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Category: confirmation bias

White American intolerance connected to authoritarianism

White American intolerance connected to authoritarianism

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 Good article discussing this recent study. The threat to our democracy isn’t partisanship on both sides; it’s intolerant white Americans that are prone to authoritarianism. When the imagine that their white identity is threatened they support undemocratic, authoritarian rule. And of course Dump is the perfect authoritarian to stoke their prejudices to impose undemocratic restrictions on some of the population. Which is, of course, a “repudiation of American values and democratic commitments.” Of course this phenomenon has been going on…

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Differences in liberal and conservative bias

Differences in liberal and conservative bias

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Thanks to Normalanga for sending this study to me,  in which participants were paid to read opposing political Twitter feeds for a month. The results were that conservatives were “substantially more conservative” after the experiment, while liberals were “slightly more liberal […] though none of these effects were statistically significant.” It is obvious that liberal and conservative bias is on an asymmetrical scale.

Why some conservatives are blind to climate change

Why some conservatives are blind to climate change

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Article by Jiaying Zhao et al. in The Conversation. Some excerpts: “Despite the strong evidence that human activities are contributing to climate change, a small minority of the public disagrees with the scientific consensus. […] When we analyzed the data, we found a pattern: Conservatives who were less concerned about climate change were less likely to see climate-related words than liberals who were worried about the issue. In short, conservatives showed climate change blindness.” “Now that we know people’s political…

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A dive into the black waters under the surface of persuasive design

A dive into the black waters under the surface of persuasive design

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A Guardian article last October brings the darker aspects of the attention economy, particularly the techniques and tools of neural hijacking, into sharp focus. The piece summarizes some interaction design principles and trends that signal a fundamental shift in means, deployment, and startling effectiveness of mass persuasion. The mechanisms reliably and efficiently leverage neural reward (dopamine) circuits to seize, hold, and direct attention toward whatever end the designer and content providers choose. The organizer of a $1,700 per person event…

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Dumpsters are the biggest consumers and promoters of fake news

Dumpsters are the biggest consumers and promoters of fake news

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Continuing this prior post,  this new study by Oxford University confirms the phenomenon. And no, this study is not confirmation bias but scientific reality.  The abstract: “What kinds of social media users read junk news? We examine the distribution of the most significant sources of junk news in the three months before President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union Address. Drawing on a list of sources that consistently publish political news and information that is extremist, sensationalist, conspiratorial, masked commentary, fake news…

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Study of fake news in the 2016 election

Study of fake news in the 2016 election

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Authors from Princeton, Dartmouth and Exeter published this. The abstract: “Though some warnings about online “echo chambers” have been hyperbolic, tendencies toward selective exposure to politically congenial content are likely to extend to misinformation and to be exacerbated by social media platforms. We test this prediction using data on the factually dubious articles known as “fake news.” Using unique data combining survey responses with individual-level web traffic histories, we estimate that approximately 1 in 4 Americans visited a fake news website…

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Seeing my blindfold

Seeing my blindfold

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I’ve found some thought-provoking answers on the Q&A social media site, Quora. Follow the link to a perceptive and helpful answer to, “Can a person be able to objectively identify exactly when and how their thinking processes are being affected by cognitive biases?” The author provides some practical (if exhausting) recommendations that, if even partly followed by a third-to-half of people (my guestimate), would possibly collapse the adversarial culture in our country.

Liberals and conservatives are not equivalently biased

Liberals and conservatives are not equivalently biased

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Here is a meta-analysis called “Ideological asymmetries and the essence of political psychology” by John T. Jost, Political Psychology, Vol. 38, No. 2, 2017. This is in part a response to a previous meta-analysis posted on this blog that found both liberal and conservatives equally biased. It’s interesting how liberals, when basing their so-called biases on science and facts, are declared equivalently biased to those whose biases are based on factors other than the foregoing, including authoritarianism and fear responses. …

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The real problem of consciousness

The real problem of consciousness

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See this article. A few excerpts: “A new picture is taking shape in which conscious experience is seen as deeply grounded in how brains and bodies work together to maintain physiological integrity – to stay alive.” “The brain is locked inside a bony skull. All it receives are ambiguous and noisy sensory signals that are only indirectly related to objects in the world. Perception must therefore be a process of inference, in which indeterminate sensory signals are combined with prior…

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It takes more than facts

It takes more than facts

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Excellent article by George Monbiot. He’s right to assert that one’s worldview narrative trumps all other considerations, like facts. Such stories organize how we see everything through their lenses. Monbiot notes that the two major narratives of our time are social democracy and neoliberalism. While having different means and goals they both have the same narrative structure: “Disorder afflicts the land, caused by powerful and nefarious forces working against the interests of humanity. The hero – who might be one…

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