Interesting Links for 01-03-2025

[andrewducker]

1. "A year of trying to save my father from conspiracy theories"

(tags:conspiracy psychology usa politics religion )

2. The Finkbeiner Test: A Tool for Writing About Women in their Professions

(tags:women journalism patriarchy society )

Comments

[sobriquet9]

People are notoriously bad at estimating probabilities. None of the predictions materialized in a year, but some were not that improbable. For example, the mayor of New York City was under investigation by the feds.

[nancylebov]

On the other hand, some of them were extremely improbable, and the father didn't seem to distinguish between them. He was very sure of all of them.

I don't remember the terms of the bet. Did all of them need to come true?

[sobriquet9]

I think they were individual bets.

The other factor besides probability that he might be taking into consideration is severity. Probability of having a house fire may be very small, but the damage from such event is big, therefore buying a fire extinguisher makes sense. When you buy physical gold you carry the risk of it being stolen and lose on the premium, but otherwise gold is likely to retain its value.

[calimac]

1) Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if leading Democrats are charged with something. The current administration has gone so far in other things already, what'll they do for an encore? But this, you'll notice, is a left-wing conspiracy theory idea, not a right-wing one.

2) Sure, but as the article hints, the best thing would be to write a sarcastic profile of a male scientist using all the sexist stereotypes you see about female ones. I think it's been done, though I can't remember where. But even better is Douglas R. Hofstadter's hair-raising translation of defenses of sexist language into a defense of racist language. (It's in Metamagical Themas.) It really burns the house down.

[calimac]

Severity is one factor which explains why many people fear airplane accidents more than auto accidents, even though being killed in a plane crash is much rarer. I think that's a completely understandable reaction.

[foms]

#2
For decades, I've been calling this sort of thing "(headlinese) lady plumber syndrome". I think that I remember learning about a more well-known name but I find no documentation.
There are a lot of people who will try to apply this aphorism:
"The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all."
It's neither. It's not a marvel. This is everyday, normal stuff. The category of people who can be competent is people.
I'm tired of seeing this presented as new and I'm more tired of it remaining needful to support that presentation.
And why "lady" other than that other ways of specifying are not sufficiently diminutive?

[jducoeur]

Some years back, one of our local small theater troupes (made up mainly of friends of mine) did a fully gender-swapped production of Taming of the Shrew. It was incredibly eye-opening: the misogyny jumps out at you vividly, since it makes you very conscious of gender roles.