Cosma on the New York Times:
Satirical journal with dubious taste but an uncanny knack for coming up with stories which are almost plausible, and sometimes cited as fact by the unwary.
The Gentlemen
The boys were gentlemen, and let the ladies go first.
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A. Art is often an outgrowth of the self’s desire to be loved. An artist’s motivation for making things is often, at some primal level, an attempt to say to other people: please, please love me.
B. If the artist is honest, works hard, and tells the truth, art patrons will often recognize themselves in the art. They’ll respond emotionally, and some of the love they feel for the artist’s product will inevitably spill over to the artist.
C. This love is, however, conditional. It requires the artist to make new and interesting things, and quickly becomes bored and withdraws love when the artist does not.
D. The artist feels betrayed by what he or she perceives as mis-directed and conditional love, and begins to resent the audience for not loving unconditionally enough.
E. Although the artist might even be aware of the irrationality of this resentment, the resentment can nonetheless shrivel into bitterness, which eventually shrivels into hatred.
Not all concepts wielded by professional scientists would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit. We are here not looking for tools with which research scientists might benefit their science. We are looking for tools to help non-scientists understand science better, and equip them to make better judgments throughout their lives.
—Dawkins for the Edge piece 2011 : What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody’s Cognitive Toolkit?
r/shitredditsays has to be the most misunderstood subreddit there is. I have no idea why everyone thinks they’re superserious all the time when they’re usually (and frankly, very obviously) just making fun of reddit by turning the jokes around on the speakers and pointing out blatant hypocrisy through humour and exaggeration and sarcasm, then laughing when redditors get butthurt after being subjected to the exact shit they’re subjecting everyone else to.
The ‘downvote brigade’ thing confuses me, too, as it’s in the rules, sidebar, and at least one comment in most posts to NOT downvote anything. No one’s sending anyone to downvote anything. Hell, often, they’re the ones upvoting.
It’s basically reddit’s mirror, and reddit hates it because they don’t want to see themselves for what they really are.
Freakanomics: What Went Wrong?
The landscape of pop-statistics books grows more varied by the year, and Levitt and Dubner’s bestsellers have introduced several new ingredients to the genre. One of the delights of the books and the blog is the authors’ willingness to play with ideas and consider alternative explanations. But unquestioning trust in friends and colleagues combined with the desire to be counterintuitive appear in several cases to have undermined their work. They—and anyone who wishes to convey economics and statistics to a popular audience—just need to take the next step and avoid, in any given example, privileging one story over all other possibilities. This may require Levitt to be more skeptical of the research of his friends and colleagues, and Dubner to be more skeptical of Levitt. “Easy read” should not mean “easy write.”
(2011)
(Source: gaws)
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