User:Bellebramer/sandbox

Brainstorming ideas Wiki-workshop

Group brainstorming ideas:

Confusion between disciplines related to truth/evidence within a specific ‘real life example’

Climate change: —> truth (evidence)

Sub-ideas

• food waste
• plastic pollution
• car pollution —> switching to green
• deforestation
• agriculture; meat industry —> taxation, etc.
• land fill

Relevant disciplines

• politics/policy making
• economics
• environmental science

Managing the spread of epidemics —> evidence?

Sub-ideas

• HIV/AIDS
• black plague

Relevant Disciplines

• anthropology
• religion
• sociology
• economics
• statistics
• mathematical modelling

Other ideas

• monopolies/collusion
• trophy hunting (ecology)

More brainstorming...

Food waste

• High consumption of water and fossil fuels needed to produce food. Food waste means a waste of these resources
• Emissions of CO2 and methane from decomposing food -> GHG emissions
• Difficulties of quantifying food waste (EVIDENCE)
  • Typical data comes from "structured interviews, measurement of plate waste, direct examination of garbage".
  • This data is somewhat indirect, and experts from different fields may debate its reliability/validity. (Thus making it an interdisciplinary issue.)

Drug legalisation

Evidence

Legalisation of medical hallucinogens

Medicine/clinical psychology

• Carhart-Harris; UK clinical trial of psilocybin (active element in psilocybin 'magic' mushrooms)
  • used for "treatment-resistant" depression
  • 5 of the 12 individuals included in the study were not depressed any longer after 3 months

Politics

• Societal issues
• Difference between legalisation & decriminalisation
• Legalisation of drugs:
  • becomes profitable; almost 'advertise' use

• Collapse of profit for criminal groups; could possibly lead to uncertainty
• Destabilising force due to connections of the illegal market to many societies and governments
  • politics and economics connected to money supply coming from illegal markets
• Different solution to the 'drug' problem
  • instead of legalisation to solve the problem
    • invest in programmes such as drug addiction treatments, improved and increased drug prevention
    • evidence: 2005-2011; increase in treatment and recover availability = decrease in drug use by 15%

Sociology

• Normalisation of drug use
• Greater exposure to drug use by the entire society

Race Science and Racism

• History – argued different races were different species – believed to be true, pseudo-scientific evidence and therefore pseudoscientific racism– social construct ‘types of mankind’ 1854 – human zoos, white supremacy – eugenics
• No biological evidence for race – more variation within human populations than between populations
• Race based medicine – race can help identify populations at risk of disease - evidence for Jewish people being more prone to Tay sach’s disease. Inherent belief can also lead to treating people differently – racial bias in pain assessment
• Subconscious and conscious beliefs ; conscious (implicit) associations role in behaviour and beliefs
• Implicit association test – people make connections quickly between pairs of ideas already related in our minds than those unfamiliar – male and family vs female and career – more difficult – more mental associations with maleness and careers
• Online test – measure response times – race IAT – beginning asked what your attitudes to whites and blacks are – 80% pro-white associations – attitudes towards race operate on 2 levels
• conscious attitudes (choose to believe) – values we use to direct our behaviour
• IAT measures attitude on an unconscious level – automatic associations not deliberately chosen – data from experiences, people, lessons, books, movies – formulates an opinion we may not be aware of
• Philosophical stance – does subconscious opinion define who we truly are?
  • Since our actions are consciously driven and are therefore controlled, to what extend does our sub-conscious actually affect these decisions? Do our subconscious thoughts actually matter in terms of our behaviour?

Chapter structure

(structure we agreed upon for the wikibook chapter)

Subconscious racism

Interdisciplinary issue: Truth

Introduction:

• establish argument; does our sub-conscious reflect our racist beliefs
• establish what the IAT test is = the basis of the interdisciplinary issue

Argument:

1. Behavioural psychology argument

Claim: Our subconscious reflects our racist beliefs and the IAT can identify these beliefs.

• IAT reflects inherent racism
• how the IAT test works;

Counter argument:

1. Sociology

Claim: Our subconscious beliefs do not reflect our values, since our subconscious is a result of social constructs.

• Race science: if race is itself a social construct = subconscious will be affected
  • But will not have an innate racism
    • only caused by social construct / imperialism

• Frederick Oswald research team did meta-analysis of 46 studies, found IAT scores are poor predictors of actual behavior and policy preferences / IAT scores predicted behaviors and policy preferences no better than scores on simple paper-and-pencil measures of prejudice

2. Neuroscientists

Claim: The IAT reflects quick associations in the brain, but there is no concrete link between these reactions among neurons and our conscious values regarding issues such as race.

• MRIs of brain activity
  • racial bias is caused by fast automatic thinking

3. Cognitive science

Claim: links to neuroscientist claim

• IAT = assesses familiarity
• need to answer very quickly
  • some cannot cognitively process the information fast enough
• IAT is a measuring construct of salient attributes
  • test describes something about racist beliefs but racism in itself is a social construct
  • the subconscious tests do not express something biological but more an environment consequence of our society
• The test-retest reliability (repeatability) of the Race IAT is only .42, which falls well below the psychometric standard of .80 - repeatibility as a key scientific value

Counter-counter argument

1. Social Psychology

Claim: The IAT is valid in determining the truth of our subconscious beliefs regarding race, as it provides a more genuine response than alternate research methods would.

• validity of self-reports depends on how sensitive the topic/situation asked about is
  • if asking about a sensitive topic (ie. whether or not the individual deems themselves racist); cannot ask people directly without getting inaccurate results
  • Therefore: supports that the IAT can help find out through their subconscious if an individual may actually have racist beliefs
    • However: even their subconscious may not accurately reflect what that individual believes

Conclusion

• subconscious is more built around our environment
• see differences in studies between countries; effect of specific environment
• key is how we use these results (evidence) to form truths --> what does the IAT measure and therefore what truth can we form? does it measure prejudice / racism / cognitive ability etc?