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from the That's-what-they-WANT-you-to-think dept.
In the Salon
There seems to be a lot of science being thrown at the "Trump Phenomenon." Salon covers yet another, and interviews the author.
A new paper, recently presented at the American Political Science Association's annual convention, suggests a widespread motive driving people to share fake news, conspiracy theories and other hostile political rumors. "Many status-obsessed, yet marginalized individuals experience a 'Need for Chaos' and want to 'watch the world burn'," lead author Michael Petersen tweeted, announcing the availability of a preprint copy.
Truth, in such a worldview, is beside the point, which offers a new perspective on the limitations of fact-checking. The motivation behind sharing or spreading narratives one may not even believe can help make sense of a variety of threatening or confusing recent developments in advanced democracies. It also sheds light on disturbing similarities with outbreaks of ethnic or genocidal violence, such as those seen in Rwanda and the Balkan nations during the 1990s.
Preprint of the paper available at PsyArXiv, here. [DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/6m4ts]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:29PM (3 children)
What did they do? Seeing as 1950 is before there were pocket calculators, teach how to compute trig functions, in case you don't have a book of tables handy?
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:41PM (2 children)
There was a lot more geometry, infinite series and a lot of proofs. And logarithms. Yes, all necessary for being able to calculate your own numbers in absence of a calculator.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday September 13 2018, @06:37AM (1 child)
Slide rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday September 13 2018, @07:10AM
And to understand why it works, and to use it competently, you need to know about logarithms.