Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed
Our minds set up many traps for us. Unless we’re aware of them, these traps can seriously hinder our ability to think rationally, leading us to bad reasoning and making stupid decisions. Features of our minds that are meant to help us may, eventually, get us into trouble. Here are the first 5 of the most harmful of these traps and how to avoid each one of them. 1. The Anchoring Trap: Over-Relying on First Thoughts
Do Uncancelled Stamps Prove Mail Bombs Were Not Sent Through the USPS?
The lack of postmarks on explosive devices mailed to Democratic officials proves those items were not sent through the USPS. In October 2018, multiple parcels housing mail bombs were sent to various Democrats and critics of President Trump, including the Clintons, the Obamas, Joe Biden, George Soros, and actor Robert de Niro. According to various accounts, the packages included “explosive devices made from PVC pipe and contained a timer (likely a digital alarm clock) to set off the detonator. The powder contained in the bombs comes from pyrotechnics. X-rays show there was likely shrapnel inside the PVC pipe.”
Hysteresis: The Phenomenon Behind the Anti-vax Movement
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines are a safe and effective tool for the prevention of childhood diseases, a significant minority of the U.S. population remains skeptical of the practice, as evidenced by the persistence of the anti-vax movement. This has sometimes made it a difficult task to achieve the desired level of coverage required for the protective effects of “herd immunity” to kick in. Now, researchers from Dartmouth College have investigated this phenomenon, uncovering a key factor in why it may be so hard to increase the numbers of people being vaccinated. In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Feng Fu, an assistant professor of mathematics, and colleagues showed that a phenomenon known as "hysteresis" may act as a roadblock for efforts to increase vaccination rates.
Media Bias Chart, 3.1 Minor Updates Based on Constructive Feedback - ad fontes media
So why is it time for another update to the Media Bias Chart? I’m a strong believer in changing one’s mind based on new information. That’s how we learn anyway, and I wish people would do it more often.
How US billionaires are fuelling the hard-right cause in Britain
Dark money is among the greatest current threats to democracy. It means money spent below the public radar, that seeks to change political outcomes. It enables very rich people and corporations to influence politics without showing their hands.
Three Type of Arrogance
Explanations > Relationships > Three Type of Arrogance Belief arrogance | Crowing arrogance | Perceived arrogance | So what? Arrogance can be viewed as appearing in three forms: belief, crowing and perceived, each of which is quite different.
Does This Video Show a Man Ripping the MAGA Hat Off a Trump Supporter?
A video shows a white man ripping the “MAGA” hat off the head of a black Trump supporter in a Starbucks. On 25 October 2018, the Instagram account “funny__marco_” shared a video that purported to show an altercation in a Starbucks between a black man wearing a Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat and a white man who ripped it off his head in anger: The video was captioned, like so many others of its time, with a call for fans to follow a YouTube channel — a channel featuring many other bits of staged, awkward, or humorous confrontations. This similarity lead many (but not enough) people to correctly surmise it was a staged video produced for some sort of comedic value. We reached out to “Funny Marco” via his Twitter profile regarding the incident portrayed in the video but have received no response.
The Root of All Cruelty?
The philosopher David Livingstone Smith, commenting on this episode on social media, wondered whether its writer had read his book “Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others” (St. Martin’s). It’s a thoughtful and exhaustive exploration of human cruelty, and the episode perfectly captures its core idea: that acts such as genocide happen when one fails to appreciate the humanity of others. One focus of Smith’s book is the attitudes of slave owners; the seventeenth-century missionary Morgan Godwyn observed that they believed the Negroes, “though in their Figure they carry some resemblances of Manhood, yet are indeed no Men” but, rather, “Creatures destitute of Souls, to be ranked among Brute Beasts, and treated accordingly.”
It’s not politics or religion separating humans; it’s shame
stocksy Once, after delivering a lecture at Berkeley in the 1960s, a psychologist took questions from the audience. A young woman stood up to explain that she understood the deep connection between people and the collective responsibility that we all shared for the world, but she didn’t know what to do next.
Mandela Effect Introduction – Debunking Mandela Effects
The Mandela Effect is a term for where a group of people all mis-remember the same detail, event or physicality. It is named after the instance in which a large group of people all shared the same memory that Nelson Mandela died prior to his actual 2013 death, usually some time in the 1980’s. The effect exploded in popularity on the internet when a peculiar example popped up where a majority of people seemed to have recalled the Berenstain Bears books as being spelled as “Berenstein” or some other variation, differing from the actual spelling. The effect is somewhat different from a false memory as it effects large groups of people, seemingly without many connections and without the same emotional factors present. It also seems stronger and harder to escape the feeling that it’s simply a mis-remembering of a detail, which is why people are so adamant with claims of their memories.
