We claim to judge people for what they intentionally do, but accidents often influence our judgments. In our justice systems, people can be harshly and unfairly blamed for bad luck—but in our personal lives, taking on blame isn’t always a bad thing.
29 July 2018
Deutsche Welle: What Germans think of friendship and sex
And one in three in Germans were revelaed to think it is "okay" to have friends with benefits, a friendship which includes a sexual component without being a full-blown relationship.
"Friends with benefits are now apparently accepted by a large section of the general public," said sociologist Janosch Schobin from the University of Kassel.
Also, 69 percent believe that a good romantic relationship can grow out of friendship. [...]
Germans today report having an average of 3.7 close friends among an average of around 11 friends. Friends and acquaintances make up a social circle of 42.5 people per individual, the survey found.
However, only two-thirds of participants say they have a best friend. Also, compared to a similar survey five years ago, the average number of friends is slightly smaller. [...]
On an international level, 42 percent of Germans believe strongest in the friendship between their country and France, putting it way ahead of runner-up Austria with 26 percent and another neighboring country, the Netherlands, with 23. Only 9 percent favored the relationship between Berlin and Washington, although that number is likely negatively affected by the controversial American president, Donald Trump.
The Guardian: A humiliating Brexit deal risks a descent into Weimar Britain (Timothy Garton Ash)
Am I exaggerating the danger by even hinting at a comparison with Weimar Germany? Indeed I am. I don’t seriously envisage millions of newly unemployed, or a new Hitler coming to power, or a world war started by Boris Johnson. But it’s surely better to overdramatise the risk, to get everyone to wake up to it, rather than do what most of our continental partners have done for the last two years, which is consistently to underestimate the dangers for the whole of Europe that flow from Brexit – especially a mishandled Brexit. [...]
To avert the danger of a humiliated, divided, angry “Weimar Britain” will require wisdom on both sides of the Channel. On the British side, we need three things traditionally associated with the country but of late in short supply: pragmatic realism, a credible democratic process, and robust civility. With all its faults, Theresa May’s Brexit white paper is a step towards pragmatic realism. All serious people inside government know that Britain will have to compromise some more in order to get a deal with the other 27 member states of the EU. [...]
Yet our European partners could still reasonably say: dear Mrs May, give us a reasonable, detailed explanation of what you want, and we will respond in kind. Well, now she has. Brussels’ initial response has been politely cautious, particularly insisting on clarification of the “backstop” arrangements for keeping an open border on the island of Ireland. But in a notable article, a group of authors including Norbert Röttgen, the chair of the foreign affairs committee of the Bundestag, and Jean Pisani-Ferry, a leading French policy intellectual, have argued that the EU should now stop and think politically, not just bureaucratically, about its response.
27 July 2018
The Atlantic: ‘A Sudden Burst of Movement’ on the Afghan Peace Process
This month, the Trump administration reportedly ordered its diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban. That news report came just days after General John Nicholson, the head of the nato mission in Afghanistan, said the United States was “ready to talk to the Taliban and discuss the role of international forces.” The militant group maintains that the Afghan government is illegitimate and that it will talk only to the U.S. It also insists on a withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the country as part of any reconciliation process in Afghanistan. The Taliban has not dismissed the reported offer—but noted it was awaiting a formal offer from the U.S. [...]
The reported U.S. offer of direct talks with the Taliban comes on the heels of the Afghan government’s own unprecedented overtures toward the militant group. In February, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani offered the group unconditional talks; and last month, he offered the Taliban an unconditional cease-fire to coincide with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. If that offer was a surprise, the Taliban’s response to it was a shock: It accepted the offer and ordered its fighters to lay down their weapons for three days. The effectiveness of the truce—as well as the resumption of the fighting after Eid—signaled just how much control the Taliban has over its fighters and the Afghan government over its forces. Not only that, the scenes of public celebrations, Taliban fighters embracing Afghan soldiers and taking selfies together, and a dramatic reduction in bloodshed during those three days showed just how tired everyone in Afghanistan, including those engaged in the fighting, is of their nearly two-decade-long conflict. The Taliban, which is now publicly seeing that the public it claims to represent supports a reconciliation process, has even ordered a halt on attacking civilian targets. The reports of the U.S. offer of direct talks have also strengthened the optimism in the country. [...]
“My interpretation is that the Afghan government sees potential value in a U.S.-Taliban channel with at least two conditions: That it’s coordinated very closely with Kabul and with a great deal of transparency about what’s discussed,” Walsh, who previously served at the State Department as the lead adviser on the Afghan peace process, told me. “And, second, no talks are going to delve into the political future of Afghanistan without the appropriate Afghan representatives in the room.” He said there is no deal the U.S. could make with the Taliban without “a meaningful agreement between the actual stakeholders who have to live with it, and those are Afghans.”
Vox: 9 essential lessons from psychology to understand the Trump era
Our teams are lenses through which we interpret the world. In a more recent experiment, researchers showed participants a video of a protest that had been halted by the police. Half the subjects were told the protest was of an abortion clinic. The other half were told it was a protest against the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
People inclined to support abortion rights thought the protesters were more disruptive in the abortion clinic condition. People who had strong egalitarian ideals were more likely to express support for the protesters for LGBTQ rights. Again, it was the same exact footage. All the changed were who the participants thought the protesters were. [...]
This is a key point that many people miss when discussing the “fake news” or “filter bubble” problem in our online media ecosystems. Avoiding facts inconvenient to our worldview isn’t just some passive, unconscious habit we engage in. We do it because we find these facts to be genuinely unpleasant. They insult our groups and, by extension, us. So we reject these facts, like our immune system would reject a pathogen. [...]
This is called “solution aversion,” and it helps explain why many conservatives are wary of the science of climate change; many solutions to climate change involve increasing government oversight and regulations. Similarly, perhaps, this is why so many Trump supporters discredict the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling. The possible conclusion — that Trump’s election was doctored by outside influences — is unsettling. [...]
Past experiments with liberal participants have found a similar effect: Liberals are more likely to support conservative policies when told their leaders support conservative policies. And it’s possible that when people are changing their minds in this manner, they’re not even aware their minds are changing.
read the article
People inclined to support abortion rights thought the protesters were more disruptive in the abortion clinic condition. People who had strong egalitarian ideals were more likely to express support for the protesters for LGBTQ rights. Again, it was the same exact footage. All the changed were who the participants thought the protesters were. [...]
This is a key point that many people miss when discussing the “fake news” or “filter bubble” problem in our online media ecosystems. Avoiding facts inconvenient to our worldview isn’t just some passive, unconscious habit we engage in. We do it because we find these facts to be genuinely unpleasant. They insult our groups and, by extension, us. So we reject these facts, like our immune system would reject a pathogen. [...]
This is called “solution aversion,” and it helps explain why many conservatives are wary of the science of climate change; many solutions to climate change involve increasing government oversight and regulations. Similarly, perhaps, this is why so many Trump supporters discredict the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling. The possible conclusion — that Trump’s election was doctored by outside influences — is unsettling. [...]
Past experiments with liberal participants have found a similar effect: Liberals are more likely to support conservative policies when told their leaders support conservative policies. And it’s possible that when people are changing their minds in this manner, they’re not even aware their minds are changing.
read the article
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