Personal Thoughts Of Rando

Yesterday I was listening to the Adam Ruins Everything podcast, specifically this episode here , and it somewhat reminded me of this post I'd seen on reddit from the University of Indiana  here . The podcast referred to the " backfire effect ", which I believe really does happen when people's views are challenged. In addition to discussing the phenomenon, both Adam and his guest talk about ways online to try and combat the effect and to provide context to ideas shared online - basically to lessen the effect of trolls and such. For example, one method pointed out by the guest on the podcast was that a Norwegian news site will ask people to take a short quiz over the article that they just read before allowing them to comment. In a way, it's sort of a short test of reading comprehension. It limits people from just randomly seeing a headline and then commenting/reacting to the headline rather than reading the article. I thought it was kind of brilliant, but may not...

(Note: I did this as a Facebook post; I'm just re-posting here for historical reasons.) I’m going to go ahead and note right off that you and I are probably not going to see eye to eye on this issue. That’s okay; I’ve no intention of trying to “win” a discussion or anything; only to share concerns and thoughts. Civilized discussion I feel has really taken a turn for the worst lately, and I’d like to try and make effort and be civilized especially given the strong emotions both sides have on the issue. To my actual concerns: I empathize with the feeling that people have about the National Anthem; the actions of sacrifice. I do. I don’t think anyone who is protesting and kneeling has any intent of trivializing the men and women who’ve served. I’ve shared an article on my wall that gives the side of Kaep and Reid on why they started what they started. Here’s the thing about protesting: the intent is to cause people to take notice. People protest in all sorts of ways and in all s...

I did a post here  on my other blog over my thoughts on what America's role in space should be for the next decade.