mercoledì 14 dicembre 2016

The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class

Notebook per
The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class
Donald Boudreaux Mark Perry
Citation (APA): Perry, D. B. M. (2014). The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Parte introduttiva
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 1
Donald Boudreaux and Mark Perry: The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 4
Robert Reich,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 5
"After three decades of flat wages during which almost all the gains of growth have gone to the very top,"
Nota - Posizione 5
x TIPICA RIMOSTRANZA DELLE CLASSI MEDIE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 5
"the middle class no longer has the buying power to keep the economy going."
Nota - Posizione 6
c
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 7
It is true enough that, when adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, the average hourly wage of nonsupervisory workers in America has remained about the same.
Nota - Posizione 8
x LA VERITÀ NELLA LEGGENDA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 10
the CPI overestimates inflation by underestimating the value of improvements in product quality and variety.
Nota - Posizione 11
x CPI PRIMO PROBLEMA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 11
Would you prefer 1980 medical care at 1980 prices, or 2013 care at 2013 prices?
Nota - Posizione 11
x ESEMPIO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 14
the average hourly wage is held down by the great increase of women and immigrants into the workforce over the past three decades.
Nota - Posizione 15
x INGRESSO DI DONNE E IMMIGRATI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 19
flat average wages over time don't necessarily support a narrative of middle-class stagnation.
Nota - Posizione 20
x CONCLUSIONE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 21
other measures of middle-class living standards.
Nota - Posizione 21
X COSA OCCORRE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 22
No single measure of well-being is more informative or important than life expectancy.
Nota - Posizione 22
x SPERANZA DI VITA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 23
five years longer than in 1980
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 23
more than a decade longer than in 1950.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 25
"The gap in life expectancy between whites and blacks in America has narrowed, reaching the lowest point ever recorded."
Nota - Posizione 25
x MENO DISEGUgl
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 27
spending by households on many of modern life's "basics"—food
Nota - Posizione 27
.… SPESA X IL CIBO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 28
utilities—fell from 53% of disposable income in 1950 to 44% in 1970 to 32% today.
Nota - Posizione 29
c
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 29
underappreciated result of the dramatic fall in the cost (and rise in the quality) of modern "basics"
Nota - Posizione 30
x BASIC
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 30
while income inequality might be rising when measured in dollars, it is falling when reckoned in what's most important—our ability to consume.
Nota - Posizione 31
x DISEGUAGL IN REDDITO E IN CONSUMI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 31
Before airlines were deregulated, for example, commercial jet travel was a luxury that ordinary Americans seldom enjoyed.
Nota - Posizione 32
x AETEO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 33
50% decline in the real price
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 33
Bill Gates in his private jet flies with more personal space than does Joe Six-Pack when making a similar trip on a commercial jetliner. But unlike his 1970s counterpart, Joe routinely travels the same great distances in roughly the same time as do the world's wealthiest
Nota - Posizione 35
x GATES E L IDRAULICO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 35
What's true for long-distance travel is also true for food, cars, entertainment, electronics, communications and many other aspects of "consumability."
Nota - Posizione 37
x ALTRI CONSUMI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 37
qualities of what ordinary Americans consume are closer to that of rich Americans
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 39
They aren't much inferior to the electronic gadgets now used by the top 1%
Nota - Posizione 39
x AGGEGGI ELETTR DELLA CLASSE MEDIA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 41
access to the most affordable food, appliances, clothing and cars in history, plus today's cornucopia of modern electronic goods—for
Nota - Posizione 42
x ACCESSO A PAROTÁ DI REDDITFO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 44
middle-class Americans have more buying power than ever before. They live longer lives and have much greater access to the services and consumer products bought by billionaires.

Pensiero e linguaggio Geoffrey K. Pullum Julie Sedivy Mark Liberman Elizabeth spelke broncobilly jhon ray

Notebook per
Pensiero e linguaggio
Geoffrey K. Pullum Julie Sedivy Mark Liberman Elizabeth spelke broncobilly jhon ray
Citation (APA): ray, G. K. P. J. S. M. L. E. s. b. j. (2014). Pensiero e linguaggio [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Parte introduttiva
Nota - Posizione 1
nasce prima il pensiero o il linguaggio? concetti senza termini. bimbi coreani e inglesi il cuore condiviso dei significati destra/sinistra: psicologia lakofiana educazione ricevuta e orientamemto politico
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 27
Which comes first, language or thought? Elizabeth Spelker Babies think first By William J. Cromie
Nota - Posizione 28
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 29
Do we learn to think before we speak, or does language shape our thoughts?
Nota - Posizione 29
LA DOMANDA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 30
"Infants are born with a language-independent system for thinking about objects,"
Nota - Posizione 31
L-INDIPENDENT
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 32
For example, when Koreans say that one object joins another, they specify whether the objects touch tightly or loosely. English speakers, in contrast, say whether one object is in or on another.
Nota - Posizione 34
CORESNI E INGLESI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 37
Because languages differ this way, many scientists suspected that children must learn the relevant concepts as they learn their language.
Nota - Posizione 37
SOSPETTO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 38
Infants of English-speaking parents easily grasp the Korean distinction between a cylinder fitting loosely or tightly into a container. In other words, children come into the world with the ability to describe what's on their young minds in English, Korean, or any other language.
Nota - Posizione 40
CONCETTI CHE PREVEDONO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 40
differences in niceties of thought not reflected in a language go unspoken when they get older.
Nota - Posizione 40
IL NON DETTO È CMQ SPECIALIZZATA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 42
When babies see something new, they will look at it until they get bored. Hespos and Spelke used this well-known fact to show different groups of five-month-olds a series of cylinders being placed in and on tight- or loose-fitting containers. The babies watched until they were bored and quit looking. After that happened, the researchers showed them other objects that fit tightly or loosely together. The change got and held their attention for a while, contrary to American college students who failed to notice it. This showed that babies raised in English-speaking communities were sensitive to separate categories of meaning used by Korean, but not by English, adult speakers.
Nota - Posizione 47
CAPACITÀ DI ATTENSIONE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 50
Their findings suggest that language reduces sensitivity to thought distinctions not considered by the native language. "Because chimps and monkeys show similar expectations about objects, languages are probably built on concepts that evolved before humans did,"
Nota - Posizione 51
SENSIBILITÀ RIDOTTA MA NN ANNULLATA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 53
The sounds of meaning
Nota - Posizione 54
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 54
before babies learn to talk for themselves, they are receptive to the sounds of all languages. But sensitivity to nonnative language sounds drops after the first year of life.
Nota - Posizione 55
PREDISPOSIZIONE A TUTTI I LINGUAGGI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 58
They learn what to ignore,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 60
This is one reason why it is so difficult for adults to learn a second language,
Nota - Posizione 61
IMPARIAMO AD ESCLUDERE. X QS NN IMPARIAMO LE LINGUE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 62
Speech is for communicating so once a language is learned nothing is lost by ignoring sounds irrelevant to it. However, contrasts such as loose-versus-tight fit help us make sense of the world. Although mature English speakers don't spontaneously notice these categories, they have little difficulty distinguishing them when they are pointed out.
Nota - Posizione 63
IMPARARE CONCETTI ESTRANEI NJ È COME IMPARARE UNA LINGUA ESTRANEA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 66
Even if babies come equipped with all concepts that languages require, children may learn optional word meanings differently.
Nota - Posizione 66
RAFFINAMENTO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 68
Bloom points out, "is that there exists a universal core of meaningful distinctions that all humans share, but other distinctions that people make are shaped by the forces of language. On the other hand, language learning might really be the act of learning to express ideas that already exist,"
Nota - Posizione 70
ESPRIMERE IDEE CHE GIÀ ESISTONO
Nota - Posizione 72
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 74
Lakoff has written a book (reviewed here) which purports to explain the Left/Right polarity of politics as Mother-oriented politics versus Father-oriented politics
Nota - Posizione 75
DESTRA SINISTRA MADRE PADRE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 76
He rightly points out that there are many "contradictions" (I would call them compromises) in any real-life political program
Nota - Posizione 77
CONTRSDDIZIONI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 77
he has a grand theory that explains how all such apparent contradictions arise -- a theory that shows the real consistency underlying
Nota - Posizione 78
COERENTIZZARE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 79
I too think I can explain the inconsistencies Lakoff mentions but I think I can explain it, not in a book, but in one paragraph.
Nota - Posizione 80
ALTERNATIVA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 80
What I would say that is that the contradictions arise because neither side of politics is in fact much INTERESTED in being consistent.
Nota - Posizione 81
TESI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 81
Conservatives don't like theories and just go by what seems to have worked well for people in the world to date
Nota - Posizione 82
DESTRA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 82
And Leftists are only interested in what sounds good at the time
Nota - Posizione 83
SINISYRA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 87
Leftists want to make us "better" while at the same time denying that there is any such thing as "better"!!
Nota - Posizione 87
CONTRADDIZIONE A SINISTRA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 102
Left/Right difference
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 107
If women are basically Leftist, shouldn't they mostly VOTE Leftist?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 111
And good old Joe Stalin sure was a motherly, feminine character wasn't he?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 126
Lakoff's whole idea that political attitudes are formed by childhood experiences with parenting is however just a minor variation on the old "California" theory put forward by the Marxist Adorno
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 165
Lakoff and the feminists
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 214
Steven Pinker has written a good takedown of Lakoff. Excerpt:………….The field of linguistics has exported a number of big ideas to the world. They include the evolution of languages as an inspiration to Darwin for the evolution of species; the analysis of contrasting sounds as an inspiration for structuralism in literary theory and anthropology; the Whorfian hypothesis that language shapes thought; and Chomsky's theory of deep structure and universal grammar. Even by these standards, George Lakoff's theory of conceptual metaphor is a lollapalooza. If Lakoff is right, his theory can do everything from overturning millennia of misguided thinking in the Western intellectual tradition to putting a Democrat in the White House. ...
Nota - Posizione 219
PINKER SU LAKOFF
Nota - Posizione 225
marcare il futuro ci rende miopi? pullman: 4 critiche x' ci affascina associare comportamenti r lingua (sedivy)? x' diciamo lingua e intendiamo cultura
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 225
Keith Chen, Whorfian economist Geoffrey K. Pullum Julie Sedivy Mark Liberman
Nota - Posizione 225
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 227
Chen's paper alleges that a certain simple grammatical property of languages correlates robustly with indicators of profligacy and lack of prudence,
Nota - Posizione 228
CHEN: LINGUA E DISSOLUTEXZA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 233
if your language has clear grammatical future tense marking (and thus is a strong future time reference or strong FTR language), then you and your fellow native speakers have a dramatically increased likelihood of exhibiting high rates of obesity, smoking, drinking, debt, and poor pension provision, as if they had little concern for the future.
Nota - Posizione 235
LINGUE CHE MARCANO IL FUTURO E OBESITÀ
Nota - Posizione 245
PROBLEMI GIÀ SULLA CLASSIFICAZIONE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 256
The language of the Pirahã Indians of Brazil, studied by Daniel Everett, has no future tense marking whatever— it is not just weak FTR, it is zero FTR. But, contrary to Chen's prediction, the Pirahã are unconcerned with planning for the future,
Nota - Posizione 258
CASI CONFUTANTI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 262
I find that I might just as well be convinced that a language with grammatical future tense marking would have speakers who paid MORE attention to worrying about the future.
Nota - Posizione 263
TESI CONTROINTUITIVA PROVE ULTERIORI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 269
I have some colleagues here at the University of Edinburgh, within Simon Kirby's research group, who have run some informal experiments on the data Chen uses to see if dredging up spurious correlations of this kind is easy or hard,
Nota - Posizione 270
FACILE LA CORRELAZIONE SPURIA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 272
None of these briefly summarized worries about Chen's work, however, disturb me as much as the appalling journalistic misrepresentations that David Berreby offers us. His title is: "Obese? Smoker?
Nota - Posizione 273
GIORNALI BLEAH
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 279
although it is possible in principle to devise empirically testable Whorfian hypotheses (see thediscussion by Barbara Scholz and colleagues here), I wouldn't bet a dime on this particular Whorfian thesis.
Nota - Posizione 281
DIFFICILE TESTARE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 285
Is Your Language Making You Broke and Fat? How Language Can Shape Thinking and Behavior (and How It Can’t) By Julie Sedivy
Nota - Posizione 286
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 304
To many people, it’s intuitively obvious that dropping consonants in pronunciation is the mark of a lazy culture, that romancing someone is easiest in a language that’s intrinsically as soothing and soft as French, and that the disciplined German mind is in part a product of the strictly rigid and orderly German language.
Nota - Posizione 306
R MODCIA ITALIA OPERA TEDESCO DISCIPLINA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 307
As noted by Guy Deutscher, in his book Through the Language Glass, “the industrious Protestant Danes have dropped more consonants onto their icy, windswept soil than any indolent tropical tribe.
Nota - Posizione 309
LINGUA PROTESTANTE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 311
Is Italian culture vulnerable to corruption because there is no Italian word that directly translates as accountability?
Nota - Posizione 312
ACCOUNTABILITY IN ITALIANO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 319
we’d expect more egalitarian cultures to spring from entirely gender-neutral languages like Dari, the variant of Persian that’s spoken in Afghanistan.
Nota - Posizione 320
GENDER NEITRAL CULTURA E LINGUA. AFGHANISTAN
Nota - Posizione 327
EVIDENZE MARGINALI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 329
I bet you’d find a correlation between tonal languages and the use of chopsticks at mealtimes, simply because both of these spread throughout a particular geographic region.
Nota - Posizione 330
GEOGRAFIA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 332
If language structure has quite a limited effect on the way we think and act, why then do we have these sturdy impressions that some languages are inherently more romantic, slovenly, logical, or fussy than others?
Nota - Posizione 333
DOMANDA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 336
A particularly nice illustration comes from a study by Dirk Akkermans and colleagues, in which bilingual Dutch subjects played a business variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, intended to test the degree of cooperative versus competitive behavior. (The game is set up so that you reap the highest profits if both you and your partner choose a cooperative strategy of keeping prices for your products high, and the lowest profits if you play cooperatively but your partner chooses to undersell you.) Half of the subjects played the game in English, and half played the game in Dutch—the idea being that the English language is more closely associated with highly individualistic and competitive cultures than Dutch.
Nota - Posizione 340
GIOCO DEL PRIGIONIERO IN DUE LINGUE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 341
the effects of language on strategy choice really depended on how much direct exposure to Anglophone culture the subjects had.
Nota - Posizione 342
ESITO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 345
Actual proficiency in English had no discernible impact.
Nota - Posizione 345
MA
Nota - Posizione 351
u
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 351
Thought experiments on language and thought Julie Sedivy
Segnalibro - Posizione 351
Nota - Posizione 352
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 354
"The explanation in question is almost certain to be false. However, if it were true, it would be incredibly interesting, so we have no choice but to explore it."
Nota - Posizione 355
SULL IPOTESI CHEN
Nota - Posizione 357
IPOTESI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 357
almost-certainly-false-but-incredibly-interesting-if-true
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 358
The main finding is that there is a robust correlation such that families who speak a language in which future tense marking is classified as obligatory tend to also engage in self-sabotaging behaviors like saving less money, exercising less and smoking more.
Nota - Posizione 359
TESI CHEN RIPETUTA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 362
correlation holds if we look only at families
Nota - Posizione 362
ENFASI SULLA FSMIGLIA X I CTRL
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 363
country of birth and residence, sex and age of family members, family structure, income, number of children, and religion.
Nota - Posizione 363
CONFOUNDS
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 365
Controlling for such variables offers only mild reassurance if any,
Nota - Posizione 365
x UN CONTROLLO SCARSAMENTE UTILE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 366
very similar families would choose to speak different languages
Nota - Posizione 366
X DIVERSITÀ DEI LING IN FAMIGLIA
Nota - Posizione 374
UN PRECEDENTE. LINGUAGGIO CHE TIRA LA CULTURA ANCHE SU CHI APPARTIENE A DIVERSE CULTURE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 378
Rather, it's properly understood as a sociolinguistic phenomenon: Labov suggested that people adopt specific patterns of pronunciation as a way of subconsciously signaling solidarity with a particular community and its attitudinal mindset.
Nota - Posizione 379
L ADESIONE CULTURALE ALLA LINGUA CHE SI SCEGLIE DI PARLARE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 380
vowel-raising had become a sort of identity badge for broadcasting one's attitudes.
Nota - Posizione 381
X MARCHOO D IDENTITÀ
Nota - Posizione 392
X ESP IDEALE IMPRATIC
Nota - Posizione 400
X PAROLE CHE INCENTIVANO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 400
a well-known study by John Bargh and colleagues has famously shown that you can prime meek behavior by having subjects unscramble sentences laced with words like graciously, respect, and honor, and that undergraduates exposed to words like gray, Florida, and bingoundergo accelerated aging, performing badly on memory tests, and walking more slowly.
Nota - Posizione 403
x PAROLE DEPRIMENTI
 David Beaver has discussed a particularly interesting study in which people were more likely to vote in an election depending on the wording of a question they'd been asked the previous day: If subjects were asked "how important is it to you to be a voter?" they were dramatically more likely to cast their ballot than if they'd been asked "how important is to you to vote?"
Nota - Posizione 405
x INCENTIVARE IL VOTO CON LA PAROLINA

Nota - Posizione 410
x ESP IDEALE PRATICATO: SIMILE AL DILEMMA CON GLI STESSI INCONV (VEDI DOPO)
It's true that you can elicit rude or polite behavior with certain words. But you can also prime behavior with just about any stimuli that elicit social stereotypes—people become more aggressive after seeing images of African Americans, perform better on tests after being primed with thoughts of professors rather than soccer hooligans

Nota - Posizione 418
x LA SPINTA NN È LINGUISTICA MA DERIVA DA ASSOCIAZIONI CYLTURALI
All of this should lead us to worry that our hypothetical research subjects are being primed less by the grammar of their languages, and more by the cultural associations of their languages

Nota - Posizione 423
NN LA GRAMMATICA MA L ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE


 But this is puzzling to me. It's not at all clear that this is really a linguistic effect at all. I suspect you would get very similar results if you primed subjects with images of American versus Dutch flags,
Nota - Posizione 439
x SUL DILEMMA X BILINGUISTI
 If we must, perhaps we could refer to such results as socio-Whorfian effects.

Nota - Posizione 441
SOCIOWHORFIAN
Personally, I'm not willing to plunk down any-sized bet that these predictions would come out. If I had to bet any portion of my Language Log royalties, I'd put my money on a socio-Whorfian effect showing an effect of language, but no additional impact of future tense.

Nota - Posizione 449
NO GRAMMATICA

Appello ai giovani: lasciate perdere la politica

La politica ci fa ragionare male.
Inquina le nostre facoltà cognitive. Altro che religione. Chi crede nella forza della ragione sarebbe meglio la trascurasse.
E’ quello che sostiene più o meno esplicitamente Dan Kahan nel saggio “Politically Motivated Reasoning Paradigm
Un caso clamoroso
… Citizens… are less sharply divided today over the justice of progressive taxation (Moore 2015) than over the evidence that human CO2 emissions are driving up global temperatures (Frankovic 2015)…
In altri termini: le questioni di valore (progressività tassazione) dividono meno che le questioni di fatto (pericolosità del global warming, del nucleare, della libera circolazione delle armi, della deterrenza della pena di morte…).
Un altro caso
… Democrats and Republicans argue less strenuously about whether states should permit "voluntary school prayer" (General Social Survey 2014) than about whether allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns in public increases homicide rates or instead decreases them...
Insomma: sui valori c’è speranza di mettersi d’accordo ma sui fatti proprio no.
In altri termini ancora, la scienza fomenta più litigi della religione.
Molto strano poiché pensavamo che l’arbitrio fosse favorito dalla religione e sconfitto dalla chiarezza delle scienze.
Precisiamo: questa strana inversione dei ruoli è vera solo quando la questione fattuale ha conseguenze nelle policy. la rilevanza politica di una questione ci modifica il cervello.
Si ha un bel dire “partiamo dai fatti”, sono proprio i fatti il terreno di scontro…
… These are admittedly complex questions. But they are empirical ones…
Quando le evidenze sono meno evidenti dei valori, allora tutto è possibile.
La sperimentazione sul campo ha registrato un numero notevole di questioni fattuali in cui la forbice del dissenso è tale da far impallidire le diatribe sui valori…
… safety of deep geologic isolation of nuclear wastes, the health effects of the HPV vaccine for teenage girls; the deterrent impact of the death penalty, the efficacy of invasive forms of surveillance to combat terrorism
Come si spiega la cosa? Con il paradigma del “politically motivated reasoning” (PMR). Cos’è il PMR?…
… policy relevant fact has come to assume a widely recognized social meaning as a marker of membership… groups can be expected to conform…
Aderire a certe posizioni ci iscrive in un gruppo. Poco importa se quelle questioni abbiano un contenuto fattuale che dovrebbe orientare le scelte di una persona ragionevole in un senso o nell’altro.
La scienza puo’ ben poco in un mondo dove il PMR predomina. Questo esperimento è un classico…
… In the study, the subjects… were shown pictures and CVs of scientists, all of whom had been trained at and now held positions at prestigious universities and had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences… The subjects were then asked to indicate how strongly they disagreed or agreed that each one of them was indeed a scientific expert on a disputed societal risk… The positions of the scientists on these issues were manipulated, so that half the subjects believed that scientist held the "high risk" position and half the "low risk"… The direction and strength of the subjects' assessment of the expertise of each scientist turned on out to be highly correlated with whether the position attributed to the scientist matched the one that was predominant among individuals sharing the subjects' cultural out-looks…
Tipico grafico che descrive esperimenti del genere:
pmrp2
In altre parole: un esperto è esperto se la pensa come noi (in certe materie sensibili), e il suo curriculum vale ben poco.
Rimedi?
Quello che viene in mente per primo: studiare, imparare a leggere i numeri, le statistiche i modelli quantitativi…
Sbagliato. Cio’ che si chiama “high numeracy” è irrilevanti in questo genere di distorsioni. Anzi, le amplifica.
Un esempio ben noto sulla questione “quanto è pericoloso il libero accesso alle armi?”…
… subjects highest in Numeracy more accurately construed complex empirical data on the effectiveness of gun control laws but only when the data, properly interpreted, supported the position congruent with their political outlooks…
In altri termini: la dimestichezza con i numeri serve solo ad indebolire le ipotesi “scomode” introducendo una sofisticazione ulteriore. Le ipotesi “comode” vengono invece assunte vere così come sono.
L'intelligenza, anziché correggere le distorsioni del pensiero si mettono al loro servizio rafforzandole.
In questo senso, il profano schierato politicamente è più sensibile al consenso scientifico dello scienziato professionale schierato politicamente.
Conclusione
… politically motivated reasoning, far from reflecting too little rationality, reflects too much
Il problema non è l’ignoranza dell’elettore militante visto che la scienza dell’esperto militante crea distorsioni anche peggiori.
Il problema allora non puo’ essere che la militanza.
La scienza vale a poco se non è accompagnata dall’amore per la verità. Ma la nostra capacità “amorosa” è limitata, almeno a giudicare da come l’amore per la verità conviva male con l’amore per il partito.
A questo punto la vera soluzione è chiara: lasciar perdere la politica. Difficile infatti innamorarsi della politica senza innamorarsi di una posizione politica.