FM2030Videos FM-2030 discusses the rate of personal growth and the rapidly changing world. He shares how to make a smooth transition into coming decades and how to be progressive in all major areas of life like values and lifestyles, politics and ideologies, loyalties and levels of humanities. For more information, visit http://www.fm2030.com
Getting Ready: An Interview with Futurist FM-2030 – Pt. 2
FM2030Videos FM-2030 discusses the rate of personal growth and the rapidly changing world. He shares how to make a smooth transition into coming decades and how to be progressive in all major areas of life like values and lifestyles, politics and ideologies, loyalties and levels of humanities. For more information, visit http://www.fm2030.us
A fascinating discussion on sex, gender, and human instincts, as relevant today as ever.
In the course of a lively drinking party, a group of Athenian intellectuals exchange views on eros, or desire. From their conversation emerges a series of subtle reflections on gender roles, sex in society and the sublimation of basic human instincts. The discussion culminates in a radical challenge to conventional views by Plato’s mentor, Socrates, who advocates transcendence through spiritual love. The Symposium is a deft interweaving of different viewpoints and ideas about the nature of love–as a response to beauty, a cosmic force, a motive for social action and as a means of ethical education.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is considered to be the greatest German literary figure of the modern era. Wikipedia
The French philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86) was at the height of her influence after the publication of her landmark feminist treatise The Second Sex (1949) and of her acclaimed novel The Mandarins (1954). In the wake of the Second World War, alongside Albert Camus as well as her lover Jean-Paul Sartre, she had set out to usher in a new society built around ideals of freedom and justice. In doing so, the trio had also helped to ignite movements in the US and France whose adherents sought to spread existentialist philosophy through writing and art – or, at the very least, have a raucous good time. By the time this interview with Beauvoir aired on Canadian television in 1959, Camus and Sartre had already fallen out over communism and abandoned the existentialist label. Still, Beauvoir is able to make a compelling point for the value of ideology even as she distances the values of the existentialist cause from, in the interviewer’s words, the ‘noisy, rowdy jazz-loving young people’ they inspired. In this wide-ranging interview, Beauvoir also discusses her views on the intersection of philosophy and political activism, and the condition of women worldwide, offering insights into the cultural moment as well as her deeply held beliefs on philosophy and the human condition.
In the year since the Jan. 6 insurrection, mainstream journalists have done a lot of things right. They’ve published major investigations, pointed out politicians’ lies and, in many cases, finally learned how to clearly communicate the facts of what happened leading up to that horrendous riot at the U.S. Capitol — and what is happening now as pro-Trump Republicans steadily chip away at the very checks and balances that saved American democracy last year.
Much of this work has been impressive. And yet, something crucial is missing. For the most part, news organizations are not making democracy-under-siege a central focus of the work they present to the public.
“We are losing our democracy day by day, and journalists are individually aware of this, but media outlets are not centering this as the story it should be,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of autocracy and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”Advertisement
That American democracy is teetering is unquestionable. Jan. 6 is every day now, in the words of a recent New York Times editorial that noted the growing evidence: election officials harassed by conspiracy theory addicts, death threats issued to politicians who vote their conscience, GOP lawmakers pushing measures to make it harder for citizens to vote and easier for partisans to overturn legitimate voting results.
“The reactionary counter-mobilization against democracy has accelerated,” wrote historian Thomas Zimmer, a visiting professor at Georgetown. “It’s happening on so many fronts simultaneously that it’s easy to lose sight of how things are connected.”Many have argued that President Donald Trump’s efforts amounted to an attempted coup on Jan. 6. Was it? And why does that matter? (Monica Rodman, Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)
To be sure, even some of the most studiously neutral of news organizations are doing important journalism on this subject.
“ ‘Slow-motion insurrection’: How GOP seizes election power,” read the headline of an Associated Press news story last week. It detailed the ways in which Republicans aligned with former president Donald Trump, after the near-miss of last year’s coup attempt, “have worked to clear the path for next time.”Advertisement
The story explained what’s happening in the battleground states that could determine the next occupant of the White House: “In Michigan, the Republican Party is restocking members of obscure local boards that could block approval of an election. In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the GOP-controlled legislatures are backing open-ended ‘reviews’ of the 2020 election, modeled on a deeply flawed look-back in Arizona.” Writer Nicholas Riccardi stated his findings in his own equivocation-free words, without washing it through the voice of some academic or activist: “The efforts are poised to fuel disinformation and anger about the 2020 results for years to come.”
Similarly, NPR recently ran a seven-minute segment by Melissa Block on what it called “the clear and present danger of Trump’s enduring ‘Big Lie.’ ” As NYU’s Jay Rosen noted, the piece was admirably direct in its language: “No dilution via ‘both sides,” no ‘critics say,’ Just a straight-up warning.” And on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this weekend, moderator Chuck Todd — who has deservedly drawn criticism in recent months for too often allowing GOP talking points to go unchallenged — stepped up in a significant way to detail the “big lie” spread by Trump allies this past year to evoke the specter of a supposedly stolen presidential election.
More pointedly,the Atlantic magazine — which positions itself as centrist rather than left-leaning — published an entire issue in December devoted to the topic of democracy under threat. The cover headline’s message was hard to miss: “January 6 was practice.” The cover story by Barton Gellman began with this chilling paragraph:Advertisement
“Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.”
All of this is good, necessary and important. The Atlantic, particularly, seems to have taken on the challenge.
But, in general, this pro-democracy coverage is not being “centered” by the media writ large. It’s occasional, not regular; it doesn’t appear to be part of an overall editorial plan that fully recognizes just how much trouble we’re in.
That must change. It’s not merely that there needs to be more of this work. It also needs to be different. For example, it should include a new emphasis on those who are fighting to preserve voting rights and defend democratic norms.Advertisement
“We focus on the enemies of democracy, the villains, but we also need to focus on democracy’s heroes,” including those working at the grass-roots level, Ben-Ghiat told me, such as voting rights advocates and public officials in communities across the country. An occasional feature story on Stacey Abrams, the celebrated activist and former Georgia state lawmaker, is not nearly enough.
This new pro-democracy emphasis should be articulated clearly — and fearlessly — to readers and viewers. That could be in statements from editors or publishers, in advertising campaigns, or in other ways, declaring, in essence, “we are devoting more resources to this crucial subject because it is at the heart of our mission.” (As a reference point, think about how the heads of news organizations announced they were going to pay more attention to “the heartland” after the 2016 presidential election, or how some, at long last, are bearing down on climate change coverage.)
Then, news leaders, show that you really mean it. Put that pro-democracy coverage in front of your paywall, just as you’ve done with much of your covid coverage. Put teams of reporters and editors on the subject. Label it in a defining and memorable way, as news organizations have done with “Spotlight” or “Watchdog” teams in the past.Advertisement
Don’t be afraid to stand for something as basic to our mission as voting rights, governmental checks and balances, and democratic standards.
In other words, shout it from the rooftops. Before it’s too late.
Mothers undeniably impact and shape history — but their stories are often left out or misrepresented, says sociologist and author Anna Malaika Tubbs. This erasure limits policies to support mothers and their essential roles in society. Citing the remarkable lives of Alberta King, Louise Little and Berdis Baldwin (the mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin, respectively), Tubbs emphasizes the need to shift the perspective on motherhood at a cultural level — to better reflect the presence, power and influence of moms as our first leaders, caretakers and teachers. “Would the world be different today if we had been telling their stories all along?” she asks.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Six research groups’ findings all suggest variant multiplies more in throats and causes less serious disease
Research into the Omicron variant ‘does suggest that the disease is less severe than Delta and the original Wuhan virus’, according to one researcher. Photograph: Simon Lehmann/Alamy
A growing body of evidence indicates that the Omicron Covid variant is more likely to infect the throat than the lungs, which scientists believe may explain why it appears to be more infectious but less deadly than other versions of the virus. Six studies – four published since Christmas Eve – have found that Omicron does not damage people’s lungs as much as the Delta and other previous variants of Covid. The studies have yet to be peer-reviewed by other scientists.
“The result of all the mutations that make Omicron different from previous variants is that it may have altered its ability to infect different sorts of cells,” said Deenan Pillay, professor of virology at University College London.
“In essence, it looks to be more able to infect the upper respiratory tract – cells in the throat. So it would multiply in cells there more readily than in cells deep in the lung. This is really preliminary but the studies point in the same direction.”Advertisement
If the virus replicates more in the throat, that makes it more transmissible, which would help to explain the rapid spread of Omicron. A virus that is good at infecting lung tissue, on the other hand, will be potentially more dangerous but less transmissible.
Researchers from the University of Liverpool’s Molecular Virology Research Group published a pre-print on Boxing Day that shows Omicron leading to “less severe disease” in mice, according to Prof James Stewart. The paper showed that mice infected with Omicron lose less weight, have lower viral loads and experience less- severe pneumonia.
“It’s one piece of the jigsaw,” he said. “The animal model does suggest that the disease is less severe than Delta and the original Wuhan virus. It seems to get cleared faster and the animals recovered more rapidly, and that ties in with clinical data coming through.
“The early indications are that it’s good news, but that’s not a signal to drop our guard, because if you’re clinically vulnerable, the consequences are still not great – there are deaths from Omicron. Not everyone can rip their masks off and party.”
The Neyts Lab at Leuven University in Belgium found similar results in Syrian hamsters, with a lower viral load in the lungs compared with other variants. Prof Johan Neyts said this may be because the virus was better at infecting humans than hamsters, or that it was more likely to infect the upper respiratory tract, or that it provoked less-severe disease.
Some research has suggested that lateral flow tests detect Omicron better when the throat is swabbed rather than the nose. Photograph: Gareth Everett/Huw Evans/Rex Shutterstock
A further pre-print, submitted to Naturelast week by researchers in the US, also found that mice with Omicron lost less weight and had a lower viral load. And researchers at the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Virus Research have found evidence that Omicron has changed the way it enters the body. Omicron was substantially likely to evade the immunity of people who had had two doses of the vaccine, but a booster dose gave a “partial restoration of immunity”.
The slew of Christmas research builds on a study from the University of Hong Kong last month showing less Omicron infection in the lungs, and on research led by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, whose team investigated blood samples from vaccinated patients. They found Omicron able to evade vaccines, but less able to enter lung cells.
The latest scientific research comes amid a debate about how best to carry out home-testing. Last week, some scientists suggested that lateral flow tests (LFTs) might be more accurate if people took swabs from the throat as well as the nose. Prof Jennifer Rohn at University College London said that her experience of using LFTs was that she had tested negative using nose swabs but positive when taking a sample from her throat.
That seemed to be supported by a study from South Africa showing that saliva samples subjected to PCR tests were better than nasal swabs at detecting Omicron.
However, Prof Lawrence Young, virologist at the University of Warwick, said the study was not significant enough for conclusions to be drawn. “This is a small study on acutely symptomatic, non-hospitalised patients. On the one hand it confirms previous studies indicating that salivary testing could be useful as a more easily performed sampling approach. I don’t think this study is significant enough to conclude anything about the behaviour of Omicron.”
The UK Health Security Agency said there was no indication that rapid tests differed in their ability to detect the Omicron or Delta variants, although the tests were continuously monitored by researchers. “All lateral flow devices used by NHS Test and Trace have gone through rigorous validation and are proven to be highly effective at detecting Covid-19 in people,” a spokesperson said. “We are currently seeing high numbers of positive lateral flow device tests reported. This means we are detecting tens of thousands of cases that might otherwise have gone undetected.”
This article was amended on 3 January 2022 because an earlier version said: “If the virus produces more cells in the throat, that makes it more transmissible …”. The reference should have been: “If the virus replicates more in the throat…” This has been corrected.
Liron Rozenkrantzis a neuroscientist interested in the influence of beliefs and expectations on cognition and wellbeing. She is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As part of her research, she is studying ‘enhanced rationality’ in autism and how Autistic individuals seem to be less susceptible to cognitive – as well as social – biases.
Anila D’Mellois a cognitive neuroscientist interested in language and social communication. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she uses neuroimaging to examine how the brain learns from previous experiences to inform future behaviour. She also uses personalised study designs to promote strengths-based approaches to studying language in autism.
A rational person, according to traditional economic models, is someone who considers all relevant information when reasoning, reaching a decision or making a judgment. In this sense, rationality allows for optimal decision-making. Yet humans are so frequently irrational that this aspect of our nature is taught in introductory psychology courses and used in marketing to turn a profit. The human brain is bounded by limited computing power. It is impossible for people to compute all the scenarios, weigh all the options, and integrate all the available information, especially given limited time to make decisions. So we tend to use cognitive shortcuts (also called heuristics) to filter incoming information. Human irrationality can be seen as partly a byproduct of these shortcuts and other filters – which can include past experience, context, emotions and intuitions.
How do these filters affect behaviour? To take one example, people are highly motivated to avoid loss, and they will reliably choose options that are framed in terms of gains more than they choose options framed in terms of losses, even if the outcomes of these choices are in fact the same. This is referred to as the ‘framing effect’. It might seem strange that people consistently fall prey to such a bias – but what about you? Would you be more inclined to agree to a surgery that you’re told has a ‘90 per cent chance of survival’, or one that’s described as having a ‘10 per cent chance of death’? The emotions engendered by a more negative framing can influence our decision-making. Similarly, people are often unduly attracted by the possibility of high gains, even if their actual likelihood is very low – as when someone plays the lottery. Cognitive biases can affect the sorts of decisions that people make regularly, from preferring an ‘80 per cent fat-free’ yogurt over one that contains ‘20 per cent fat’ to buying sensible insurance immediately after hearing about a disaster, only to cancel it later because one (wrongly) perceives the risk of disaster to have passed.
Such examples can make it seem as if such irrationality is an inevitable characteristic of human thinking. However, in the past decade or so, challenges to this idea have arisen from unexpected places. As we explained in a recent review paper, researchers have repeatedly found evidence that Autistic individuals are, on average, more consistent, less biased, and more rational than non-autistic individuals in a variety of contexts. (We use identity-first language, eg, ‘Autistic people’, as it is preferred by many people on the autism spectrum.) Specifically, many Autistic people seem to be less susceptible to cognitive biases, and therefore better able to make judgments and reach decisions in a more traditionally ‘rational’ manner.
Some studies have found, for instance, that Autistic participants are less influenced by the framing of a choice when deciding between options (the ‘framing effect’ described above). Other research suggests that Autistic individuals might have a reduced ‘optimism bias’. This is the bias wherein people tend to neglect information containing undesirable news (eg, an unexpectedly high probability of an adverse event happening), but adjust their outlook in response to desirable news (a lower-than-expected probability of such an event). The research indicates that Autistic individuals integrate information in a more objective and unbiased manner than is typical, representing a more veridical view of the world.
A lower reliance on prior experience when weighing incoming information might enable more thorough processing of information
Consider, too, the sunk cost bias, wherein costs that cannot be recovered are nevertheless integrated into the decision-making process, leading to suboptimal choices. Imagine you have bought two non-refundable tickets to different trips, one much more costly. You are then told that you must cancel one of them. In this case, many people will cancel the cheaper trip regardless of which one they would prefer to go on – and even though they will have spent the same amount of money either way. Autistic individuals appear to be more likely to make a choice based on their personal preference rather than on an irrelevant cost.
Autism researchers and society in general have been largely focused on deficits and challenges in autism, with less regard for areas in which Autistic people might tend to outperform non-autistic people. Based on the above examples and others, it is possible that enhanced rationality is yet another part of the constellation of characteristics associated with autism (though an understudied and not well-recognised one).
It’s also possible that ‘deficits’ associated with autism might confer certain advantages. Things such as circumscribed interests or perseveration (when one repeats or prolongs an action, thought or utterance after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased) could directly or indirectly benefit some Autistic individuals. For example, the prominent climate activist Greta Thunberg has suggested that her autism contributes to her singular focus on the climate. In the case of judgment and decision-making, other apparent characteristics of autism – such as a lower reliance on prior experience when weighing incoming information – might also enable more thorough processing of information.
More specifically, some theories of brain function characterise the brain as a prediction machine: it learns from past information and experiences to create models of the world that can be used to predict what is likely to occur. This allows for quick cognitive processing and speeds perception, as we don’t have to wait for sensory inputs before acting or making a decision. Depending on the context we are in and how uncertain we are in a given moment, our reliance on past experiences and predictions versus novel incoming information may shift. Several theoretical frameworks have suggested that in autism, the balance between prior knowledge and incoming input is shifted towards the latter. For perception, reduced reliance on predictions could make incoming sensory input (even very familiar input) seem novel and unexpected.
These theoretical frameworks have posited that this shifted balance could result in high attention to detail, and even increased sensitivity to and difficulty ignoring noises (such as the monotonic humming of a refrigerator) or other sensations in the environment (the feeling of uncomfortable clothing on the skin) – all indeed commonly reported in autism. However, reduced reliance on predictions in the face of novel information could also inform enhanced rationality. For example, more equal weighing of information regardless of prior knowledge – meaning the context in which the information is presented, or past experiences – might contribute to reduced bias and more rational decision-making.
Regardless of the interpretation, elucidating strengths in Autistic people could have significant benefits. It can give us a more accurate and balanced perspective on the various Autistic characteristics. This, in turn, can lead to wider acceptance of and reduced stigma toward Autistic individuals, and could provide insight into how best to support Autistic individuals academically and in the workplace.
Reduced use of stereotypes in implicit decision-making could be interpreted as a form of enhanced rationality
Each year in the United States, about 100,000 Autistic teenagers enter adulthood, and many Autistic young adults do not have a paying job. Understanding the specific strengths of individuals with autism and the ways in which they might tend to outperform non-autistic people (eg, with less biased information-processing) could be helpful for their transition into the workforce. These strengths might be especially relevant to particular work contexts. One potential example is work in departments that make hiring or promotion decisions, since bias can influence decision-making processes about matters such as who is the best candidate for a position.
Indeed, there is some evidence that Autistic individuals are more rational in their judgments about people. One way to measure this is by looking at both explicit stereotypes and implicit biases related to race and gender. Some studies have found that Autistic participants are as likely as neurotypical participants to show an understanding of race and gender stereotypes when asked (for example, the idea that girls are more likely than boys to play with dolls). However, when researchers assessed implicit bias, Autistic individuals were less likely to make rapid, stereotype-based associations between concepts than neurotypical individuals. Reduced use of stereotypes in implicit decision-making could be interpreted as a form of enhanced rationality.
Of course, just as in the neurotypical population, the experiences or abilities of one Autistic individual are not necessarily generalisable to all Autistic individuals. Moreover, it is important to consider that many of the studies finding enhanced rationality in autism have focused on a certain subset of the spectrum – those who have relatively strong cognitive abilities or language abilities. Much like in other areas of autism research, here too there is a selection bias, wherein Autistic individuals who experience more challenges, especially in cognitive performance and language, are underrepresented. Future research should take a similar strengths-based approach in examining skills and challenges across the autism spectrum and in other conditions as well.
Reframing the canonical understanding of autism has implications for our understanding of human thought and behaviour more broadly. Until now, it seems that this understanding has been limited by our use of neurotypical individuals as the reference population. The research we’ve highlighted suggests that many of the biases that we take for granted might not be so standard, illustrating the potential for fuller and more rational consideration of information. This view echoes and expands on principles of neurodiversity – the idea that conditions such as autism reflect normal variation in human characteristics. Autistic individuals show differences in ways of interacting with the world and processing information, but differences need not be deficits. While some of these differences might involve costs such as cognitive inflexibility or challenges in navigating the social world, they could also lead to a rethinking of the bounds of human rationality.
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