Erich Vieth - Dangerous Intersection

Five psychology experiments that demonstrate the dark side of human nature.

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:February 13, 2013
Post category:cognitive biases Psychology Cognition
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Here are five classic social psychology experiments summarized.

The cognitive styles of conservatives and liberals

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:February 13, 2013
Post category:cognitive biases Ingroup/Outgroup Psychology Cognition
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PLOS offers another bit of evidence that political preferences might have their genesis at low-level cognitive processes:

Liberals and conservatives engage different cognitive processes when they think about risk, and they support recent evidence that conservatives show greater sensitivity to threatening stimuli.

Here are more attempts to tie political persuasion to lower level phenomena.

We the People proposed Amendment

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:February 11, 2013
Post category:Corporatocracy populism Social justice
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This proposed Constitutional Amendment from We the People Amendment is loaded with good ideas:

Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights] The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only. Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law. The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable. Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech] Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure. Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed. The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

Onion: Pope lacks stamina to lead the church backward

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:February 11, 2013
Post category:Humor Religion
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According to The Onion:

Citing his advancing age and deteriorating health, Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation from the papacy Monday, saying he no longer possessed the strength and energy required to lead the Catholic Church backward.

Cult of personality

Post author:Erich Vieth
Post published:February 11, 2013
Post category:Fraud hypocrisy Propaganda Secrecy
Post comments:5 Comments

Glenn Greenwald points out that many Democrats have been exposed as hypocrites, supporting abhorrent Bush era policies simply because Obama is now implementing them.

That many Democratic partisans and fervent Obama admirers are vapid, unprincipled hacks willing to justify anything and everything when embraced by Obama - including exactly that which they pretended to oppose under George W Bush - has also been clear for many years. Back in February, 2008, Paul Krugman warned that Obama supporters are "dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality." In May, 2009, a once-fervent Obama supporter, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, wrote a column warning that Obama was embracing many of the worst Bush/Cheney abuses and felt compelled - in the very first sentence - to explain what should be self-evident: "Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House." The same month, former Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith - who provided the legal authorization for the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program - went to the New Republic to celebrate that Obama was not only continuing the core Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism, but even better (from his perspective), was strengthening those policies far beyond what Bush could achieve by transforming Democrats from opponents of those policies into supporters.

Many, including Greenwald have repeated attacked our policy allegedly justifying the assassination of Americans. A much bigger concern to me is that we are, through the use of drones, waging illegal undeclared wars in a many other countries. Also consider these domestic and foreign policy actions of Obama. How many Democrats would support them if a Republican President had been responsible?