Scientific American: You Do Not Think Alone

People overestimate how well they understand how things work. Direct evidence for this comes from the psychological laboratory. The great Yale psychologist Frank Keil and his students first demonstrated the illusion of explanatory depth, what we call the knowledge illusion. He asked people how well they understand how everyday objects (zippers, toilets, ballpoint pens) work. On average, people felt they had a reasonable understanding (at the middle of a 7-point scale). Then Keil asked them to explain how they work. People failed miserably. For the most part, people just can’t articulate the mechanisms that drive even the simplest things. So when he again asked them to rate their understanding, their ratings were lower. By their own admission, the act of attempting to explain had pierced their illusion of understanding. We have replicated this basic finding many times, not only with everyday objects, but also with political policies. Matthew Fisher has shown that people overestimate their ability to construct logical justifications for their beliefs. [...]

Human reasoning takes a couple of forms. Most of the conclusions we come to are the products of intuition. Intuitive processes can be identified because we have no introspective access to how they work; we are only conscious of their output. For instance, intuitive processes deliver stored conclusions from memory. We can’t introspect to see how memory retrieves information; it just serves it up to consciousness. [...]

People fail to distinguish the knowledge that’s in their own heads from knowledge elsewhere (in their bodies, in the world, and—especially—in others’ heads). And we fail because whether or not knowledge is in our heads usually doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have access to the knowledge. In other words, the knowledge we use resides in the community. We participate in a community of knowledge. Thinking isn’t done by individuals; it is done by communities. This is true at macro levels: Fundamental values and beliefs that define our social, political, and spiritual identities are determined by our cultural communities. It is also true at the micro-level: We are natural collaborators, cognitive team-players. We think in tandem with others using our unique ability to share intentionality.

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Vox: We called random Swedes. They told us about ... foraging? (Apr 19, 2016)

Sweden became the first country with its own national phone number. We called it to talk about Allemansrätten, the Swedish policy of foraging for all. 

Motherboard: Facebook Celebrates Pride, Except Where Homosexuality Is Illegal

Such measures are important, and can help queer Facebook employees and users of the platform to feel included and seen. One feature, a rainbow "reaction" ("like") button, allows users to express their pride, or solidarity, in response to posts. But as Sarah Kessler pointed out at Quartz, that feature was only rolled out to users in certain markets...namely, "major markets with Pride celebrations." Other users are able to opt in to the feature by liking Facebook's official LGBTQ@Facebook page. [...]

After sending out some messages to friends in other places, I discovered that the feature was unavailable in a number of countries, including Egypt, Palestine, Bahrain, Lebanon, Singapore, Russia, and the UAE. While Facebook admits—in both its press release and in response to a question posed by a Singaporean user on its official LGBTQ page—that the feature isn't available everywhere yet, my testing demonstrated that it's widely available throughout the world...except in places where homosexuality is either illegal or of questionable legal status.

Facebook hasn't said why the feature is restricted to those particular countries, but the company is likely worried about putting users at risk. That's a fair concern, to be sure—gay and bi men are being rounded up and killed in Chechnya, for example—but it's worth noting that Facebook's "authentic name" policy is part of why such users are at risk to begin with. Despite protests from queer users for nearly a decade, Facebook has continued to reaffirm the value of the policy in promoting "civility," despite evidence to the contrary. [...]

"Facebook policies have [contained] a lot of discrimination in so many aspects," Aoun told me. "It's the same when a certain terrorist attack happens in Lebanon, we don't have the safety check. Unfortunately, the world nowadays is built on the priorities of … people who are living in Western countries, especially white people who are living in those countries."

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Bloomberg: Angela Merkel Embraces German Nationalism With a Twist

This, of course, is something of an election campaign gimmick. During the 2013 campaign, a video that quickly went viral showed Merkel angrily taking a German flag away from a fellow party member who had tried to wave it while standing next to her. This year, the flags are back, and the flag colors get a mention on Merkel's list. Her Christian Democratic Union is trying to reclaim the patriotic ground from the Alternative for Germany populists. Affirming the German Leitkultur, lead culture, is one of the CDU strategies. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a Merkel ally, published his own "Top 10" of the Leitkultur's features in April, and it included Christianity but not any other religions; the Judeo-Christian tradition makes an appearance on Merkel's list, too. 

But, for everyone who might think she regrets letting in more than a million refugees into the country in 2015 and 2016, Merkel's list also includes "Muslims" and "migration background" -- something that 21 percent of Germany's residents have today. In that, Merkel echoes a campaign speech by France's new president Emmanuel Macron in Marseille, in which he held forth on how French national identity is driven by its diversity of immigrants: "Armenians, Comorans, Italians, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Malians, Senegalese, Ivorians." It amounted to a challenge to his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen. 

The way these two leaders see national identity is a step away from the slogans of diversity, multiculturalism and supranational federalism. They're talking about a deep-rooted, old culture taking on some new flavors without straying too far from its traditional mainstream. It only looks progressive compared with the alternatives -- for example, the stump speeches of Le Pen or other nationalists across Europe.

At the same time, it's somewhat similar to the vision of Russian national identity that Vladimir Putin laid down in a 2012 article. He described ethnic Russians and the Russian culture as a "binding fabric" for historically multiethnic society. Putin quoted Ivan Ilyin, his favorite emigre philosopher whom many consider an early fascist ideologue (despite his troubles with the Nazi regime in Germany): "Not to eradicate, not to suppress, not to enslave outsider blood, not to strangle foreign and non-Orthodox life but to let everyone breathe and give them a great Motherland; to watch over everyone, make peace, let everyone pray in their own way, work in their own way and involve the best from everywhere in building a state and a culture."

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The Atlantic: The Gulf's Demands on Qatar Look Designed to Be Rejected

Yet, the extent and scale of the demands appear designed to induce a rejection by Qatar, and a possible justification for a continuation, if not escalation, of the crisis. The list, if accurate, represents an intrusion into the internal affairs of Qatar that would threaten its very sovereignty. Because Qatar forms a cornerstone of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, America has a stake both in its domestic security and regional stability. So, too, do the emerging and industrial economies around the world that rely heavily on its liquefied natural gas exports, whose security would be imperiled in the event of a full-blown crisis in Doha. [...]

All along, a key objective of the anti-Qatar campaign appears to have been winning the battle for hearts and minds in Washington, and, in particular, within a White House deemed sympathetic to the Saudis and Emiratis. One imagines that the articles associating Qatar with Iran and various Islamist groups across the Middle East were tailored with Trump officials like James Mattis and H.R. McMaster in mind—their hawkish views are aligned closely with those in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. That the media campaign against Qatar began two days after Trump’s visit to Riyadh may have encouraged officials in regional capitals to believe that the White House would take sides in the dispute.

Initially, Trump appeared to back the Saudi-Emirati position in a series of characteristically direct tweets posted on June 6 that suggested that Qatar was indeed a funder of “radical ideology,” and implied that he had discussed the issue with regional leaders during his visit to Saudi Arabia. But in the days since, the Departments of State and Defense have reaffirmed the strategic and commercial value of the Qatar partnership to U.S. interests. The June 14 confirmation of a $12-billion sale of F-15 jets to Qatar signaled that Washington was not about to abandon the country that has hosted the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command since 2003. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also advocated for a negotiated solution to the standoff, and is well aware, from his tenure at ExxonMobil, of Qatar’s importance both to global energy markets and U.S. energy companies.

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