A Study In Movement

thexfiles:

if a marginalized group tells you that a word or phrase is harmful/toxic towards them and they wish you’d stop using it, it’s not an opportunity for you to flex your fucking debate skills

butyoudontlooklikealibrarian:

madmaudlingoes:

roscoerackham:

shinykari:

lady-feral:

hollowedskin:

cannon-fannon:

boneyardchamp:

Your professor will not be happy with you if he says the Stanford Prison Experiment shows human nature and you say it shows the nature of white middle class college-aged boys.

Like he will not be happy at all.

For real though. That experiment. Scary shit.

This reminds me of a discussion that I read once which said Lord of the Flies would have turned out a hell of a lot differently if it was a private school of young girls (who are expected to be responsible and selfless instead), or a public school where the children weren’t all from an inherently entitled, emotionally stunted social class (studies have shown that people in lower socioeconomic classes show more compassion for others).

Or that the same premise with children raised in a different culture than the toxic and opressive British Empire and it’s emphasis on social hierarchy and personal wealth and status.

And that what we perceive as the unchangable truth deep inside humanity because of things like Lord of the Flies and the Stanford Prison Experiment, is just the base truths about what happens when you remove any accountabilty controlling one social group with an overwhelming sense of entitlement and an inability to feel compassion.

I will always reblog this.

I just wanna say that the Lord of the Flies was explicitly written about high-class private school boys to make this exact point. Golding wrote Lord of the Flies partially to refute an earlier novel about this same subject: The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne. Golding thought it was absolutely absurd that a bunch of privileged little shits would set up some sort of utopia, so his book shows them NOT doing that.

This is also generally true about most psychological experiments.

There’s an experiment called “The Ultimatum Game”. It goes something like this.

1. Subject A is given an amount of money (Say, $100).
   
2. Subject A must offer Subject B some percentage of that money.
3. If Subject B accepts Subject A’s offer, both get the agreed upon amount of money. If Subject B refuses, no one gets any money.

The most common result was believed to be that people favored 50/50 splits. Anything too low was rejected; people wanted fairness. This was believed to be universal.

And then a researcher went to Peru to do the experiment with members of the indigenous Machiguenga population, and was baffled to find that the results were totally different.

Because, to the Machiguenga, refusing any amount of free money (even an unfair amount) was considered crazy.

So the researcher took his work on the road (to 14 other ‘small scale’ societies and tribes) , and to his shock found the results varied wildly depending on where the test was done. 

In fact, the “universal” result? Was an outlier. 

And that’s the problem. 96% percent of test subjects for psychological research come from 12% of the population. Stuff that we consider to be universal facts of human nature… even things like optical illusions, just… aren’t.

 You can read an article about it here.  But the crux of it is that psychology is plagued with confirmation bias, and people are shaped more by their environment than we realize. 

There’s some researchers at UBC in Vancouver who look at this kind of bias, and they use the acronym WEIRD–standing for “Western, educated, industrial, rich, democratic”–to describe how the typical research subject differs from the world on average.

This is a really fascinating discussion and frankly something that had not occurred to me before. I do a whole segment in my information studies class on authority, with a focus not just on who has authority but whose voices are missing from the conversation, and I think I need to incorporate this somehow.

Republicans are the primary beneficiaries of gerrymandering

spytap:

mostlysignssomeportents:

As the Supreme Court makes ready to rule on the blatant gerrymandering in Wisconsin, the AP has conducted a study using “a new statistical method of calculating partisan advantage” to analyze “the outcomes of all 435 U.S. House races and about 4,700 state House and Assembly seats up for election last year” and report “four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones.”

Both parties have engaged in gerrymandering, but in many Republican strongholds, the GOP attains majorities and supermajorities despite capturing a minority of the vote, in a way that is unmatched by Democrats in states where they dominate.

As the party pivots away from its post-Romney strategy of finding ways to appeal to Americans from all walks of life, and into an entho-nationalist party that uses white identity politics to secure massive wealth transfers to an aging, tiny block of super-rich financiers, it can only realize electoral power through fraud, because neither of those groups are, on their own, sufficiently large to take and hold political power.

https://boingboing.net/2017/06/26/demographics-vs-democracy.html

Duh.

So, what can people do?*

sashayed:

twoearsandaheart:

Healthcare Edition (June 8, 2017):

We had a fun/absurd national moment watching Comey testify today, but now that’s over and as citizens there’s basically nothing we can do to affect the Russia investigation (unless you’re plotting a honeypot mission to Mar-a-Lago in which case: godspeed, heroines). But we CAN do something about (one of) the other terrible thing(s) happening, which is Mitch McConnell wrangling the ACA repeal through the Senate.

Remember when the House passed a monstrosity of a health care bill and we were all sure it was DOA in the Senate? Reports suggest not much has changed in the Senate version of that bill which, even though it doesn’t exist yet (or does and is being kept under wraps), good ol’ Mitch has taken steps to fast-track (skipping committee and going directly on the Senate Calendar for a vote).  Ben Wikler has put out the all-call; if you prefer your action on Twitter, this is the link.

–> We need another sustained public outcry against taking a health care bill to the Senate floor that bears any resemblance at all to the House bill.

HERE’S YOUR TO-DO LIST:

1. Program the Capitol switchboard # into your phone:  (202) 224-3121

2. Make as many calls as you possibly can every day. Set a phone reminder.

3. Recruit friends from these states to call. ALL reps need their phone lines tied up, but these reps could be the swing votes.

4. Ask for the Health Legislative Assistant for your senator. Here are their names!  TELL YOUR STORY.  Or your dad/grandma/sister/friend’s story. Healthcare touches us all. It’s their job to listen to this stuff specifically. 

5. Go to your local Congressional office:  demand to be seen, wait there, take photos and videos, post them online. Don’t wait to see the wave of action to be inspired–start the wave yourself. Everybody can be a hero every day in the Age of Trump.

6. Get creative! Get tambourines and a bullhorn. Make loud signs. Bedazzle your jean jacket with “Save the ACA.” Or just pick up the phone. We are all GLOBALLY EXHAUSTED, and it hasn’t even been 5 months. But we have the power to make enough noise to break through the insanity out there [& in our brains] and make sure health policy remains humane, and represents the best of America, not the worst.

*courtesy of Ben Wikler of MoveOn.org

WHAT A GOOD POST, and what a good thread by Ben Wikler. 

HELLO EVERYONE!!! MY GOD WE’RE SO TIRED, BUT PUTTING IN WORK ACTUALLY HELPS US BE LESS TIRED, OR AT LEAST THE SAME TIRED IN A GOOD WAY. MITCH MCCONNELL STILL WANTS TO FAST-TRACK THE AHCA THROUGH THE SENATE WHICH WILL LITERALLY KILL MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. Inform him, his colleagues and allies that that would be a mistake.