The American Dunning-Kruger Epidemic (Or Why Ignorant People Are So Sure They’re Right)

This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

It’s time to address an epidemic in the United States. It’s one that could be deadly, particularly to liberty.

It’s an epidemic of Dunning-Kruger. It’s why ignorant people are so certain that they’re right.

What’s that, you ask?

The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which individuals, who are unskilled at a particular task, believe themselves to possess above-average ability in performing the task. On the other hand, as individuals become more skilled in a particular task, they may mistakenly believe that they possess below-average ability in performing those tasks because they may assume that all others possess equal or greater ability. In other words, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.” (source)

And haven’t we all seen that lately? Let’s look at a recent example right here in the good ole USA.

Those who haven’t lived like the rest of us are the ones shouting the loudest.

Let’s start with the current gun control debate.

We have high school kids who think they are experts on policy, firearms, and the Constitution, smugly telling us how clueless they believe we are.

We have movie stars who make millions from movies where they shoot people and who are protected by armed security guards, telling us that we law-abiding citizens who have guns are vicariously responsible for every school shooting that has ever happened.

We have wealthy city dwellers who live in buildings with doormen telling the rest of us that we’re nuts for wanting to protect ourselves.

And all of these people who want to loudly tell the rest of us how to live our lives have one thing in common: they are completely out of touch with the real world.

When you live in your guarded castles, you don’t have to worry about defending yourself from a rapist who might break in through your bedroom window. When you’re a kid, you can’t fathom the vast responsibility one feels as a parent to protect one’s children from home invaders or kidnappers. When you haven’t yet gone out there and lived your life with jobs and crime and financial instability, you have no idea what it’s really like for the average American.

And yet, these out-of-touch people are the ones screaming the loudest that only they know what is right for America.

And that’s where the Dunning-Kruger effect comes into play.

Back in 1999, social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University performed tests on some subjects and discovered that in many cases, the lower the performance of a subject, the higher their confidence was that they had done well. They published their findings in a paper entitled, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”

In an article by David Dunning called “We Are All Confident Idiots,” he wrote of his studies:

In 1999, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, my then graduate student Justin Kruger and I published a paper that documented how, in many areas of life, incompetent people do not recognize—scratch that, cannot recognize—just how incompetent they are, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Logic itself almost demands this lack of self-insight: For poor performers to recognize their ineptitude would require them to possess the very expertise they lack. To know how skilled or unskilled you are at using the rules of grammar, for instance, you must have a good working knowledge of those rules, an impossibility among the incompetent. Poor performers—and we are all poor performers at some things—fail to see the flaws in their thinking or the answers they lack.

What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.

This isn’t just an armchair theory. A whole battery of studies conducted by myself and others have confirmed that people who don’t know much about a given set of cognitive, technical, or social skills tend to grossly overestimate their prowess and performance, whether it’s grammar, emotional intelligence, logical reasoning, firearm care and safety, debating, or financial knowledge. College students who hand in exams that will earn them Ds and Fs tend to think their efforts will be worthy of far higher grades; low-performing chess players, bridge players, and medical students, and elderly people applying for a renewed driver’s license, similarly overestimate their competence by a long shot. (source)

Hmmm….that sounds familiar.

And the way Dunning applies this to politics vividly demonstrates why we have the polarization we’re currently experiencing in the US.

Some of our most stubborn misbeliefs arise not from primitive childlike intuitions or careless category errors, but from the very values and philosophies that define who we are as individuals. Each of us possesses certain foundational beliefs—narratives about the self, ideas about the social order—that essentially cannot be violated: To contradict them would call into question our very self-worth. As such, these views demand fealty from other opinions. And any information that we glean from the world is amended, distorted, diminished, or forgotten in order to make sure that these sacrosanct beliefs remain whole and unharmed…

…Political and ideological beliefs, too, often cross over into the realm of the sacrosanct. The anthropological theory of cultural cognition suggests that people everywhere tend to sort ideologically into cultural worldviews diverging along a couple of axes: They are either individualist (favoring autonomy, freedom, and self-reliance) or communitarian (giving more weight to benefits and costs borne by the entire community); and they are either hierarchist (favoring the distribution of social duties and resources along a fixed ranking of status) or egalitarian (dismissing the very idea of ranking people according to status). According to the theory of cultural cognition, humans process information in a way that not only reflects these organizing principles, but also reinforces them. These ideological anchor points can have a profound and wide-ranging impact on what people believe, and even on what they “know” to be true.

It is perhaps not so surprising to hear that facts, logic, and knowledge can be bent to accord with a person’s subjective worldview; after all, we accuse our political opponents of this kind of “motivated reasoning” all the time. But the extent of this bending can be remarkable. In ongoing work with the political scientist Peter Enns, my lab has found that a person’s politics can warp other sets of logical or factual beliefs so much that they come into direct contradiction with one another. (source)

And most importantly:

Sacrosanct ideological commitments can also drive us to develop quick, intense opinions on topics we know virtually nothing about. (source)

This isn’t just about gun control, though.

This article isn’t just about the hot-button topic of gun control. It’s about how we’re living our everyday lives.

Here’s an example: People either love President Trump so much they are unwilling to see any wrongdoing or they despise him to the point that they are unwilling to recognize any right-doing. Most people’s analyses of the actions of the President are completely warped by their sacrosanct ideologies of whether he is “good” or “bad.” They don’t weigh the merits of the actions – instead, they judge them from a place of deeply committed cognitive bias.

The same thing is true for many topics:

• Illegal immigration


• Freedom of speech


• Political ideologies


• Economic theories


• Gay rights


• Abortion


• The right to bear arms


• Taxes


• The bathroom drama at Target

All of us – myself included – can look at the list above and immediately say whether we are for or against these things, and what our specific belief is – but do we honestly know the details of these topics? Are our opinions sourced from cognitive bias or fact?

I have biases. You have them. We all do. However, the ability to recognize your own cognitive bias is the gold standard of intelligence.

This isn’t something that is going to change.

It’s completely normal for us to base our opinions on our own moral beliefs. As Dunning wrote, we are, at heart, either individualist or communitarian, hierchist or egalitarian. These are core attributes that would be difficult, if not impossible, to change.

But what we CAN do is make a conscious effort to catch ourselves when we make rapid judgment calls without the facts. We can educate ourselves on both sides of an issue and make an effort to use facts instead of feelings in our arguments.

What we CANNOT do is expect everyone to play by these rules. But that’s okay because by understanding how an opposing view was developed, we can use that to fuel our own arguments. We can call out the cognitive biases. What we can’t expect is for facts to change their deeply held beliefs, no matter how ignorant those beliefs might be.

We can correct the lack of information, but we can’t really expect someone with a confident, sacrosanct opinion to change their minds. They’ll hold on to a belief even after it is proven factually incorrect because, as Dunning said, “We are all confident idiots.” Remember, facts have nothing to do with why they have their points of view.

The good news is that there are folks in the middle, who may not have a deeply held opinion on hot-button topics. These are the folks who can be reached by logic and facts. It’s nearly impossible to battle confident ignorance, but with facts, you can influence people who are undecided.

If you ask me what is going to be the end of our civilization, the rampant epidemic of Dunning-Kruger seems to be the most likely cause. Let’s not be guilty of this confident ignorance ourselves. Let’s vow to inoculate ourselves with facts instead of enabling ourselves with emotional biases.

Hat tip to Suzanne

Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

Daisy Luther is the author of The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide To Whole Food on a Half Price Budget.  Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca</e

CDC Corruption: Corporate Science Cover-Ups And How They Enrich The Politically Elite

The elitists in government have their pawns in the mainstream media to do their dirty work and cover up the scandals that arise from corporate science and the subsequent enrichment of the political parties in power. But the CDC director’s resignation is shining a new light on the agency that’s been corrupted for years.

Just days ago, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, Brenda Fitzgerald, abruptly resigned after it was revealed that she owned shares of big tobacco companies, as well as a prominent vaccine manufacturing company called Merck, whose products are often promoted by the CDC.  Of course, it doesn’t take much “connecting of the dots” to realize what a gross conflict of interest that was; and Americans should be outraged.  But they aren’t.

According to Natural News, the corruption of Fitzgerald does not stop there either. Fitzgerald also purchased shares of junk food companies during her time as director of the CDC, which is certainly outrageous but really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. After all, back in 2016, the director of the CDC’s Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention was caught using her influence to favor Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.

This corruption isn’t new; Fitzgerald’s resignment, however, sheds fresh light on the problems and the corruption within the CDC and how the government agency goes about promoting certain products for human consumption. While most human beings would agree that tobacco and junk food are not considered to be products that are “in one’s best interest” to consume, far too many people still don’t understand the threat that the vaccine industry poses to our country. Just days ago, Natural News published an article on how the vaccine industry is now in panic mode as a result of children dying all across America after receiving flu shots.

Yet, the former CDC director has shares of Merck, and the CDC, of course, promotes vaccines like it’s some kind of a magic shield protecting one’s body from illness.  Which isn’t the case at all. With the global vaccine market now at over a trillion dollars, vaccine safety should be of utmost concern to the CDC. But instead, rather than testing and monitoring the health effects of vaccines and patient injuries truthfully to the American public and making critical and necessary corrections in the program, the CDC has become a mouthpiece for industry and has protected the ‘all vaccines for all children’ policy despite peer-reviewed science to the contrary.

According to the World Mercury Project, a UPI Investigative article written in the early 2000s highlights just a sliver of the corruption surrounding the CDC and vaccines. The CDC owned at least 28 vaccine patents. They are also in charge of vaccine promotion (getting the public to take vaccines) and vaccine safety. The CDC, like other large bureaucratic agencies, also has a revolving door to an industry that comes with inherent conflicts of interests. Common sense should have told us that this system was doomed to fail.

All of this corruption pads the pockets of the political elite while sickening the general public.

*This is not to say one should or should not receive a vaccination; but one should conduct their own research and look into independent studies (although, admittedly difficult to find) that will detail the potential benefits and side effects before making a decision.

Navarro Grants Govt Everything, Defendants Nothing – Bunkerville Trial

BRIEFS AND PLEADINGS BY THE DEFENSE TEAMS MAY HAVE CAUSED NAVARRO TO ADJUST HER RULINGS SLIGHTLY.

Redoubt News Staff – October 26, 2017

On Tuesday, October 24, Judge Gloria Navarro issued a number of rulings in the Bundy case, granting the government almost everything they asked for while denying the defense almost any means to defend themselves in the upcoming trial.

With a sweep of her pen, Navarro has wiped multiple motions off the docket with arbitrary rulings that only benefit the government.

Shockingly, Navarro even ruled that the prosecution can introduce Cliven Bundy’s 2014 speech in which he reportedly said “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro. . . .” Cliven’s remarks were taken out of context from a wide-ranging discussion of over-regulation, the negative impacts of welfare policy, and benefits of hard work. Many economic studies of welfare policy are in agreement with Cliven’s (poorly worded) remarks. But the publication of Cliven’s speech in the aftermath of the 2014 Bunkerville standoff caused many supporters to abandon him at that time.

The biased judge also ruled that prosecutors may introduce evidence about Jared and Amanda Miller, a married couple who briefly camped near the Bundy Ranch in 2014 area and later went on to kill two Las Vegas police officers. And, said Navarro, prosecutors may introduce claims that Bundy cattle harmed the environment, wildlife, or even sacred Indian artifacts even though the Bundys themselves are barred from even mentioning that the government killed or harmed their cattle.

Astoundingly, Navarro even ruled that the government may play hearsay statements to the jury by now-deceased journalist Michael Flynn claiming that the protest on April 12, 2014 was “illegal.”

Navarro’s one-sided rulings make clear that in the Lloyd George Federal Courthouse, Courtroom 7C, in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Constitution is not welcome. The defendants in Judge Gloria Navarro’s courtroom do not have constitutional protections.

In the pattern of her previous rulings, Navarro granted almost all of the government requests to prohibit the Bundys from mentioning the following:

1. Self-defense, defense of others, or defense of property;

2. Third-party/lay person testimony or opinion about the level of force displayed or used by law enforcement officers during impoundment operations, including operations on April 6, 9, and 12, 2014;

3. Opinions/public statements of Governor Brian Sandoval of April 8, 2014, and/or opinions registered by other political office holders or opinion leaders about BLM impoundment operations;

4. Allegations of workplace misconduct by the SAC (Special Agent in Charge) of the impoundment (Dan Love), or regarding those who worked for, or with, him.

5. Allegations that officers connected with the impoundment acted unethically or improperly by the way they were dressed or equipped during the impoundment, or that they improperly shredded documents during or after impoundment operations;

6. References to mistreatment of cattle during the impoundment operations;

7. Legal arguments, beliefs, explanations, or opinions that the federal government does not own the land or have legal authority or jurisdiction over public lands where impoundment operations were conducted, or that the land was or is otherwise owned by the State of Nevada;

8. Legal arguments, beliefs, explanations, or opinions regarding infringement on First and Second Amendment rights, including any effort to confuse the jury that there is some form of “journalist” or “protest” immunity for the crimes charged;

9. References to punishment the defendants may face if convicted of the offenses;

10. References to the Oregon trial of United States v. Ammon Bundy, Ryan Payne, and Ryan Bundy., or the results in that trial;

11. References to the outcomes in the previous two trials in this case; and

12. Legal arguments, explanations, or opinions advancing defendants’ views of the U.S. Constitution, including claims that law enforcement officers within the Department of Interior have no constitutional authority, that “natural law” or other authority permits the use of force against law enforcement officers in defense of property or individual rights, or that the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada has no jurisdiction or authority under the [C]onstitution to order the removal of cattle from public lands.

But the precise wording of Judge Navarro’s orders may offer a ray of hope. Some of Navarro’s sentences are worded in such a way as they may allow some defenses. For example Navarro denied a portion of the government’s motion in limine regarding evidence of third-party state of mind. Navarro also ruled that the government’s request to exclude all reference to government misconduct is too broad. Navarro concluded that “a blanket exclusion of these topics is inappropriate at this juncture.”

Thus, although Navarro’s rulings continue her pattern of assisting the prosecution and shutting down the defense, it appears that Navarro’s rulings may be slightly more fair for this upcoming trial than they were in the previous two trials (of Parker, Drexler, Lovelein, Stewart, Burleson and Engel). Briefs and pleadings by the defense teams of Cliven Bundy and Ryan Payne—which argued that the Judge’s previous rulings were unlawful—may have caused Navarro to adjust her rulings slightly.

Redoubt News

The post Navarro Grants Govt Everything, Defendants Nothing – Bunkerville Trial appeared first on Oath Keepers.

These Five Cognitive Biases Hurt Investors The Most

There is no shortage of cognitive biases out there that can trip up our brains.

By the last count, Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes there are 188 types of these fallible mental shortcuts in existence, and they constantly impede our ability to make the best decisions about our careers, our relationships, and for building wealth over time.

BIASES THAT PLAGUE INVESTORS

In today’s infographic from StocksToTrade, we dive deeper into five of these cognitive biases – specifically the ones that really seem to throw investors and traders for a loop.

Next time you are about to make a major investing decision, make sure you double-check this list!

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

The moves that may seem instinctual for the average investor may actually be pre-loaded with cognitive biases.

These problems can even plague the most prominent investors in the world – just look at JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon!

BIASES TO AVOID

Here are descriptions and examples of the five cognitive biases that can impact investors the most:

Anchoring Bias
The first piece of information you see or hear often ends up being an “anchor” for others that follow.

As an example, if you heard that a new stock was trading at $5.00 – that is the piece of information you may reference whenever thinking about that stock in the future. To avoid this mental mistake: analyze historical data, but don’t hold historical conclusions.

Recency Bias
Recency bias is a tendency to overvalue the latest information available.

If you heard that a CEO is resigning from a company you own shares of, your impulse may be to overvalue this recent news and sell the stock. However, you should be careful, and instead focus on long-term trends and experience to come up with a more measured course of action.

Loss Aversion Bias
No one wants to lose money, but small losses happen all the time even for the best investors – especially on paper.

Loss aversion bias is a tendency to feel the effects of these losses more than wins of equal magnitude, and it can often result in a sub-optimal shift in investing strategy. Investors that are focused only on avoiding losses will miss out on big opportunities for gains.

Confirmation Bias
Taking in information only that confirms your beliefs can be disastrous. It’s tempting, because it is satisfying to see your previous conviction in a positive light – however, it also makes it possible to miss important findings that may help to change your conviction.

Bandwagon Bias
No one wants to get left out, but being the last one to pile onto an opportunity can also be cataclysmic. If you’re going to be a bandwagon jumper, make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.

Every Single Cognitive Bias In One Infographic

The human brain is capable of incredible things, but it’s also extremely flawed at times.

Science has shown that we tend to make all sorts of mental mistakes, called “cognitive biases”, that can affect both our thinking and actions. These biases, as Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins points out, can lead to us extrapolating information from the wrong sources, seeking to confirm existing beliefs, or failing to remember events the way they actually happened!

To be sure, this is all part of being human – but such cognitive biases can also have a profound effect on our endeavors, investments, and life in general. For this reason, today’s infographic from DesignHacks.co is particularly handy. It shows and groups each of the 188 known confirmation biases in existence.

WHAT IS A COGNITIVE BIAS?

Humans tend to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from making rational judgments.

These tendencies usually arise from:

• Information processing shortcuts


• The limited processing ability of the brain


• Emotional and moral motivations


• Distortions in storing and retrieving memories


• Social influence

Cognitive biases have been studied for decades by academics in the fields of cognitive science, social psychology, and behavioral economics, but they are especially relevant in today’s information-packed world. They influence the way we think and act, and such irrational mental shortcuts can lead to all kinds of problems in entrepreneurship, investing, or management.

COGNITIVE BIAS EXAMPLES

Here are four examples of how these types of biases can affect people in the business world:

Familiarity Bias: An investor puts her money in “what she knows”, rather than seeking the obvious benefits from portfolio diversification. Just because a certain type of industry or security is familiar doesn’t make it the logical selection.

Self-Attribution Bias: An entrepreneur overly attributes his company’s success to himself, rather than other factors (team, luck, industry trends). When things go bad, he blames these external factors for derailing his progress.

Anchoring Bias: An employee in a salary negotiation is too dependent on the first number mentioned in the negotiations, rather than rationally examining a range of options.

Survivorship Bias: Entrepreneurship looks easy, because there are so many successful entrepreneurs out there. However, this is a cognitive bias: the successful entrepreneurs are the ones still around, while the millions who failed went and did other things.

THE TRUTH vs CNN – Bill Whittle

In his latest FIREWALL, host Bill Whittle recounts the recent CNN scandal, describes the masterful way the videos were released and shows what incredible — almost unbelievable — harm is caused by media bias.

If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, please consider making a donation to support our work.  You can donate HERE.

The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia and The Death of Nazi Germany

Every time, I look around this place
I see them screams but I hear no sound
And the terrible things happen down the road
To somebody else that I don"t even know

Nothing bad ever happens to me
Nothing bad ever happens to me
Nothing bad ever happens to me
Nothing bad ever happens to me

-Oingo Boingo

Ain"t normalcy bias swell?

The normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster and its possible effects, because it causes people to have a bias to believe that things will always function the way things normally function. This may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare and, on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations.

The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since one has never personally experienced a disaster, one never will. It can result in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. They also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation. Normalcy bias is essentially a "desire for the status quo."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias

Are you having a hard time waking up some family or friends, or even yourself, to the possibility that you may someday want to get the fuck out of Dodge City?  Are you for some reason unable to travel to the formerly beautiful Damascus, Syria, or Caracas, Venezuela, to see first-hand what it looks like when SHTF?

I might be able to help.    

The next time you have an hour to kill, I highly recommend you use the time to watch the 2009 Vice documentary, The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia.  

You will meet the amazing local priest, General Butt Naked...

You will learn what to expect from the local youth group in a societal collapse...

You will see the how government authority reacts to collapse...

Then, follow it up by the reading the excellent book, Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947, by Thomas Goodrich.  Although I highly recommend reading the book, there is also apparently a related 90 minute documentary video available online, Hellstorm : The Genocide of Germany by the Common Enemy.

You will learn of the massive amount of state-sponsored rape and murder of German women in the final days of World War 2.  

You will learn what amount of mercy to expect from governments in such situations...

If you decide that you want to put together a plan and some resources to bravely run away if the SHTF, then please consider starting with these three ZeroHedge articles.

Peace, liberty, prosperity,

h_h

Good Cop Leaks Video of Fellow Cop Torturing Handcuffed Man with a Taser — Guess Who’s in Trouble

Balch Springs, TX — Coming just weeks after Balch Springs Police Officer Roy Oliver killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, was fired, and later arrested and charged with murder, another scandal has rocked the department. This time, it is torture with a taser.

Body camera footage was mailed to Fox4 News showing a Black man being tased while handcuffed. Thirty-nine-year-old Marco Stephenson was compliant, not resisting at all, and in handcuffs when the torture began.

The leaked body camera footage shows Stephenson with his hands raised above his head as officers approach. Balch Springs PD responded to a 911 call of a man brandishing a weapon.

Stephenson admitted he had a BB gun but denied threatening anyone with it. According to our experts in gang activities, criminals use BB and pellet guns to keep enemies at bay who are unaware the toys are not real.

Stephenson was handcuffed and told he was under arrest for threatening the community who’d called 911 to report him. He denied committing any crime but was, by all accounts, compliant with all officer commands.

He spit his toothpick into the grass which seemed to have set off the cops. He got a little mouthy with one of the officers (inaudible) and was immediately tased.

“Don’t pull away! You understand? You understand?” an unidentified sergeant on the video said as he was tasing Stephenson. “Don’t pull away! You get it?! You get it?! Because I ain’t playing with you today! Do you understand?!”

“Yes sir,” answered Stephenson as he again complied with officer commands. Yet the cop kept tasering him — even after he fell to the ground.

READ MORE:  Difference Between a "Black Guy" Breaking into a Car vs. a "White Guy"

The incident apparently raised the eyebrows of fellow officers who promptly reported the incident to the sergeant’s superiors.

According to the Chief of Police for Balch Springs, the incident was reviewed by three different entities; Texas Rangers, Professional Standards and the Dallas County DA’s Public Integrity Unit.

Chief Jonathon Haber said, “We decided together that this was an administrative issue, not a criminal issue.” And since Stephenson didn’t file a complaint, no charges were brought against the officer.

While the department has a vocal supporter on their side, Reverend Ronald Wright, others apparently aren’t happy with the conclusions reached in the internal investigation and they are the ones who leaked the video to the press.

Wright said, “There was some things that were done that could have been kept quiet. But there was some officers that set an example of what all police departments should do.”

Now the chief is looking to see who leaked the video, seemingly more concerned about the Balch Springs PD’s image than with arresting another member of his police force.

Haber described Stephenson’s lengthy criminal record to reporters, citing the number of times he’d been arrested and processed in the jail system. But the video, coupled with the latest killing of an unarmed innocent child, leave more questions than answers.

Why did the department choose to keep someone on its force who’d tased a handcuffed compliant man? Why after whistleblowers turned him in was he not fired? And how and why did three law enforcement agencies arrive at the conclusion no crime had been committed?

READ MORE:  Missouri KKK: We will use ‘lethal force’ against Ferguson protesters

It seems Haber is more interested in finding out who leaked the video to the press and firing that person than he is concerned with protecting the civil rights and liberties of Mr. Stephenson and others like him.

According to Chief Haber, the sergeant in question was reprimanded and put on “no contact with the public” until he completed courses in conflict resolution, anti-bias, and how to respond to mental health calls. All in all, he got away with tasing a handcuffed man without losing one day’s pay.

Something has to change with modern policing methods when officers are not charged for doing things to handcuffed suspects that the public cannot do to each other. Many consider it to be an example of a double standard at work for law enforcement. What would have happened had the taser killed Stephenson? Remember Graham Dyer and Gregory Towns? They weren’t as lucky as Stephenson.

UofA Hires "Social Justice Advocates" To Police Fellow Students For "Bias Incidents"

Submitted by Ian Miles Cheong via HeatSt.com,

Administrators at the University of Arizona are now accepting applications for “social justice advocates,” whose job it is to snitch on other students accused of bias. They’re also expected to hold educational programs about “the mosaic of diversity, multiculturalism and inclusivity” and maintain “social justice bulletin boards” in student residence halls.

The job, which officially calls (archived link) for the advocates to “report any bias incidents or claims to appropriate Residence Life staff,” pays the student workers $10 an hour. They’re expected to work 15 hours a week, which means they could be making as much as $600 a month to police their fellow students.

Part of the job description reads:

“The position also aims to increase understanding of one’s own self through critical reflection of power and privilege, identity and intersectionality, systems of socialization, cultural competency and allyship as they pertain to the acknowledgement, understanding and acceptance of differences. Finally, this position intends to increase a student staff member’s ability to openly lead conversations, discuss differences and confront diversely insensitive behavior.”

The core responsibility, however, is to report bias claims. Bias incidents, which in recent years are increasingly being policed on college campuses, can range from outright acts of racism to far more subtle “microaggressions” such as referring to someone as a “guy” or wearing dreadlocks while white.

The social justice advocate’s job will also be, according to the job posting, to foster dialogue “related to diversity, multiculturalism and social justice”. Furthermore, the advocates will be tasked with “increasing awareness of diverse identities” and are expected to “promote inclusive communities.”

Lastly, these wildcats are expected to “be punctual in all position-related functions and tasks”.

The University of Arizona is a public school, and so these positions are funded with taxpayer dollars. At least until the state legislature reads about it.

The Political Left&#039;s Shmoo Theory Of Education

“Uneducated” is the favorite insult and excuse of the political left. In the past year alone, for example, a lack of education among voters has been used to explain each of the left’s electoral failures, as well as to dismiss criticisms of its people, policies, and institutions. These defenses are dubious to say the least. Yet setting aside the strategic choices of left-wing political groups, the obsession with un-education reveals that there are serious problems with the way education is understood by the intellectual classes.

Most importantly, the popular use of the word “education” suffers from the same error as the mainstream economic use of the word “capital.” This shouldn’t be a surprise, given that education is often metaphorically described as “human capital.” The error is that both capital and education are thought of as a kind of “homogeneous blob,” or “shmoo.” A shmoo is elastic and can be molded by the user into any shape necessary, and it’s therefore equally serviceable in all possible uses. Anyone who wants to use it as a production input must simply decide how much to apply to a specific problem.

In reality, of course, capital and education are both highly heterogeneous. The structure of production is extremely delicate and difficult to organize, and so too is the structure of human knowledge.

Unfortunately, this fact escapes those intellectuals who concern themselves with other people’s lack of education: in current discourse, education is a homogeneous good acquired exclusively through obtaining formal degrees. To lack a college degree is to lack education, while the more degrees one acquires, the better educated one is. Importantly, all education is equally serviceable across all areas of expertise. English majors can talk about economics, and physicists can talk about politics. But anyone who isn’t a product of the university education system is barred from participating in these discussions.

It should be easy to spot the errors in this kind of thinking. First, no matter what kind of education we pursue, we don’t simply add new blobs of it to a big pile. Instead, we acquire specific, distinct types of knowledge which vary widely in their serviceability. Second, and more important, education is not equivalent to obtaining degrees. It means different things in different contexts, and the education that takes place in higher education institutions reflects only a specific and narrow type of learning. Depending on one’s area of study, this kind of learning can often lack relevance outside the classroom, and in this sense, it actually undermines the role of education as a practical tool for learning how to create value within society. This is part of the reason why university-educated people flock to the intellectual class to begin with.

In fact, sometimes obtaining the relevant kind of education is impossible within higher education. To take some obvious examples, many of the most successful and world-changing entrepreneurs of the past few decades have been college dropouts. Needless to say, they’ve given a bit more to the human race than the average Huffington Post writer. On a smaller scale, Mises was fond of pointing out that consumers are often better educated about the state of the economy than many economists.

“Education” is another example of a kind of rhetorical imperialism that has already captured words like “science” and “evidence.” The bias in favor of “education” is basically a bias in favor of the opinions of the contemporary intellectual classes, and a devotion to the status quo in higher education. The intellectuals treat education as a shmoo because often, that’s exactly what it is to them: simply another word for describing their own collection of homogeneous opinions and concepts, which they believe should form the sum of all discussion. Fortunately, more and more people are beginning to realize that true education does not and cannot thrive in this environment, which increasingly closes itself off from the real world and the people in it. This is the perfect time for organizations like the Mises Institute to take up the challenge of bringing genuine learning to the masses, both inside and outside the academy.