Pinboard (jm)
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recent bookmarks from jmThe Lab-Leak Illusion2023-08-24T21:54:37+00:00
https://quillette.com/2023/08/19/the-lab-leak-illusion/
jmI learned almost nothing of value when I was a [JFK] conspiracy theorist, but I did learn quite a lot pulling myself out of that mindset, and like [Scott] Alexander, I would never have done so had I only ever encountered people who told me I was being an imbecile. Part of the appeal of conspiracy theories is that they allow a person to feel more intelligent than the drones who passively drift along on the current of received consensus. [...]
For now and the foreseeable future, much of the COVID-origins discourse remains committed to an illusory explanation that appeals to misfiring intuitions and trades almost entirely in suspicion and innuendo. Highly intelligent minds are as vulnerable to irrational thinking and conspiracist ideation as those of the cognitively impaired, particularly if they are used to perceiving problems in political terms. Reasoning well, Scott Alexander reminds us, is hard and “all factual claims can become the basis for emotional/social coalitions.” The best way to avoid this trap is to try to remember that we do not live through the looking glass where up is down and black is white. In quotidian reality, things are usually exactly as they appear to be.
]]>reasoning logic media lab-leak covid-19 conspiracies politics us-politics china long-readshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:95d1bb2fe74e/It’s Not Climate Change — It’s Everything Change2015-07-27T16:11:31+00:00
https://medium.com/matter/it-s-not-climate-change-it-s-everything-change-8fd9aa671804
jmclimate climate-change margaret-atwood long-reads change life earth green futurehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8cfdcc804e08/Ryan Lizza: Why Won’t Obama Rein in the N.S.A.? : The New Yorker2013-12-09T15:17:04+00:00
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/16/131216fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all
jmThe history of the intelligence community, though, reveals a willingness to violate the spirit and the letter of the law, even with oversight. What’s more, the benefits of the domestic-surveillance programs remain unclear. Wyden contends that the N.S.A. could find other ways to get the information it says it needs. Even Olsen, when pressed, suggested that the N.S.A. could make do without the bulk-collection program. “In some cases, it’s a bit of an insurance policy,” he told me. “It’s a way to do what we otherwise could do, but do it a little bit more quickly.”
In recent years, Americans have become accustomed to the idea of advertisers gathering wide swaths of information about their private transactions. The N.S.A.’s collecting of data looks a lot like what Facebook does, but it is fundamentally different. It inverts the crucial legal principle of probable cause: the government may not seize or inspect private property or information without evidence of a crime. The N.S.A. contends that it needs haystacks in order to find the terrorist needle. Its definition of a haystack is expanding; there are indications that, under the auspices of the “business records” provision of the Patriot Act, the intelligence community is now trying to assemble databases of financial transactions and cell-phone location information. Feinstein maintains that data collection is not surveillance. But it is no longer clear if there is a distinction.
]]>nsa gchq surveillance spying privacy dianne-feinstein new-yorker journalism long-reads us-politics probable-causehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ad3b726393db/How I decoded the human genome - Salon.com2013-05-28T15:54:18+00:00
http://www.salon.com/2003/10/21/genome_5/
jmhuman genome genomics eugenics politics life john-sundman disability health dna medicine salon long-reads childrenhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:20cab9411a13/