We should be thanking Kurt Tucholsky for that "Stalin" quote: http://www.hubski.com/pub?id=3818 Poor Mr Tucholsky deserves his day in the sun.

I'm not really around, sorry; just dropping by :)

Well done, you! That's great news. And thanks for the update.

That's great news. Well done, sir! I hope it all goes well. Thank you for the update.

Thanks for those links! Their arguments are certainly interesting. I'm not sure about the left/right-wing one: it doesn't explain how being fast at recognising visual differences has anything to do with the way someone might vote. And it doesn't link to the study, either, which always makes me wonder if they're spinning something :)

But the Pew Survey one: wow, that was surprising. The survey summary shows that the percentage of scientists who identify as Democrat goes down if you look at those who are working not in universities but in private industry (where it's just under the rate found in the general public; see quote below). But for the overall rate to be only 6% Republican: that's so low and so weird!

http://people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-poli... From the section 'Scientists and Politics': Overall, 52% of the public identifies as Democratic or leans Democratic, while 35% identifies as Republican or leans Republican. Majorities of scientists working in academia (60%), for non-profits (55%) and in government (52%) call themselves Democrats, as do nearly half of those working in private industry (47%).

It's not all easy for good-looking people, either, which is the ridiculous thing. My niece (21 and pretty) discovered while travelling through a foreign country that she was stared at by men wherever she and her mother went. They both felt very uncomfortable whenever they were in a public place.

Maybe there are things we can do about this sort of prejudice. Even if part of it is biological (e.g. maybe we subconsciously prefer features that indicate better health or something?), there's clearly a lot which is cultural, and that part is changeable.

Does anybody know what sort of study Eric Schmidt is talking about here?

... the notion of strong identity was never invented in the Internet. Many people worked on it - I worked on it as a scientist 20 years ago, and it’s a hard problem. - from a Q&A at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival; transcript in Andy Carvin's Google+ post: https://plus.google.com/117378076401635777570/posts/CjM2MPKo...

What was he working on as a scientist 20 years ago?

>> Does every site have to allow pseudonyms?

Is anybody saying that? I think the main problem is that it's a Google site, not just any site, and not just a "site" either: it's endeavouring to be a social network and a platform. I'm not entirely sure what a platform is, by the way, but think it's the foundation on which other webdevs can build things. If so, it will set some initial standards or expectations which everybody else will need to adhere to if they want their apps to work with it.

And something that Google's executive chairman Schmidt said the other day: they think the internet lacks "an accurate identity service". In the context of what he was saying, it seems that maybe Google+ is their way of building that. The transcript is in an Andy Carvin Google+ post if you're interested: https://plus.google.com/117378076401635777570/posts/CjM2MPKo...

Google isn't the entire internet, obviously, but it does have a big influence over what happens elsewhere.

I read that Vonnegut thing years ago and thought he was saying one thing, then read something that analysed its politics, and ended up thinking he'd been saying something else entirely. In short: I dunno :)

That comic has a beautiful style. Some of the panels look like block prints or paintings. Lovely.

That cloud looks close enough to touch! Wow.

I won't try that video, I'm on a dial-up, but exactly: discrimination or prejudice against short people is probably a similar thing.

I couldn't decide whether to support that article's ideas or not. Even admitting that I might discriminate (or be discriminated against) because of "ugliness", and the idea that it's an objective category that could be set in law... it's weird. But then, if we humans actually are biased in this way, and these attitudes do have a measurable effect in the world, then maybe a legal category would bring the problem out into the open and we'd have to at least acknowledge we're doing it.

I agree, it'll be terrible if this sort of interaction disappears. There's something really valuable about being able to communicate like this. I think it's one of the greatest things about the internet.

But it does seem like there's a danger it will be pushed out of existence by sites like Facebook and Google+ (where it's who you are and who you know that matters, not what you think and what you say).

That sounds like important work. Best of luck with everything.

In case you can see this update, thenewgreen, and in case it's relevant to your work : here's another Psychology Today post about the same topic, but this one focuses on emotions rather than statistics:

... these studies suggest that the collapse of compassion happens because when people see multiple victims, it is a signal that they ought to rein in their emotions. The alternative might seem too difficult. It also suggests a way that the collapse of compassion might be prevented. Anything that encourages people to accept their emotions, rather than suppressing them, might reduce the collapse.

- Keith Payne, "Why is the death of one million a statistic?" 14 March 2010 http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-autopilot/201003/wh...

It's disappointing, hey, finding out that a quote has been messed with? I always feel a bit betrayed :D

I was thinking the same thing about that quote. Your comment reminded me of it, thanks, so I tried to find the original context. And apparently it wasn't Stalin who said it. Ouch! According to Wikiquote, it's from "Französischer Witz" (1932) by Kurt Tucholsky. Translated to English: The war? I can't find it too terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic! http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Misattributed

I'd like that too. Sometimes a post really needs more than one tag.

Amusing :)

(I don't understand most of what it's talking about, and it's funny anyway.)

That post was really surprising - I thought it was going to say something else entirely. A great read, thanks.

You're right. That visualisation is great - immediate impact; easy to understand.

That was an interesting read, thanks.

I saved some extracts:

"Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. [...]

What you want to do [when talking to people about your work] is get that critical mass in action; 'Yes, that reminds me of so and so,' or, 'Have you thought about that or this?' When you talk to other people, you want to get rid of those sound absorbers who are nice people but merely say, 'Oh yes,' and to find those who will stimulate you right back. [...]

If you read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. So yes, you need to keep up. You need to keep up more to find out what the problems are than to read to find the solutions."

Good point about the need to feel that your donation is actually going to do something. The big-picture view is so bad so often, it seems like there's no point trying. But probably few people think there's no point trying to save the life of one specific person.

Wow, go you! Good luck with it!

Are you going to hunt up the original studies? I think the article's author was a bit dodgy about the way he quoted the prices people would donate - didn't cite the papers, and didn't explain how many people had been surveyed.

I think if statistics are going to have an impact on people who don't naturally think in numbers, they need to be explained somehow - maybe in a diagram, or translated somehow as if they're a foreign language.

Here's what happened when I read the sentence you quoted about 29,000 children having died in the last 90 days: apparently I didn't read it at all. After seeing your comment here, I went back to skim-read the article again. That sentence was in a paragraph after mention of 12 million people being malnourished and 640,000 starving, and apparently that's when I stopped paying attention. Those numbers were already too much, and I mean the numbers were too much, instead of the facts they were trying to relate. That's the screwy part of this. It shouldn't matter how the news is conveyed when the reality is so horrifying, but it does matter. I read numbers such as "640,000" as if they say "mumble-mumble-big-number-etc" and instead of trying to understand them or get a picture of what they're saying, I just ignore them instead.

I know that's not really what the article was talking about; it's just something I think is relevant.

I don't know if conservation is really about timescales (just making things last longer). Maybe it's about attention (directing it towards things that still might matter even though they seem to have disappeared).

As for conserving humans over the long-term: nah. I bet we'll be gone relatively soon, looked at from a rock's perspective. Fair enough too. No other species makes such a mess of the place :) Earth will probably be glad to see the end of us.

That's probably true (I don't know much about business or economics, but it certainly seems likely). Profit does seem to rely on competition, too - outdoing the competition, defeating them - rather than co-operating to improve conditions for everybody.

That need for "no contact" time, and MaxUdargo's comment about remembering "how nice it was before you were expected to be so accessible" - it's clear the phones have changed the way we live, which is just a bit scary, really.

You've got a good memory. The only way I can remember my current phone number is to list it as a contact in the phone's address book.

Haha! That would seem SO SLOW now.

Her argument does make sense. Maybe the growth of a network is similar to the growth of a city? That's what I was thinking when reading the article. You start off with a village where everybody feels a sense of belonging just based on the fact they share a location and recognise each other. But if more and more people move in, you can't know everyone any more. After that, maybe a sense of community starts to require sharing something more than just proximity - it might require shared interests or activities?

It was an interesting article, thanks.