The Cognitive Biases Tricking Your Brain →

Critical thinking is a useful skill for adult life, but right now it's necessary just to maintain our democracy, and will be vital for repairing our country. We owe it to each other to be as circumspect and careful about posting news on social media as each of us is able. Understanding common thinking and reasoning problems can help a lot: once we know what they are, we can start watching out for them in our own thinking, and catching ourselves before we fail.

When people hear the word bias, many if not most will think of either racial prejudice or news organizations that slant their coverage to favor one political position over another. Present bias, by contrast, is an example of cognitive bias—the collection of faulty ways of thinking that is apparently hardwired into the human brain. The collection is large. Wikipedia’s “List of cognitive biases” contains 185 entries, from actor-observer bias (“the tendency for explanations of other individuals’ behaviors to overemphasize the influence of their personality and underemphasize the influence of their situation … and for explanations of one’s own behaviors to do the opposite”) to the Zeigarnik effect (“uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than completed ones”).
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If I had to single out a particular bias as the most pervasive and damaging, it would probably be confirmation bias. That’s the effect that leads us to look for evidence confirming what we already think or suspect, to view facts and ideas we encounter as further confirmation, and to discount or ignore any piece of evidence that seems to support an alternate view. Confirmation bias shows up most blatantly in our current political divide, where each side seems unable to allow that the other side is right about anything.

How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump →

Zeynep Tufecki, in an excellent essay in the MIT Technology Review (which I recommend reading, especially "5. Lessons of the era"):

...Online, we’re connected with our communities, and we seek approval from our like-minded peers. We bond with our team by yelling at the fans of the other one. In sociology terms, we strengthen our feeling of “in-group” belonging by increasing our distance from and tension with the “out-group”—us versus them. Our cognitive universe isn’t an echo chamber, but our social one is...
...This is also how Russian operatives fueled polarization in the United States, posing simultaneously as immigrants and white supremacists, angry Trump supporters and “Bernie bros.” The content of the argument didn’t matter; they were looking to paralyze and polarize rather than convince. Without old-style gatekeepers in the way, their messages could reach anyone, and with digital analytics at their fingertips, they could hone those messages just like any advertiser or political campaign...
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But we didn’t get where we are simply because of digital technologies. The Russian government may have used online platforms to remotely meddle in US elections, but Russia did not create the conditions of social distrust, weak institutions, and detached elites that made the US vulnerable to that kind of meddling.
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Russia did not make the US (and its allies) initiate and then terribly mishandle a major war in the Middle East, the after-effects of which—among them the current refugee crisis—are still wreaking havoc, and for which practically nobody has been held responsible. Russia did not create the 2008 financial collapse: that happened through corrupt practices that greatly enriched financial institutions, after which all the culpable parties walked away unscathed, often even richer, while millions of Americans lost their jobs and were unable to replace them with equally good ones.
Russia did not instigate the moves that have reduced Americans’ trust in health authorities, environmental agencies, and other regulators. Russia did not create the revolving door between Congress and the lobbying firms that employ ex-politicians at handsome salaries. Russia did not defund higher education in the United States. Russia did not create the global network of tax havens in which big corporations and the rich can pile up enormous wealth while basic government services get cut.
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If digital connectivity provided the spark, it ignited because the kindling was already everywhere. The way forward is not to cultivate nostalgia for the old-world information gatekeepers or for the idealism of the Arab Spring. It’s to figure out how our institutions, our checks and balances, and our societal safeguards should function in the 21st century—not just for digital technologies but for politics and the economy in general. This responsibility isn’t on Russia, or solely on Facebook or Google or Twitter. It’s on us.

 

Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests →

Facebook's potential for social control (both by itself, and by others through it) is enormous. It's remained largely free of government oversight and regulation, partially because the technology and its issues are so new. But it's been willfully blind to its own possibilities. It's naïveté, with its "neutral" stance in regards to political content that people post, has allowed networks of bad actors to inspire violence around the world. Regulation is necessary.

Karsten Müller and Carlo Schwarz, researchers at the University of Warwick, scrutinized every anti-refugee attack in Germany, 3,335 in all, over a two-year span. In each, they analyzed the local community by any variable that seemed relevant. Wealth. Demographics. Support for far-right politics. Newspaper sales. Number of refugees. History of hate crime. Number of protests.
One thing stuck out. Towns where Facebook use was higher than average, like Altena, reliably experienced more attacks on refugees. That held true in virtually any sort of community — big city or small town; affluent or struggling; liberal haven or far-right stronghold — suggesting that the link applies universally.
Their reams of data converged on a breathtaking statistic: Wherever per-person Facebook use rose to one standard deviation above the national average, attacks on refugees increased by about 50 percent.
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Could Facebook really distort social relations to the point of violence? The University of Warwick researchers tested their findings by examining every sustained internet outage in their study window. German internet infrastructure tends to be localized, making outages isolated but common. Sure enough, whenever internet access went down in an area with high Facebook use, attacks on refugees dropped significantly.

Calling Bullshit 10.3: Debunking Myths →

This is an excellent series of lectures on spotting BS in the media. I highly recommend watching it all the way through. I particularly liked this episode, though; training yourself to detect BS is hard, but calling it out in a way that's actually likely to convince someone who believes BS is way harder.

Jevin introduces Cook and Lewandowsky's Debunking Handbook (https://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Debunking_Handbook.pdf), and suggests a number of rules for how to successfully change opinions rather than reinforcing erroneous beliefs. May 31, 2017 Course: INFO 198 / BIOL 106B. University of Washington Instructors: Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin West Synopsis: Our world is saturated with bullshit.

Over 2,000 Cities with Higher Lead Levels than Flint →

From the transcript:

EUGENE PURYEAR: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s pretty stunning, when you look at it. Many people forget, but shortly after the Flint crisis broke, USA Today actually did a study and found over 2000 localities that had low levels of lead in the water that were actually higher than Flint. That was in early 2017 they did that study. Reuters did subsequently, later in that year, did a similar study where they looked at about 3000 census tracks- they actually looked at more than that, but they found about 3000 census tracks around the country that also had higher lead levels in water, and also in terms of the lead blood level than what we were finding of people in Flint.

Baltimore, Milwaukee, Chicago and Cleveland all have been victim to high lead and other toxins in the water. Eddie Conway and Eugene Puryear discuss the frustrations of citizens and the struggles to get clean water in communities of color Visit https://therealnews.com for more stories and help support our work by donating at https://therealnews.com/donate.

What We Know About Voter ID Laws →

A good overview of the research on voter ID laws. They seem to have had little impact on the outcome of most elections, but they primarily affect people of color and the elderly. And the intent behind passing them has been very clear, because those trying to pass them tend to target specific areas, right before certain elections...

In 2012, a Republican legislative leader in Pennsylvania made headlines by saying that the state’s voter ID law — which was later overturned by the courts — was “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” But even when the law’s authors are more circumspect about their motivations, the evidence is clear: It’s Republican legislatures and legislators that tend to pass them. There’s also a racial dynamic: Seth McKee found that Republican legislators are more likely to back voter ID laws — and Democratic legislators less so — as their districts have more black voters. It’s also no accident that the states whose voter ID laws make headlines — Wisconsin, North Carolina, Virginia — are often swing states with diverse electorates.
It’s important, too, to underscore that Trump promoted voter ID laws for a reason: They tend to poll reasonably well, especially among Republicans. A 2016 AP-NORC poll found that 79 percent of those surveyed favored requiring all voters to provide photo ID, with Republicans especially supportive.
It’s certainly not a consensus, but the weight of recent research suggests that even if voter ID laws have limited effects on which party wins specific elections, they still affect tens of thousands of voters in larger states, particularly black, Latino, Democratic and elderly voters. And importantly, these laws’ long-term impacts may well differ from their immediate effects upon implementation. So as politicians, lawyers and social scientists continue to debate these laws, the very effects themselves are likely to change beneath our feet.

The Modern Automobile Must Die →

We're nearing the point past which we may not be able to control global climate change without really drastic measures. E.g., there are serious proposals for flying planes all over the world that release microscopic reflective particles into the upper atmosphere in order to block sunlight; these are desperate attempts which will have further consequences we can't easily predict.

We need to do everything we can to control greenhouse gas emissions, and one of the biggest changes necessary is to how we get around (and the energy infrastructure vehicles rely on). We'd probably be a lot happier with more public transportation and less smog, too.

The most effective solution would be to combine these policies. Governments would require drastic improvements in fuel efficiency for gas-powered vehicles, while investing in renewable-powered electric car infrastructure. At the same time, cities would overhaul their public transportation systems, adding more bikes, trains, buses and ride-shares. Fewer people would own cars.

Elizabeth Warren Unveils Radical Anti-Corruption Platform →

Power is so concentrated that most legislation is now authored by big-money lobbying firms instead of by individual members of Congress. If we want to get money out of politics, we need laws like the one Warren's proposed, and the sooner the better.

In a major speech at the National Press Club, she laid out the parameters of what she is calling the “Anti-Corruption Act.” If just half of it were implemented, it could transform the political economy of Washington and fundamentally upend the lawmaking process as it currently exists.
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In broad strokes, Warren is attempting to take the profit motive out of public service by making it extremely difficult for former lawmakers and government officials to cash in on their government experience, while simultaneously giving Congress and federal agencies the resources needed to effectively govern without the motivated assistance of K Street. 
In 1995, when Newt Gingrich and the “Republican Revolution” took over Congress, he systematically dismantled the intellectual infrastructure of the institution, defunding major functions of Congress and slashing budgets for staff. The public-facing explanation was to cut back on wasteful spending, but the true intent was to effectively privatize lawmaking, forcing Congress to outsource much of the work of crafting legislation to K Street. What followed was an explosion in the lobbying industry in Washington.
Warren proposes much stricter restrictions on the revolving door between public service and lobbying, but, more fundamentally, flat-out bans on any lobbying on behalf of foreign governments, an industry that has come under increased scrutiny as a result of the trial of Paul Manafort, who made his fortune carrying water for foreign governments in Washington, often whose interests ran against those of the U.S.