Links - 12th September 2019 (2)

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 186 - Tania Lombrozo on “Why we evolved the urge to explain” - "'I used to teach these classes on reasoning and decision making and judgment. The concepts and the techniques that we were teaching were relatively complicated. And often talking to people after the classes, we would realize, "Oh, gee, they really didn't understand what we were saying." They seemed like they understood. They were nodding their heads. They felt like they understood. But in talking to them, we realized they really didn't.
So then we started adding in this paired tutoring session, where we had people explain the classes to each other. And this -- even though there was no real content in this class, it was just people explaining things to each other that we'd already taught them -- it became by far the most popular class that we taught. And in the feedback forms, people kept saying things like, "Wow, I didn't actually understand the classes until I tried to explain it to other people and I realized what was missing," and so on and so forth.'...
'in the research literature, there was an influential paper in the late 80's where the researchers were trying to figure out what it was that made some students much more effective learners than others. In some of the early studies, what they looked at was the patterns in study behavior of students going through physics problems and physics textbooks. And they found that some of them were doing this thing which looked a whole lot like explaining to themselves. They were just doing it spontaneously, as they worked through the problems and thinking, "Okay, why does that step follow? Why is this the case?" And so on. The students who were doing more of that self-explanation were also doing better on post-tests, showing that they had learned more from this training.'...
'This coder started explaining the problems to his rubber duck sitting on his desk instead -- and found that that worked basically just as well. So, he would start talking aloud to his duck about the problems with his code and then he'd solve his problems'"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 176 - Jason Brennan on "Against democracy" - "Politics tends to I think make us dumb and mean... Because our votes don't matter very much, we are in a sense able to use political ideology not as a way of forming true beliefs about the world that we might get punished or rewarded for, but rather as a banner or flag around which we can rally. We end up using political beliefs in order to form in-groups and out-groups. There's a lot of experiments showing that we just automatically do this about really mundane things, and politics, because it's cost-free, when you're wrong in politics it won't make a difference, we're able to use these political beliefs that way.What ends up happening is people who care about politics tend to have it be part of their tribal identity, and they just end up being angry and nasty towards people on the other side, overly forgiving and hypocritical towards their own side...
'When I think about epistocracy being implemented, I see first of all, as you say in the book, the current demographics who have the highest information and the highest education, they're white, they're predominantly male, they're well off, and they already have this power advantage over other groups in society. If we then give them even more power, it just seems like they're going to have a strong incentive to define what makes a competent someone who deserves a vote, to be people like them.Even more so, they're going to have an incentive to block other groups from getting the kind of education and information that they would need in order to qualify as competent voters. Those incentives arguably exist to some extent already, in that entrenched power structures want to preserve their power, but it seems like an epistocracy would just worsen that problem, by an order of magnitude at least.'...
'One idea I entertain in the book is ... There's actually a reason to think that we could use a hybrid system in which democracy with universal suffrage gets to choose the voter competence exam, and then you get to vote on the other stuff only if you pass that exam'...
'Diana Mutz's Hearing The Other Side. It's one of my favorite books on politics. I think you'll learn a tremendous amount about political behavior and how people think about politics. One other interesting fact about it, she asked the question, "Who actually hears the other point of view? Who actually hears points of view with whom they disagree?" It turns out that if you're white, rich, and educated, that predicts you almost never hear points of view with which you disagree, and if you are poor, not white, and uneducated, that predicts you frequently hear points of view with which you disagree.'
Of course, white, rich, and educated describes... liberals

Blaire White on Twitter - "If Ariel can be played by a black woman, Scarlett Johansson can play a trans woman. Y'all are RIDICULOUS."

Unofficial Artist formally known as Diversity and Comics Yaboiposting - Posts - "Harry Styles (@Harry_Styles) in talks to play Prince Eric in #Disney's live-action #TheLittleMermaid"
"So, the little mermaid is black and the prince is white. Meaning that the only way she'll be happy is with a white man, Disney is not that subtle."
"Oh hey look, the exact people the racebent Ariel was done for are already turning on the movie. Who’d have guessed that?!"

Intellectual Dark Web Memes for Contrarian Teens - Posts - "when your sociology department meets the quota: white socialist, female socialist, black socialist, gay socialist, trans socialist, socialist in a wheelchair - diversity"
""One think to rule them all,
One think to mind them,
One think to group them all
And in the safe space bind them."
Benjamin Boyce"

Cracking India’s mystifying ‘nod code’ - "One thing all travellers to India talk about – apart from the dreaded Delhi Belly, of course – is the great Indian head nod. It’s not exactly a nod (up and down from the neck, meant to indicate ‘yes’) – or a shake (straight side to side to convey ‘no’). It’s a smooth movement that involves tilting the head from side to side vertically, either gently or fiercely... Does it mean a clear yes? Is that a kind no? A maybe? A sign of uncertainty? Annoyance perhaps? It is difficult to say without knowledge of the context. Pathiyan thinks that it is almost always a ‘yes’, or at least indicates agreement. “There is also an element of being friendly or being respectful, and it is difficult to say exactly which unless you know the situation,” she added.Margot Bigg, a British-American travel writer who lived in India for more than five years and has written guidebooks on the country, is of the opinion that different types of head nods mean different things. “Like a one-stroke side nod could mean ‘yes’ or ‘let’s go’, while a more consistent back-and-forth bobble is an acknowledgment of understanding.”In my own experience, the faster the shake, the more enthusiastic the agreement – especially when used with raised eyebrows for added emphasis. But, on the other hand, it could also be used to convey “Ok… whatever you say…”; an indifferent shoulder shrug without actually shrugging the shoulders... Indians are brought up to be pliant and polite, especially to guests and to elders, and do not like to say ‘no’ directly. We mumble incoherently, we smile sheepishly, we nod vaguely, all to put off making a firm commitment. Indeed, the head nod is a gesture meant to convey ambiguity, and does so effectively... “I know I can’t do it, but I can’t say no either. So rather than outright refusal, I buy time by being deliberately vague.”In theory, this seems like a recipe for all-round happiness, but it often leads to great confusion and exasperation. While this is true mainly for cross-cultural interactions, such as when foreign bosses deal with their Indian employees or when a tourist tries to bargain with a street vendor, it sometimes has the same effect on Indians, even those who use the action themselves in other situations."

Neighbors Claim Los Angeles ‘Emoji House’ Is ‘Bullying,’ Demand New Rules Against Murals - "A brightly painted Los Angeles house featuring two large emoji symbols is a form of "bullying," according to someone who wants the city to take action against the building's owners.What began as a dispute between neighbors in the city's El Porto neighborhood is threatening to become a First Amendment showdown. The Los Angeles Times reports that the pink "emoji house" was the subject of complaints during a Tuesday city council meeting, where some locals called for legal action against the mural. According to the Times, the bright pink paint job and emojis—one of them with its tongue sticking out and another with a zipper over its mouth—were added to the house in May, after neighbors complained about illegal short-term rentals at the property and the city fined the homeowner $4,000."

Melissa Chen - A flurry of op-eds touting the USSR's wokeness... - "A flurry of op-eds touting the USSR's wokeness while tarring the US space program's misogynistic culture irks me to no end. The 50th anniversary of the moon landing is an event that should be lauded as one of those unifying moments in our species’ history, one which saw the culmination of a dream older than civilization itself. Instead, these think pieces indict this milestone in order to paint our space program and by extension, America, as an enterprise shrouded in bigotry.  Let's start with the first The New York Times piece that highlights the USSR's showy "first feats" - first woman, first Asian man, first Afro-Cuban in orbit. If you know anything about Soviet propaganda, and certainly Gary Kasparov does, you'll recognize it as some sort of Pravda on the Hudson - using forced equality of a Communist prison state to project a good, virtuous image.The point is though that not only is this just a veneer, it's also actually not accurate to say that the Soviets/Russians did more for actual cosmonaut diversity than NASA did. The truth is that the Russians always had a much narrower range of crew sizes...  For the Russian Space Program, astronauts had to be 5’5”-6' tall, with seated height no more than 37 inches; weigh no more than 187 pounds; and, for Soyuz spacesuits, have chests no smaller than 38 inches and no larger than 44 inches.Meanwhile, NASA seats (and suits) fit bodies between the 1st percentile female to 99th percentile male, a range of 4’9” to 6’6”... in terms of diversity, which space program actually did more to accommodate a wider range of possibilities?...  When Neil Armstrong took those first steps on the moon, he represented humanity, not identitarian categories such as "white" or "male." It baffles me that some see his words "that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” as gendered language instead of a universalist stance.If pushing the frontier of space can no longer be considered a grand, awe-inspiring achievement in which all humans can delight in its shared aspirations, what else is left to unite us? What else can inspire us?Nothing, really. Don't let them take away our common humanity."

Lucas Lynch - Rule number one of our leftist/critical... - "Rule number one of our leftist/critical theory/postmodern ideology - use literally every achievement by western democracies and scientific positivism, including our very greatest, as an opportunity to drum up identity-based or class-based grievances, even when totally not relevant.That major journalistic outlets have been publishing things like this alongside apologia for the Soviet Union show just how captured our journalistic institutions have become, thanks to decades of this theology being preached in the universities."

The Times’ obscene attacks on the Apollo program - "As the USSR retreats into the rearview mirror of history, there is a growing tendency to romanticize its disastrous reign through the lens of contemporary wokeness.Sure, Communists tortured and executed dissidents, starved their own people by the millions and operated gulags — but have you heard about their amazing space feminism and space intersectionality?“Cosmonaut diversity was key for the Soviet message to the rest of the globe,” the writer, Sophie Pinkham, wrote. Her piece reads like something from an old issue of the Soviet newspaper Pravda boasting of the achievements of the Soviet space program.Pravda, meaning “truth,” rarely offered what its name advertised. It functioned as a propaganda organ for the broken, failing state. But even Pravda might have demurred at publishing Pinkham’s hilarious follow-up line: “Under socialism, a person of even the humblest origins could make it all the way up.”... Education was free, that’s true. And when your education was completed, the state would send you to where you were needed. You had no “rights and privileges” as it extended to your free will. My mother, raised in central Russia, became a teacher and was shipped to Turkmenistan, 30 hours away from her home.It’s a tedious habit of modern-day liberals to examine and judge and lament all American history by today’s woke standards. Trashing the American space program, which succeeded in putting men on the moon, because it doesn’t appeal to present-day virtuousness is bad enough. Comparing it unfavorably to the Soviet Union’s is morally inexcusable."