Recommended Reading

This section contains unedited writings originally published on other websites. The views expressed, as well as the credit and copyright, in each case belongs exclusively to the original author(s) and/or publisher.

Cognitive biases

February 25, 2014
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An earlier post featured three TED lectures by the behavioural economist Dan Ariely, each of which revealed some of the predictable ways in which the human mind falls short of the ideal of perfect rationality. Ariely is just one of a large and growing number of researchers interested in human irrationality. These researchers come from the fields of cognitive and social psychology, behavioural economics, behavioural ethics, and experimental philosophy. And just as the research in this area is increasing, so too are the findings concerning the full extent of human irrationality. The following extensive list from Wikipedia summarizes some of…

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Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance (article)

June 27, 2013
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The recent revelations by Edward Snowden of the global surveillance of internet communications by the American NSA was a vivid reminder of the need for everyone to think much more carefully about their online behavior. However, many people seem to regard Snowden’s revelations as interesting or curious but not startling. Such people seem to think that they would never be the target of US government surveillance or that, even if they were, there would be nothing to fear as they are law-abiding people. This article, written by Moxie Marlinspike for WIRED challenges these comfortable assumptions. It is well worth reading. Some notable paragraphs:…

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The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’ (article by Julian Assange)

June 20, 2013
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In a recent New York Times opinion piece, “The Banaility of ‘Don’t be Evil,” Julian Assange critiques the book “The New Digital Age – Reshaping the future of people, nations and business,” co-authored by Jared Cohen and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. A short summary of the book can be found here. The title of Assange’s article, which is fiercely critical of Cohen and Schmidt’s ideas for the future of a digitized civilization, is a reference to a phrase long ago used by Hannah Arendt to note that the greatest evils in human history (particularly the Holocaust) were not executed by sociopaths and…

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Markets erode moral values (study)

June 15, 2013
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In a recent study, researches from the University of Bamberg and University of Bonn suggest that they have found causal evidence of the corrupting effects of markets on moral values. The abstract reads as follows: The possibility that market interaction may erode moral values is a long-standing, but controversial, hypothesis in the social sciences, ethics, and philosophy. To date, empirical evidence on decay of moral values through market interaction has been scarce. We present controlled experimental evidence on how market interaction changes how human subjects value harm and damage done to third parties. In the experiment, subjects decide between either…

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Michael Moss on the extraordinary science of addictive junk food

March 22, 2013
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Michael Moss on the extraordinary science of addictive junk food

  In this editorial for the New York Times Magazine, Michael Moss discusses the “Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”. He begins the article, which derives from his current book “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us,” by describing a fateful afternoon when the CEOs from all the major corporations in the junk food industry gathered to be warned about their significant role in the American obesity epidemic. The article also features interviews with former and current junk food industry insiders, PR professionals and other experts who helped or continue to help create, market and sell the most addictive,…

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Studying economics increases the tendency to lie

March 9, 2013
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A working paper by Raúl López-Pérez and Eli Spiegelman, from universities in Montreal and Madrid, suggests that studying economics at the university might increase a student’s inclination to lie. The abstract for the paper reads as follows: “Recent experimental evidence suggests that some people dislike telling lies, and tell the truth even at a cost. We use experiments as well to study the socio-demographic covariates of such lie aversion, and find gender and religiosity to be without predictive value. However, subjects’ major is predictive: Business and Economics (B&E) subjects lie significantly more frequently than other majors. This is true even after…

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Obama vs. Physics (by Bill McKibben)

January 30, 2013
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The subtitle of Bill McKibben’s latest piece for TomDispatch reads “Why Climate Change Won’t Wait for the President” and sets the tone for another very well written and well-reasoned article by one of the greatest environmental writers and activists. While it is worth reading in whole, here are some particularly interesting paragraphs that catch the essence of the article: […] And that’s always been the difficulty with climate change — the greatest problem we’ve ever faced. It’s not a fight, like education reform or abortion or gay marriage, between conflicting groups with conflicting opinions. It couldn’t be more different at a fundamental level.…

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The week the world stood still (by Noam Chomsky)

November 5, 2012
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In his article “The week the world stood still,” published originally on TomDispatch, Noam Chomsky reminds us how close the world came to thermonuclear apocalypse in 1962 and also provides some insight into what really happened behind closed doors during the standoff between the US and the Soviet Union. It is of great importance to get the facts right about this dark moment in human history right, especially since the majority of people on earth were not alive in 1962 and can only learn about it through historical scholarship. Noam Chomsky therefore does us a great service in this article; his…

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Affluent people and trickle-down economics

October 29, 2012
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When the latest republican president, George W.Bush encouraged people to go shopping and introduced massive tax cuts on corporations and the wealthiest he acted as perfect role model for conservative economic politics. Mitt Romney is now running for president by promoting the same ideas and further tax cuts.  These conservative policies are often justified by recourse to “trickle-down economics,” the idea that tax breaks or other economic benefits provided by the government to businesses and the wealthy will result in further investment by the rich, leading to more jobs and hence benefiting the poorer members of society. But does money really trickle down? The…

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Upward mobility in the U.S. is a myth

October 8, 2012
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Robert S. Strauss used to say that every politician wants you to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself. Republicans in particular never tire of emphasizing the unparalleled opportunities that exist in US, where hard work and determination can propel anyone out of humble beginnings into the White House, or at least a mansion on a hill. But is this really the case? A recent international study examined the relationship between wealth, heritage and inequality across generations. Here’s the abstract: We study the role of parental wealth for children’s educational and occupational outcomes across three types of…

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How wired is your life? (by Santiago Zabala)

October 8, 2012
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AlJazeera recently featured an excellent article by Santiago Zabala, ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona in its opinion section. In his article Zabala emphasizes that in our digital world, in which the internet and social networks have become as common as “the air we breathe,” critical thinking is more important than ever. Some quotes from the full article: It is interesting to notice how often this question is answered simply by noting the amount of time we spend online (following the US presidential campaign or admiring MOMA‘s online collection) rather than by qualifying our ability to interpret the…

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Iceland Was Right, We Were Wrong: The IMF (by Jeff Nielson)

September 5, 2012
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Jeff Nielson has published an article well worth reading on the global financial crisis and its economic consequences. Originally published in The Street, the article explains the alternative strategy Iceland implemented to combat it’s dire situation after the financial meltdown and concludes that Iceland was not only different but right, which in turn suggests that everyone else was wrong. The following is a selection of paragraphs from the full article, which can be found here: Now in what may be the greatest economic “mea culpa” in history, we have the media admitting that this government/banking/propaganda-machine troika has been wrong all along. They have…

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Global Land Grab (by Terry Allen)

June 25, 2012
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Global Land Grab by Terry Allen, senior editor at In These Times, documents and analyzes the attempts that certain countries (primarily China, India and South Korea) are making to purchase tens of millions of acres of farmland from some of the poorest countries in Africa, South American, and South Asia to grow crops for export. What is taking place is, in effect, a new form of colonialism under the guise of business transactions. Allen writes: The “new colonialism” is less like a crusade and more like an ordinary business transaction floated on a promise of “win-win.” The deal-makers include international agribusinesses, investment banks,…

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Why We Regulate (by Paul Krugman)

May 15, 2012
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One of the characters in the classic 1939 film “Stagecoach” is a banker named Gatewood who lectures his captive audience on the evils of big government, especially bank regulation — “As if we bankers don’t know how to run our own banks!” he exclaims. As the film progresses, we learn that Gatewood is in fact skipping town with a satchel full of embezzled cash. As far as we know, Jamie Dimon, the chairman and C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, isn’t planning anything similar. He has, however, been fond of giving Gatewood-like speeches about how he and his colleagues know what they’re doing,…

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How ego and ideology are destroying the world’s greatest public university (Mark LeVine)

May 12, 2012
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How ego and ideology are destroying the world’s greatest public university (Mark LeVine)

Irvine, CA – The University of California is home to many of the country’s leading scholars in dozens of fields, and for decades it has been an important laboratory for social change in the United States. It has also been at the forefront of many struggles for political, social, civil and labour rights struggles, as both an incubator of new ideas and practices and as a laboratory in which various attempts to change the balance of power and responsibility between social groups, and between society and government, have played out.  So you might not be surprised to learn that as one…

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Iceland’s president explains why the world needs to rethink its addiction to finance

April 27, 2012
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A few days ago, Adam Taylor, journalist for the Business Insider interviewed Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, who has been President of Iceland since 1996, and announced last month he would be running for a fifth term. Keep reading to hear his thoughts on Iceland’s recovery, and how a large financial sector can ruin a nation. Ragnar Grímsson connects the dots in a openly manner that unfortunately proves to be very rare in contemporary politics all around the world. Definitely a must-read. You can find the full transcript on Business Insider. Some noteworthy paragraphs: Whereas in many other countries, until recent months,…

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Can there be “good” corporations? (by Marjorie Kelly)

April 22, 2012
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When companies are owned by workers and the community—instead of Wall Street financiers—everything changes. Our economic system is profoundly broken. To anyone paying attention, that much is clear. But what’s less clear is this: Our approach to fixing the economy is broken as well. The whole notion of “fighting corporate power” arises from an underlying belief that there is no alternative to capitalism as we know it. Starting from the insight that capitalism has become virtually a universal economy, we conclude that our best hope is to regulate corporations and work for countervailing powers like unions. But then we’ve lost…

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Dear Germany: It’s okay to criticise Israel (by Mark Levine)

April 18, 2012
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Irvine, CA – My parents would never buy a Mercedes. Period. They couldn’t understand Jews who would (legitimate adults didn’t buy Volkswagons either back in the 1970s, at least where I lived). In fact, aside from long-dead German composers and pastries from the local German-American bakery – whose owners were probably Jewish – Jewish-Americans wanted nothing to do with Germany. For obvious reasons. Even today, it’s very hard for non-Jews to understand the trauma Jews born in the post-Holocaust generation experienced related to Germany. Our family lived in a strange zone between the past and present. At regular moments throughout the…

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Can You Understand the Republican Brain? (Mark Karlin interviews Chris Mooney)

April 18, 2012
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Scientific American lauds author Chris Mooney “as one if the few journalists in the country who specialize in the now dangerous intersection of science and politics.” Having interviewed Mooney about his first book, the highly praised, “The Republican War on Science,” Truthout/BuzzFlash interviews Mooney about his latest release, “The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality.” Truthout and BuzzFlash readers can directly obtain “The Republican Brain” and support uncompromised journalism by clicking here. Mark Karlin: Progressives often say of Fox that they create facts to bolster their opinions. Is this true of the Republican mind set in general? Chris Mooney: This…

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The UK government’s war on internet freedom (by Trevor Timm)

April 16, 2012
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  San Francisco, CA – Last summer in the wake of the London riots, British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted that the government should have the power to censor social media and “stop [alleged rioters] from communicating via these websites”. But after Cameron’s plan was widely compared to the tactics of former Egypt President Hosni Mubarak – not to mention the same social media services were instrumental in helping organise post-riot cleanup – the proposal never materialised. Unfortunately, Cameron’s declaration that the “free flow of information” can sometimes be a problem, then an aberration, seems to have turned into a pillar of the UK government’s 2012 agenda.…

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