<div dir="ltr"><div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote">The Chinese would never have suffered the horrors of the 20th century had they the right to own guns. When the Japanese invaded during the war and killed allll those unarmed people, imagine what would have happened had there been a rifle behind every blade of grass.<br>
</blockquote><br>USA is a country with a absurd number of violent crimes. Years and years and years of civilians having guns at homes, years and years and years of civilians being killed. Spanish civil war showed what happened with armed population during a armed conflict: They joined the army that they were in favour... and killed and raped and made a lot of revenges and lootering in every small town and every ungoverned city.<br>
<br></div>I don´t know if it is a question of age or education, but even the rightest democrat parties in Europe (Like European Popular Party) are against weapons owned by civilians and it is seen as something barbaric that americans do. In Europe only the nazis parties and maybe a rare couple more are pro-weapons.<br>
<br><br><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote">How any sane person could compare the crimes of Mao
Zedong to the "crimes" of manufacturing the goods and services of the
modern world is a level intellectual dishonesty and/or muddle-headedness
that is simply beyond my comprehension.<br></blockquote><div><br>Capitalism is the way? 16.7 million children living in food insecure households and US having the second highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world (2011 data. From wikipedia.)<br>
<br>Yes. Is the way for rich people. And for a ecologically unsustainable way of life.<br><br>You could think about Coca Cola or Nestle, two of the biggest and most succesful capitalist companies. In your country they are ok. They create a lot of jobs and helps a lot of people. In other countries, therefore, that companies uses slaves, destroy irreversibily a lot of natural places etc. Same with Zara (from my country). It is leftist being against slavery? Wow. Humanism for me.<br>
<br>You are intelligent people. You know perfectly that capitalism, as well as comunism, works very well in theory, but in a wicked way in the practice. You know that even if you are in the top of capitalist-chain<br></div>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 12:51 AM, William Flynn Wallace <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com" target="_blank">foozler83@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#0b5394"><br>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 4:56 PM, BillK <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:pharos@gmail.com" target="_blank">pharos@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 10:43 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote:<br>
> Au contraire - there is an entire and enormous field of psychology devoted<br>
> to attitude change and creation. In economic psychology there is marketing.<br>
> Thousands of studies - change and creation occur constantly. One tip: do<br>
> not present an argument far different from the people whose attitudes you<br>
> are trying to change. Just try to move them a little way or you will get<br>
> the stubbornness indicated by billk. But sometimes huge changes, like from<br>
> religious to atheist or the reverse happen. Just a little thing like<br>
> whether the pro argument is first or after the con argument matters. Dozens<br>
> of variables matter aside from the strength of a person' belief. bill w<br>
><br>
<br>
</div>Well, yes, but......<br>
I wasn't referring to opinion manipulation, adverts, etc.<br>
<br>
I was referring to confirmation bias.<br>
<<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias</a>><br>
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is<br>
the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their<br>
beliefs or hypotheses. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged<br>
issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.<br>
<br>
People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their<br>
existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been<br>
invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes<br>
more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same<br>
evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the<br>
evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect<br>
(a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and<br>
illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association<br>
between two events or situations).<br>
----------<br><div><div>
BillK<br></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div><br><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(11,83,148);display:inline">All of which is correct, except that there are exceptions to the primacy effect you mention. My dissertation showed that in certain circumstances ( I used prosecution and defense arguments in a tort trial and counterbalanced them) the more recent arguments are stronger, and it is not a memory effect.<br>
<br>The biggest problem that I see is the selective attention to information - a product of the confirmatory bias</div> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(11,83,148);display:inline">
among other things. It's a sort of xenophobia: do not go to other churches, much less other religions, don't read evidence of climate change if you are a denier, etc. We get in our little cliques and only favor those like us - ingroup-outgroup effect, perhaps the most powerful effect there is.<br>
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(11,83,148);display:inline">Thinking outside the box is pretty rare. Only contrarians like me find it easy.<br></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(11,83,148);display:inline"><br>wfw<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><div>
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