Three long, but fascinating reads for the week ahead: 1. The Quiet German, on the rise of German Chancellor Angela Merkel: newyorker/magazine/2014/12/01/quiet-german. 2. The Tsunami’s Wake, on the tsunami which struck Asia in 2004: time/tsunamis-wake/. 3. We Are All Confident Idiots, on the implications of ignorance: psmag/navigation/health-and-behavior/confident-idiots-92793/. -- Excerpts: - The Quiet German, by George Packer John Kornblum, a former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, who still lives in Berlin, said, If you cross her, you end up dead. There’s nothing cushy about her. There’s a whole list of alpha males who thought they would get her out of the way, and they’re all now in other walks of life. - The Tsunami’s Wake, by Charlie Campbell More than 230,000 people died across the Asia-Pacific in the tsunami, meaning such tales of loss are only too common. Deaths were recorded in 14 countries and as far afield as South Africa, although the four worst affected nations were Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand in declining order. The 9.3-magnitude earthquake that struck 160 km (100 miles) off northwest Sumatra was the third largest ever recorded, lasting an unprecedented nine minutes and causing the whole planet to vibrate 1 cm (o.4 in.). And to some extent, 10 years on, those vibrations are still being felt. - We Are All Confident Idiots, by David Dunning Then, of course, there is the problem of rampant misinformation in places that, unlike classrooms, are hard to control - like the Internet and news media. In these Wild West settings, it’s best not to repeat common misbeliefs at all. Telling people that Barack Obama is not a Muslim fails to change many people’s minds, because they frequently remember everything that was said - except for the crucial qualifier “not.” Rather, to successfully eradicate a misbelief requires not only removing the misbelief, but filling the void left behind (“Obama was baptised in 1988 as a member of the United Church of Christ”). If repeating the misbelief is absolutely necessary, researchers have found it helps to provide clear and repeated warnings that the misbelief is false. I repeat, false.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 13:00:01 +0000
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