What is the most potent force that divides humans today?

discrimination

Bad ideas inspire bad behaviour, but which ideas are the ones that are the most potent today, and divides us? A group of researchers have conducted some experiments to find out. Initially they ran their experiment in the US, but they then expanded the scope by crossing into other nations such as the UK, Belgium, … Read more

Study Claims Atheists are more close-minded than religious people

There is a recent study that claims that their results reveal that the non-religious are more close-minded than the religious. This perhaps merits a quick peek to see what is going on here. Having been a religious person who grew into a non-religious person I have the distinct benefit of seeing the view from both sides … Read more

Clearing up Climate Change confusion

It is a natural tendency for us to cling to hope and assume that things will not be as bad as projections tell us. Obviously I’m taking about Climate Change, but this applies in many contexts – health, economic, etc…We humans are at heart emotional and so as we strive to make sensible decisions, but … Read more

The Wikipedia Bot wars

There have been a few media stories about editing bots battling it out on Wikipedia and so I wondered what the alpha source for this was. It turns out that it all stems from a paper published within the Open Access Journal Plus One. Even good bots fight: The case of Wikipedia First the Basics … Read more

Why do political and religious discussions become heated?

Dialog on most topics tends to not result in heated verbal exchanges, but move on to either strongly embraced politics or religion ideas and you may find that verbal a whiplash is soon being deployed. What is going on here, why is it like this? What is even more fascinating is that even when faced with mountains of … Read more

Is a Fake News Vaccine really possible?

The BBC reports on a recently published study as follows … A University of Cambridge study devised psychological tools to target fact distortion. Researchers suggest “pre-emptively exposing” readers to a small “dose” of the misinformation can help organisations cancel out bogus claims. Stories on the US election and Syria are among those to have caused … Read more