-approved textbook

November 5, 2015

“Opposition politicians and some students have already been protesting against the move, accusing the government of ‘distorting history'”

“I think also the UK have a very interesting approach. We tend to avoid controversial history in our curriculum, we’re very keen on looking at more distant history and somehow, for some reason the less controversial it becomes.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-13/south-korea-to-replace-all-school-history-books/6849970?mc_cid=bed065a83a&mc_eid=34e2887073