People only pay attention to new information when they want to

by Oxford University Press

A new paper in the Journal of the European Economic Association, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that we tend to listen to people who tell us things we'd like to believe and ignore people who tell us things we'd prefer not to be true. As a result, like-minded people tend to make one another more biased when they exchange beliefs with one another.

While it would reasonable to think that people form decisions based on evidence and experience alone, previous research has demonstrated that decision makers have "motivated beliefs;" They believe things in part because they would like such things to be true. Motivated beliefs (and the reasoning that leads to them) can generate serious biases. Motivated beliefs have been speculated to explain the proliferation of misinformation on online forums. Such beliefs may also explain stock market performance. There's a great deal of objective information available about financial marketplaces, yet group decision making and encouragement (e.g. the Game Stop stock performance of winter 2021) may result in bubbles and financial instability.

 

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The experiment revealed that people who are pessimistic that they are in the high IQ group tend to become significantly more optimistic when matched with a more optimistic counterpart. An optimistic person is not, however, likely to change his beliefs if matched with a more pessimistic counterpart. This effect is particularly strong for people who are in the low IQ group, where it produces particularly severe biases. Overall, the results suggest that bias amplification occurs because people (selectively) attribute higher informational value to social signals that reinforce their pre-existing motivation to believe.

Halfway through the experiment, however, researchers gave subjects an unbiased piece of information about which IQ group subjects were in. This was highly effective at removing the biases caused by the initial exchange of beliefs. The results therefore suggest that providing unbiased, reliable sources of information may reduce motivated beliefs in settings like echo chambers and financial markets.

"This experiment supports a lot of popular suspicions about why biased beliefs might be getting worse in the age of the internet," said Ryan Oprea, one of the paper's authors. "We now get a lot of information from social media and we don't know much about the quality of the information we're getting. As a result, we're often forced to decide for ourselves how accurate various opinions and sources of information are and how much stock to put in them. Our results suggest that people resolve this quandary by assigning credibility to sources that are telling us what we'd like to hear and this can make biases due to motivated reasoning a lot worse over time."

 

Former coalmining communities are more politically disenchanted than other 'left behind' areas

by University of Cambridge

 

 political engagement continues to climb in other 'left behind' areas, while in the former mining communities it drops off again after 2017.

This discontent with contemporary politics also extends to newer populist and nationalist parties. While they favored Leave in the referendum, those in coalfield communities are still less likely to vote for UKIP, the SNP or Plaid Cymru than those in other areas with similar social and economic struggles.

"It seems that the modern Left may not have lost the people in former mining communities to populism or emerging nationalist parties, but rather apathy and cynicism," said Abreu, from Cambridge's Department of Land Economy.

In addition, and contrary to cinematic depictions and public perceptions, the research didn't detect any greater sense of community cohesion in former mining neighborhoods compared to other economically depressed areas.

"It's been over thirty years since large numbers of people went underground for work, plenty of time for strong social relationships to dwindle," said co-author Dr. Calvin Jones from Cardiff Business School. "Loss of solidarity among these communities may have been compounded by austerity in recent years."

"However, it is also possible that the other deprived communities to which we compared former mining areas—from housing estates to rundown seaside towns—actually have higher levels of social cohesion than might be expected."

 

 

 

Social policies for the digital age, by University of Konstanz

 

 Respondents across all countries expect automation and digitalization to transform their workplace positively, with 50+ percent majorities expecting

a better work-life balance,
a reduction of physical demands and dangers,
and a less tedious and stressful array of everyday tasks.

In Germany, however, the expectations are not quite as positive, with results for these questions more than ten percent lower than the international average.

At the same time, many respondents around the world are also fearful about

losing their jobs to machines, robots, or algorithms.

Figures vary widely across countries, with Turkish (64.9 percent) and Korean (65.5 percent) workers most often expressing fears that the likelihood of being replaced is "high" or "very high", while only 21.5 percent of Austrian and 27.5 percent of German workers share these worries.

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-social-policies-digital-age.html

COP 26, Global Warming Cascade Systemic Risks
"Systemic risks materialize as a chain, or cascade, impacting a whole system, inclusive of people, infrastructure, economy, societal systems and ecosystems.
70 experts analyzed cascading risks, as follows: “The cascading risks over which the participating experts expressed greatest concern were the interconnections between 

shifting weather patterns, resulting in 

changes to ecosystems, and 

the rise of pests and diseases, which, combined with 

heatwaves and drought, will likely drive unprecedented 

crop failure, 

food insecurity and 

migration of people. 

Subsequently, these impacts will likely result in 

increased infectious diseases 

(greater prevalence of current infectious diseases, as well as novel variants), and a

negative feedback loop compounding and amplifying each of these impacts.” (Pg. 38)

 

Cascades will likely lead to breakdown of governance due to limited food supplies and lack of income bringing on increasingly violent extremists groups, paramilitary intervention, organized violence, and conflict between people and states, all of which has already commenced.

 

September 17, 2021

What’s Up With COP26?,by Robert Hunziker

 

 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/17/whats-up-with-cop26/

The Stagflation Threat Is Real, by  Nouriel Roubini Aug 30, 2021

 

        While these persistent negative supply shocks threaten to reduce potential growth, the continuation of loose monetary and fiscal policies could trigger a de-anchoring of inflation expectations. The resulting wage-price spiral would then usher in a medium-term stagflationary environment worse than the 1970s – when the debt-to-GDP ratios were lower than they are now. That is why the risk of a stagflationary debt crisis will continue to loom over the medium term.  

There is a growing consensus that the US economy’s inflationary pressures and growth challenges are attributable largely to temporary supply bottlenecks that will be alleviated in due course. But there are plenty of reasons to think the optimists will be disappointed.

 

 In fact, there are multiple factors behind this summer’s mini-stagflation. For starters, 

the Delta variant is temporarily 

    boosting production costs, 

    reducing output growth, and 

    constraining labor supply. 

Workers, many of whom are still receiving the enhanced unemployment benefits that will expire in September, are reluctant to return to the workplace, especially now that Delta is raging. And those with children may need to stay at home, owing to school closures and the lack of affordable childcare. 

 On the production side,
Delta is 

    disrupting the reopening of many service sectors and 

    throwing a monkey wrench into global supply chains, ports, and logistics systems. 

Shortages of key inputs such as semiconductors are further hampering production of cars, electronic goods, and other consumer durables, thus boosting inflation. 

 

 

For starters, there is the

     trend toward deglobalization and 

    rising protectionism, 

    the balkanization and reshoring of far-flung supply chains, and 

    the demographic aging of advanced economies and 

    key emerging markets. 

Tighter immigration restrictions are hampering migration from the poorer Global South to the richer North. The Sino-American cold war is just beginning, threatening to fragment the global economy. And climate change is already disrupting agriculture and causing spikes in food prices.  

Moreover, persistent global pandemics will inevitably lead to more national self-reliance and export controls for key goods and materials. Cyber-warfare is increasingly disrupting production, yet remains very costly to control. And the political backlash against income and wealth inequality is driving fiscal and regulatory authorities to implement policies strengthening the power of workers and labor unions, setting the stage for accelerated wage growth.