• 20 Posts
  • 338 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
cake
Cake day: July 10th, 2024

help-circle
  • This is not entirely true though. Beliefs and opinions are heavily influenced by a lot of factors. Even educated people are not free from such errors. Like the backfire effect (Nyhan and Reifler (2010)): situations where people become more entrenched in their views when confronted with contradictory evidence.

    Other studies have found that when presented with data, individuals with more education can sometimes be more divided in their beliefs, particularly when the topic is politically charged. For instance, some educated individuals may use their knowledge to selectively interpret data in ways that support their pre-existing views, a phenomenon known as “motivated reasoning.” Confirmation bias relates to that. This has been observed in areas like climate change, where political and ideological factors heavily influence opinions. (See for example: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1704882114 )

    In other words, no matter how educated or smart you are, you can still fall into ignorance and stubbornness. The key is to train your ability to think critically—especially when it comes to your own beliefs and opinions. Doing so can help you become more aware of biases and avoid common pitfalls in cognitive decision-making.


  • Are you sure?

    Yes.

    This seems pretty nazi to me.

    Tolerating civilian casualties within war-efforts is an extremely different thing than specifically favouring to hunt and eradicate them while possibly propagating some narrative like they are lesser humans or some fucked up racist shit like that. If that’s your standpoint on labeling Nazis however, then every nation which ever participated in a hot war with civilian casualties is probably pretty nazi to you.

    Also germans online are one of the loud supporters of yet another genocide.

    Not in my experience. But sure, it’s good emotional bait to blindly generalise over all germans and call them Nazis who favour genocide. How about you look for some verifiable numbers before reasoning from your individual experience with “online germans”?

    Here:

    Die militärische Reaktion Israels auf die Terror-Anschläge der Hamas vom 7. Oktober 2023 geht inzwischen für mehr als die Hälfte (57 Prozent) zu weit (+7 im Vgl. zu März), jeder Fünfte (21 Prozent) hält sie für angemessen (-7), für 4 Prozent geht sie nicht weit genug (-1).

    Source: press report about a representative survey on the opinions of german’s regarding Israel’s war efforts.
    https://presse.wdr.de/plounge/tv/das_erste/2024/08/20240808_ard_deutschlandtrend_israel.html
    (From last August.)

    Translation:
    “The military response of Israel to the Hamas terror attacks on October 7, 2023, now goes too far for more than half (57 percent) of people (+7 compared to March), one in five (21 percent) considers it appropriate (-7), and for 4 percent it does not go far enough (-1).”

    On a side note, the article you’ve linked from middle east monitor cited the foreign minister of Germany a bit wrong. Here is the official full translation of her speech: https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/-/2679832

    With the following section in the middle east monitor article:

    ‘Self-defence means not only attacking terrorists but destroying them. When Hamas terrorists hide behind people, behind schools… civilian places lose their protected status because terrorists abuse it.’

    And here the full official translation of that part:

    That’s why we have made it clear time and again that self-defence means, of course, not only attacking terrorists, but also destroying them. This’s why I have made it so clear that when Hamas terrorists hide behind people, behind schools, then we end up in very difficult waters. But we’re not shying away from this. This is why I made it clear at the United Nations that civilian sites could lose their protected status if terrorists abuse this status.

    The article did not appropriately mark the sections which were omitted in the quote. It also changed words, omitted words or sections without marking it and thereby changed the tone of the quote and misrepresented it in a way significant enough for me to be so nitpicky about it.

    Most importantly, the minister highlights, that terrorists abusing protected civilian sites poses a very difficult situation which could potentially lead to a loss of the protection status.

    Furthermore, she goes on about the importance of humanitarian aid in Gaza. And also remarks how Germany supports the two-state solution to ensure security in the region, peace for Palestine and peace for Israel.

    Does that sound like Nazis to you?







  • Please, before shitting all over Germany again with Nazi accusations and whatnot, keep in mind that this was demanded by populistic, right-wing politicians, who are – luckily – currently not running the government, but are in the opposition.

    From the article:

    Politicians in Germany think that climate activist Greta Thunberg should be banned from entering the country over her participation in pro-Palestinian protests, according to the domestic policy spokesman for Germany’s biggest opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union.

    Surely you can call them out for it, but neither do they represent Germany, nor are they even running the national government.





  • I love those catchy titles. It’s not something like “The Molecular Basis of Taste Perception in Mammals: A Comprehensive Review and Future Perspectives on Taste Receptors in Male Reproduction”

    Nah, they go with: “Taste perception: from the tongue to the testis”

    Short and concise to the point. Scientists have a sense of humorous wordplays after all.








  • For the non-roboticists: SLAM = Simultaneous Localization And Mapping.

    In robot navigation problems we often face the problem to get a grasp of the environment and the robot’s position in it. It’s easier if there’s already a map provided and some sort of external observer who knows where the robot is relative to the map.

    Since people don’t usually go into your home to map it out and install some sensors in order to locate the robot, SLAM is the way to go. While moving through an environment, a map of the environment is created and by utilzing some fancy techniques based on sensor data like from cameras, mic+loudspeaker, LIDAR or whatever, it is possible to also infer the robot’s position.