Dear Peter Jackson
and also Guillermo del Toro and New Line Cinema.... Thanks for making The Lord of the Rings ! Wasn't it just awesome ? Everyone I know thought so. In fact, I think it's pretty tough to find a better movie adaptation of a much-loved book. Like Shary Bobbins, it's practically perfect in every way.
Sunday 21 December 2014
The Hobbit - I'll pay you money to make it shorter
Reshare with slight postscript having just seen the Battle of the Five Armies. I would pay good money to see the Hobbit films re-released as a single 3 hour movie. I wasn't much impressed by the first film, did enjoy the second (mostly because Smaug was exactly how I wanted Smaug to be), and approve almost entirely of the third. But they could all - especially the first - be so much better if large chunks of them were simply not there.
Monday 1 December 2014
The precision of science can be a political weakness
This is excellent. Long, and worth reading in its entirety, but some highlights :
"Ironically, in part because researchers employ so much nuance and strive to disclose all remaining sources of uncertainty, scientific evidence is highly susceptible to selective reading and misinterpretation. Giving ideologues or partisans scientific data that’s relevant to their beliefs is like unleashing them in the motivated-reasoning equivalent of a candy store."
"When the scientist’s position stated that global warming is real and human-caused, for instance, only 23 percent of hierarchical individualists [Republicans] agreed the person was a “trustworthy and knowledgeable expert.” Yet 88 percent of egalitarian communitarians [Democrats] accepted the same scientist’s expertise.... In other words, people rejected the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views—and thus the relative risks inherent in each scenario... The study subjects weren’t “anti-science”—not in their own minds, anyway. "
Unlike many similar articles, this one suggests ways to avoid the problem :
"...they tried to test the fallacy (PDF) that President Obama is a Muslim. When a nonwhite researcher was administering their study, research subjects were amenable to changing their minds about the president’s religion and updating incorrect views. But when only white researchers were present, GOP survey subjects in particular were more likely to believe the Obama Muslim myth than before. "
"If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to them in a context that doesn’t trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.... you don’t lead with the facts in order to convince. You lead with the values—so as to give the facts a fighting chance."
https://medium.com/mother-jones/the-science-of-why-we-dont-believe-science-adfa0d026a7e
"Ironically, in part because researchers employ so much nuance and strive to disclose all remaining sources of uncertainty, scientific evidence is highly susceptible to selective reading and misinterpretation. Giving ideologues or partisans scientific data that’s relevant to their beliefs is like unleashing them in the motivated-reasoning equivalent of a candy store."
"When the scientist’s position stated that global warming is real and human-caused, for instance, only 23 percent of hierarchical individualists [Republicans] agreed the person was a “trustworthy and knowledgeable expert.” Yet 88 percent of egalitarian communitarians [Democrats] accepted the same scientist’s expertise.... In other words, people rejected the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views—and thus the relative risks inherent in each scenario... The study subjects weren’t “anti-science”—not in their own minds, anyway. "
Unlike many similar articles, this one suggests ways to avoid the problem :
"...they tried to test the fallacy (PDF) that President Obama is a Muslim. When a nonwhite researcher was administering their study, research subjects were amenable to changing their minds about the president’s religion and updating incorrect views. But when only white researchers were present, GOP survey subjects in particular were more likely to believe the Obama Muslim myth than before. "
"If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to them in a context that doesn’t trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.... you don’t lead with the facts in order to convince. You lead with the values—so as to give the facts a fighting chance."
https://medium.com/mother-jones/the-science-of-why-we-dont-believe-science-adfa0d026a7e
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