Time to blame China again

In the months before September 11, 2001, I was startled to hear many politicians and media outlets drumming up potential military conflict between the United States and China. I remember this well, because my wife and I had recently adopted a Chinese baby, and she was our second Chinese daughter.  I feared that this wild lashing out China would make the United States a bad place to raise our babies.  Here's a sample of the kind of things that you would see back then, this excerpt from a report issued by the Rand Corporation:

According to a newly released Rand Corp. report, China's military is narrowing its technology gap with the U.S. armed forces using U.S. commercial technology. Beijing is developing advanced systems and its military capabilities may approach or equal the United States in some areas, the study says. . . According to Jack Spencer, a defense analyst and fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the Chinese military is preparing itself for a future war with America.

Consider also this excerpt
The Bush administration has made hostility to China one of its foreign policy principles. Bush attacked the Clinton-Gore administration during the 2000 elections, declaring that China was a “strategic competitor,” not a “strategic partner” of the United States. A series of initiatives in the last three months have been directed against Beijing—moves toward a US missile defense focused on China, reversal of US policy for a rapprochement with North Korea, and plans to supply sophisticated naval and air weaponry to Taiwan.

Continue ReadingTime to blame China again

Corporations as people

Freespeechforpeople.org proposes that we amend the U.S. Constitution using language similar to the following: Amendment XXVIII

Section 1. The sovereign right of the people to govern being essential to a free democracy, the First Amendment shall not be construed to limit the authority of Congress and the States to define, regulate, and restrict the spending and other activity of any corporation, limited liability entity, or other corporate entity created by state or federal law or the law of another nation. Section 2. Nothing contained in this Article shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
Here's why we need an amendment akin to the above:

Continue ReadingCorporations as people

Tabbi on Olbermann

Matt Tabbi has a way about putting things into perspective:

I just found out about the suspension of Keith Olbermann for making political contributions . . . We had a whole generation of journalists who sat by and did nothing while, for instance, George Bush led us into an idiotic war on a lie, plus thousands more who spent day after day collecting checks by covering Britney's hair and Tiger's text messages and other stupidities while the economy blew up and two bloody wars went on mostly unexamined ... and it's Keith Olbermann who should "pay the price" for being unethical? Because, and let me get this straight, he donated money, privately, to politicians? This is absurd even by GE's standards. There is no reason, not even a theoretical one, why any journalist should be prevented from having political opinions and participating in election campaigns in his spare time.

Continue ReadingTabbi on Olbermann

More on the Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias

Over the past year, this website has published several posts discussing the Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias, and for good reason. The Dunning-Kruger effect is the cognitive bias that naturally comes to mind whenever one thinks of America's tumultuous politics. It especially comes to mind when one considers the rise of the American "Tea Party," notable for producing politicians who are factually clueless but oblivious to this fact. That combination is the essential nature of the Dunning Kruger phenomenon, as described by Wikipedia:

Kruger and Dunning noted earlier studies suggesting that ignorance of standards of performance is behind a great deal of incompetence. This pattern was seen in studies of skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis. Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill; 2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others; 3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy; 4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.

I thought it worthwhile to raise this topic of Dunning-Kruger again tonight, and to further note that in 2005, David Dunning published a book on the Dunning-Kruger effect called Self-Insight: Roadblocks and Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself. You can read the first chapter of Dunning's book online at this link. Here are a few excerpts: [From page 8]

The notions people have about their skills and knowledge are far from perfect indicators of their actual proficiency… Impressions of skill are somehow decoupled from reality-perhaps not completely but tune extent that is surprising.… People who are incompetent are often not in a position to know that they are incompetent. Judgment of self is an intrinsically difficult task, and the incompetent just do not have the tools necessary to meet this difficult challenge, nor should the rest of us expect them to.

[Space 12]

In 1914, Babinski coined the term now used, anosognosia, to describe these cases in which people are physically or neurologically impaired, sometimes grossly, yet fail to recognize the death or even the existence of their impairment… I take the notion osanosognosia and transfer it, by analogy, from the neurological and physical realm to the cognitive and psychological one.

[Page 13]

It is not that people performing poorly fail to recognize their incompetence. Instead, our argument is that people performing poorly cannot be expected to recognize their ineptitude. They are simply not in a position to know that they are doing badly. The ability to recognize the death of their inadequacies is beyond them.… They are doubly cursed: in many areas of life, the skills necessary to produce competent responses to the outside world are also the exact same skills needed to recognize whether one acted competently. . . the skills needed to perform the cognitive task . . . are the same exact ones necessary for metacognitive (judging the response).

Continue ReadingMore on the Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias

Democracy loses the election

At Truthdig, Amy Goodman mourned the biggest loser during the election day this week: democracy.

As the 2010 elections come to a close, the biggest winner of all remains undeclared: the broadcasters. The biggest loser: democracy. These were the most expensive midterm elections in U.S. history, costing close to $4 billion, $3 billion of which went to advertising. What if ad time were free? We hear no debate about this, because the media corporations are making such a killing by selling campaign ads. Yet the broadcasters are using public airwaves. I am reminded of the 1999 book by media scholar Robert McChesney, “Rich Media, Poor Democracy.” In it, he writes, “Broadcasters have little incentive to cover candidates, because it is in their interest to force them to publicize their campaigns.” . . .
Goodman points out that the airwaves belong to the public, yet they are being used for reaping huge profits that create a financial bar to candidates who merely have good ideas.
The place where we should debate this is in the major media, where most Americans get their news. But the television and radio broadcasters have a profound conflict of interest. Their profits take precedence over our democratic process. You very likely won’t hear this discussed on the Sunday-morning talk shows.

Continue ReadingDemocracy loses the election