In Italy, fascist groups used violence against political opponents to deter them and prevent them from seating in Parliament.
from Ebner's amazon.com/Ordinary-Viole…
In France, militarised leagues went close to what seems a coup d'Etat in 1934, with riots generated by conspiracy theories around a corruption affair.
from Kalman's amazon.com.au/Extreme-Right-…
Eventually, Germany's and Italy's democracy decayed into dictatorships.
There is definitely a lesson from history: democratic institutions can fail and we should not take them for granted.
In that light, what is happening in the USA is worrying. We see the emergence of violence and intimidation by political groups. What happened to Kamala Harris' bus in Texas should ring alarm bells for a democratic country.
It was furthermore encouraged by the President himself. Encouraging violent militias is a strategy we see in authoritarian regimes to influence political events and retain limited accountability. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00…
It is important to stress that what's happening is not comparable in magnitude to what happened in Europe in the 1920s-1930s. But the current events mark an erosion of democratic norms. US citizens attached to their institutions should recognise it as such.
(End)
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Kahneman said: “The concept of loss aversion is certainly the most significant contribution of psychology to behavioral economics.”
In a new paper @kubitzg1 and I propose an explanation for it, as a feature of our cognition that helps us make good decisions.
Loss aversion is the fact that, subjectively, losing feels worse than winning feels good. The idea has been expressed throughout human history. It can be found, for instance, in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments:
Loss aversion is one of the three pillars of Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory which posits that subjective satisfaction is relative to a reference point. Outcomes above our reference point feel like gains and outcomes below feel like losses.
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While computers are extremely good at tasks humans find hard, like making complex calculations, they have struggled with tasks that humans find almost trivially easy, like language. It is part of the "Moravec paradox".
Our everyday communications may seem simple, but underneath, they are shaped by deep principles of cooperation that determine what we say and how we say it.
We frequently lament the lack of quality information in the media. Yet, as consumers, we often seek not what's most accurate, but what aligns with our views. This shifts the information marketplace into a "marketplace of rationalisations". A🧵
Concerns about the media aren't new. In the 20th century, intellectuals voiced worries about corporate mass media indoctrinating and dumbing down the public in ways that favoured the status quo of the political and economic order.
With the advent of the internet, there was hope for a decentralised public sphere, rich in idea exchange. But reality diverged from this ideal marketplace of ideas. Instead, concerns have risen about people increasingly being influenced by unreliable information.
Why hasn't the Internet worked as a great public space where the best ideas win? Perhaps because it isn't how debates operate. Behind intellectual arguments, people aren't impartial thinkers; they advocate for their team.
A🧵on how coalitional thinking shapes our discussions.
Introductory example. When a Hayek citation criticising men's overconfidence was shared on a libertarian website, it was very poorly received. Ironically, the quote was from Hayek, the free-market economist. Who "said" it greatly influenced how the quote was perceived.
John Tooby--who recently passed away--and his wife Leda Cosmides, founded an influential school of evolutionary psychology. In a 2010 article, they highlighted the importance of our "coalitional psychology," that guides us in navigating ingroup cooperation & outgroup competition.
Why reason fails: Our modern lives are teeming with technology, informed by scientific understanding. But at the same time, irrational beliefs, from superstition to vaccine hesitancy, are still widespread. How is it possible?
👉Reason is likely not the tool we think it is. A 🧵
It is common to think of reason—the ability to form judgments logically—as what sets humans apart from other animals. It’s the way it's presented in the iconic sequence 2001: A Space Odyssey, where a black monolith endows apes with the capacity to build tools... and spaceships.
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A few years ago you joined this new organisation full of motivation and drive.
If today you are disenchanted and wonder why your workplace is frustratingly far from achieving its stated goals, this post is for you! A🧵
Corporate communication is filled these days with over-the-top positivity. Everything is awesome; everybody is great. But it often feels like an artificial veneer to those seasoned employees who have been there for a while.
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An organisation is constituted by contracts between individuals with imperfectly aligned interests.