26 Reasons What You Think is Right is Wrong
A cognitive bias is something that our minds commonly do to distort our own view of reality. Here are the 26 most studied and widely accepted cognitive biases.
May 2007 Archives
Edge: WHY DO SOME PEOPLE RESIST SCIENCE By Paul Bloom and Dena Skolnick Weisberg
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE RESIST SCIENCE?
It is no secret that many American adults reject some scientific ideas. In a 2005 Pew Trust poll, for instance, 42% of respondents said that they believed that humans and other animals have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. A substantial minority of Americans, then, deny that evolution has even taken place, making them more radical than "Intelligent Design" theorists, who deny only that natural selection can explain complex design. But evolution is not the only domain in which people reject science: Many believe in the efficacy of unproven medical interventions, the mystical nature of out-of-body experiences, the existence of supernatural entities such as ghosts and fairies, and the legitimacy of astrology, ESP, and divination.
Continue reading Resistance to Science.
But how can morality be a natural phenomenon? We ought not to boil babies, but the natural world seems not to contain any trace of an "ought," or an "ought not." A dropped stone is under no obligation to fall, it just does. Admittedly, I might say, before dropping a stone out of the window, "This stone ought to hit the ground in three seconds," but here I just mean something like "It is likely that the stone will hit the ground in three seconds." If the stone doesn't do that, it has done nothing wrong, and is not to be blamed for anything. In the natural world, nothing ought to happen, or ought not to happen, in the relevant sense of "ought." Keeping within the confines of nature, there is no space for the fact that we ought not to boil babies. Yet since nature is all there is, there is no place left to go.
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US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud - Chirag Mehta : chir.ag
This is the first I've seen of Tag Clouds. Interesting way to get a visual sense of prominent ideas in speeches.
See Tagcloud.com
BBC - Religion & Ethics - Ethics
The BBC site includes excellent coverage of many ethical issues (abortion, same sex marriage, war, sporting ethics, animal rights, capital punishment, lying, etc). The material is very good.
BBC - Religion & Ethics - Reasons
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/
Reasons
By BBC Team
Intellectual
Most atheists would offer some of the arguments on the following pages as their reason for deciding that God doesn't exist
Non-Intellectual
Many people are atheists not because they've reasoned things out like that, but because of the way they were brought up or educated, or because they have simply adopted the beliefs of the culture in which they grew up. It's the same for many believers. So someone raised in Communist China is likely to have no belief in God, because they rarely if ever, meet a believer, and because the education system and pressure from the people they meet make being an atheist the natural thing to do.Other people are atheists because they just feel that atheism is right. In the same way, many people of faith hold their beliefs because they just seem right to them.
BBC - Religion & Ethics - Atheism
Atheists are people who do not believe in a god or gods (or other immaterial beings), or who believe that these concepts are not meaningful.
Some atheists put it more firmly and believe that god or gods do not exist.
With Ken Taylor and John Perry of Stanford University. Produced by Ben Manilla.
Philosophy Talk originates live, Sundays at 10am, Pacific Time, from the studios of KALW, 91.7 FM, Information Radio, San Francisco. Check the Past Programs link!
Scientific American: The Traveler's Dilemma
When playing this simple game, people consistently reject the rational choice. In fact, by acting illogically, they end up reaping a larger reward--an outcome that demands a new kind of formal reasoning
Continue reading The Traveler's Dilemma.
Atheists With Attitude -- The New Yorker
If a propensity toward religious belief is “hard-wired” in the brain, as it is sometimes said to be, the wiring has evidently become frayed. This is especially true in rich countries, nearly all of which—Ireland and America are exceptions—have relatively high rates of unbelief.
The Long and Ugly History of 'Trash" Talk --National Human Sexuality Magazine
White Trash. For many, the name evokes images of trailer parks, homegrown meth labs, and beat up Camaros, rural poor whites with too many kids and not enough government cheese. It’s a putdown for the down and out and white. White trash is the name given to those whites who don’t make it, either because they’re too lazy or too stupid. Or maybe because something’s wrong with their inbred genes. Whatever the reason, it’s their own damn fault they live like that. They’ve got nobody to blame but themselves.
Hermitary: the hermit, hermits, anchorites, recluses, eremitism, solitude, silence, simplicity
hermits, solitude, silence, simplicity: articles, book reviews, images, forum ...
I Chat Therfore I am -- Discover Maagazine
“Can machines think?” In 1950 mathematician Alan Turing pondered this question and invented an elegant game to answer it: Let a human chat via Teletype with a computer and another human; if the person can’t determine which is the computer, then it meets Turing’s standards for “thinking.” In recent years Turing’s game has taken on a life of its own in cyberspace, thanks to artificial intelligence inventors worldwide who have produced dozens of “chatbots” that anyone can talk to.
Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing - lifehack.org
Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing
Update (24/07/2006): Replaced the links with archive.org.
Roy Peter Clark from Poynter Institute has posted up 50 tools that can help you when you do any kinds of writing. This is a extensive list of writing tools, but by no mean you need to apply all of them when you do any writing. There are the Writing Tool links:
Collection: All 6,288 Smithsonian Images
A collection of 6,288 images from smithsonianimages.si.edu which appear to be overwhelmingly in the public domain. See our memo for more information.
PsyBlog | Psychology Blog: Top Ten Psychology Studies
Just because a study is old doesn't mean it's irrelevant. Indeed, the effects of many older studies are still being felt in psychology today. Generations of psychology students have wandered out of lectures, seeing themselves and other people in a new light. So, in this series of posts I will take a look at ten studies that have changed psychology and the way we see humanity.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Main Page
The Internet Modern History Sourcebook now contains thousands of sources and the previous index pages were so large that they were crashing many browsers.
The Myth of Muslim Support for Terror
The survey, conducted in December 2006 by the University of Maryland's prestigious Program on International Public Attitudes, shows that only 46 percent of Americans think that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are "never justified," while 24 percent believe these attacks are "often or sometimes justified."
Contrast those numbers with 2006 polling results from the world's most-populous Muslim countries – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Terror Free Tomorrow, the organization I lead, found that 74 percent of respondents in Indonesia agreed that terrorist attacks are "never justified"; in Pakistan, that figure was 86 percent; in Bangladesh, 81 percent.
Do these findings mean that Americans are closet terrorist sympathizers?
Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.
