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What is the Big Idea?
A new study released on Tuesday shows that immigrants play a leading role in innovation and economic growth in the United States. “Patent Pending: How Immigrants Are Reinventing The American Economy", a report authored by Partnership for a New American Economy, details the ways in which foreign-born innovators are changing the American economy.
"From more efficient ways to purify seawater to metals that can be molded like plastic, the report highlights several immigrant inventors behind some of the most cutting-edge technologies," they write. "These foreign-born inventors are fueling patent awards at the top patent-producing universities, and their new innovations and new companies are advancing American industries and creating American jobs."
Key findings of the report include:
What is the Significance?
These findings were released in conjunction with a letter signed by more than 100 presidents of top American universities asking Obama and Congress for a solution that paves a clear path to a green card for graduates.
"This is indisputable proof of the enormous contribution of immigrants in developing the new technologies and ideas needed to renew the U.S. economy and create American jobs," said Partnership for a New American Economy Co-Chair and New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in a press release. "American universities are doing their part in attracting and educating the world’s top minds, but our broken immigration laws continue to push them to our competitors. We simply cannot continue to force these innovators out if we want to remain the world’s leading economy.”
Current immigration laws prevents students from obtaining visas after graduation. They are forced to return home and unable to create the technology and opportunities that help create jobs.
Ninety-nine percent of the patents by foreign-born inventors were in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), an area where the U.S. is projected to face a deficit of 230,000 workers by 2018.
"Every graduate with an advanced degree working in a STEM-related field in the United States has been shown to create on average 2.62 additional jobs for native-born workers. Sending those people away doesn’t protect American jobs, it jeopardizes them," said Nick Schulz of the American Enterprise Institute.
COVID-19 amplified America’s devastating health gap. Can we bridge it?
The COVID-19 pandemic is making health disparities in the United States crystal clear. It is a clarion call for health care systems to double their efforts in vulnerable communities.
19 November, 2020
Willie Mae Daniels makes melted cheese sandwiches with her granddaughter, Karyah Davis, 6, after being laid off from her job as a food service cashier at the University of Miami on March 17, 2020.
Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Sponsored by Northwell Health
- The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated America's health disparities, widening the divide between the haves and have nots.
- Studies show disparities in wealth, race, and online access have disproportionately harmed underserved U.S. communities during the pandemic.
- To begin curing this social aliment, health systems like Northwell Health are establishing relationships of trust in these communities so that the post-COVID world looks different than the pre-COVID one.
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<p>In the last 100 years, we've made incredible advances in health care, advances that would be viewed as miraculous to any previous generation. To pick one example, the<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy" target="_blank"> U.S. life expectancy</a> in 1950 was 68.2 years. We've since added 10 years to that average. Social programs have helped the young and elderly, two of the most health-vulnerable populations, receive unprecedented levels of care and attention. And telemedicine has decoupled many Americans' health support and monitoring from brick-and-mortar hospitals, expanding access to care.</p><p>Yet, despite these advances and despite handily<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-dozen-facts-about-the-economics-of-the-u-s-health-care-system/" target="_blank"> outspending other OECD nations on health care</a>, the United States preserves vast health disparities. As James Madara, CEO and executive vice president of the American Medical Association,<a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/about/leadership/america-s-health-care-crisis-much-deeper-covid-19" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a>wrote on the organization's site: "The U.S. health system that exists today is a hodgepodge of ideas, programs, and regulations that is both extraordinarily expensive and highly inefficient. And despite its size and technological advancements, our health system is beset by tremendous gaps and inequities that favor some groups while unfairly disadvantaging others."</p><p>Our current predicament has its origins in tectonic sociohistorical forces that have shifted and fractured the health care landscape. For those at the peaks, access to superior care, education, resources, and social networks serve to protect their health. For those in the canyons, the ground continues to weather away with each past and ongoing crisis—consider, for example, the disproportionate fallout from<a href="https://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/60/11/2667" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the dissolution of the Mental Health Systems Act</a>.</p><p>Then came COVID-19.</p>
COVID-19 deepens U.S. health disparities
<p>Communities on the pernicious side of America's health disparities have their unique histories, environments, and social structures. They are spread across the United States, but they all have one thing in common.</p><p>"There is one common divide in American communities, and that is poverty," said <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/about/leadership/debbie-salas-lopez" target="_blank">Debbie Salas-Lopez, MD, MPH</a>, senior vice president of community and population health at Northwell Health. "That is the undercurrent that manifests poor health, poor health outcomes, or poor health prognoses for future wellbeing."</p><p>Social determinants have far-reaching effects on health, and poor communities have unfavorable social determinants. To pick one of many examples, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/913612554/a-crisis-within-a-crisis-food-insecurity-and-covid-19" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">food insecurity</a> reduces access to quality food, leading to poor health and communal endemics of chronic medical conditions. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified some of these conditions, such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes, as increasing the risk of developing a severe case of coronavirus.</p><p>The pandemic didn't create poverty or food insecurity, but it exacerbated both, and the results have been catastrophic. A study published this summer in the <em><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-05971-3" target="_blank">Journal of General Internal Medicine</a></em> suggested that "social factors such as income inequality may explain why some parts of the USA are hit harder by the COVID-19 pandemic than others."</p><p>That's not to say better-off families in the U.S. weren't harmed. A <a href="https://voxeu.org/article/poverty-inequality-and-covid-19-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">paper from the Centre for Economic Policy Research</a> noted that families in counties with a higher median income experienced adjustment costs associated with the pandemic—for example, lowering income-earning interactions to align with social distancing policies. However, the paper found that the costs of social distancing were much greater for poorer families, who cannot easily alter their living circumstances, which often include more individuals living in one home and a reliance on mass transit to reach work and grocery stores. They are also disproportionately represented in essential jobs, such as retail, transportation, and health care, where maintaining physical distance can be all but impossible.</p><p>The paper also cited a positive correlation between higher income inequality and higher rates of coronavirus infection. "Our interpretation is that poorer people are less able to protect themselves, which leads them to different choices—they face a steeper trade-off between their health and their economic welfare in the context of the threats posed by COVID-19," the authors wrote.</p><p>"There are so many pandemics that this pandemic has exacerbated," Dr. Salas-Lopez noted.</p><p>One example is the health-wealth gap. The mental stressors of maintaining a low socioeconomic status, especially in the face of extreme affluence, can have a physically degrading impact on health. <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/index.cfm/_api/render/file/?method=inline&fileID=123ECD96-EF81-46F6-983D2AE9A45FA354" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Writing on this gap</a>, Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University, notes that socioeconomic stressors can increase blood pressure, reduce insulin response, increase chronic inflammation, and impair the prefrontal cortex and other brain functions through anxiety, depression, and cognitive load. </p><p>"Thus, from the macro level of entire body systems to the micro level of individual chromosomes, poverty finds a way to produce wear and tear," Sapolsky writes. "It is outrageous that if children are born into the wrong family, they will be predisposed toward poor health by the time they start to learn the alphabet."</p>Research on the economic and mental health fallout of COVID-19 is showing two things: That unemployment is hitting <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/09/24/economic-fallout-from-covid-19-continues-to-hit-lower-income-americans-the-hardest/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">low-income and young Americans</a> most during the pandemic, potentially widening the health-wealth gap further; and that the pandemic not only exacerbates mental health stressors, but is doing so at clinically relevant levels. As <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7413844/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the authors of one review</a> wrote, the pandemic's effects on mental health is itself an international public health priority.<blockquote>We need to find ways to unify this country because we're all human beings. We're all created equal, and we believe that health is one of those important rights.</blockquote>
Working to close the health gap
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDc5MDk1MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTYyMzQzMn0.KSFpXH7yHYrfVPtfgcxZqAHHYzCnC2bFxwSrJqBbH4I/img.jpg?width=980" id="b40e2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1b9035370ab7b02a0dc00758e494412b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Northwell Health coronavirus testing center at Greater Springfield Community Church.
Credit: Northwell Health
<p>Novel coronavirus may spread and infect indiscriminately, but pre-existing conditions, environmental stressors, and a lack of access to care and resources increase the risk of infection. These social determinants make the pandemic more dangerous, and erode communities' and families' abilities to heal from health crises that pre-date the pandemic.</p><p>How do we eliminate these divides? Dr. Salas-Lopez says the first step is recognition. "We have to open our eyes to see the suffering around us," she said. "Northwell has not shied away from that."</p><p>"We are steadfast in improving health outcomes for our vulnerable and underrepresented communities that have suffered because of the prevalence of chronic disease, a problem that led to the disproportionately higher death rate among African-Americans and Latinos during the COVID-19 pandemic," said Michael Dowling, Northwell's president and CEO. "We are committed to using every tool at our disposal—as a provider of health care, employer, purchaser and investor—to combat disparities and ensure the <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/education-and-resources/community-engagement/center-for-equity-of-care" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">equity of care</a> that everyone deserves." </p><p>With the need recognized, Dr. Salas-Lopez calls for health care systems to travel upstream and be proactive in those hard-hit communities. This requires health care systems to play a strong role, but not a unilateral one. They must build <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/news/insights/faith-based-leaders-are-the-key-to-improving-community-health" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">partnerships with leaders in those communities</a> and utilize those to ensure relationships last beyond the current crisis. </p><p>"We must meet with community leaders and talk to them to get their perspective on what they believe the community needs are and should be for the future. Together, we can co-create a plan to measurably improve [community] health and also to be ready for whatever comes next," she said.</p><p>Northwell has built relationships with local faith-based and community organizations in underserved communities of color. Those partnerships enabled Northwell to test more than 65,000 people across the metro New York region. The health system also offered education on coronavirus and precautions to curb its spread.</p><p>These initiatives began the process of building trust—trust that Northwell has counted on to return to these communities to administer flu vaccines to prepare for what experts fear may be a difficult flu season.</p><p>While Northwell has begun building bridges across the divides of the New York area, much will still need to be done to cure U.S. health care overall. There is hope that the COVID pandemic will awaken us to the deep disparities in the US.</p><p>"COVID has changed our world. We have to seize this opportunity, this pandemic, this crisis to do better," Dr. Salas-Lopez said. "Provide better care. Provide better health. Be better partners. Be better community citizens. And treat each other with respect and dignity.</p><p>"We need to find ways to unify this country because we're all human beings. We're all created equal, and we believe that health is one of those important rights."</p>
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The "singleton hypothesis" predicts the future of humanity
Philosopher Nick Bostrom's "singleton hypothesis" predicts the future of human societies.
23 October, 2019
Politics & Current Affairs
- Nick Bostrom's "singleton hypothesis" says that intelligent life on Earth will eventually form a "singleton".
- The "singleton" could be a single government or an artificial intelligence that runs everything.
- Whether the singleton will be positive or negative depends on numerous factors and is not certain.
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<p>Does history have a goal? Is it possible that all the human societies that existed are ultimately a prelude to establishing a system where one entity will govern everything the world over? The Oxford University philosopher <a href="https://www.nickbostrom.com/" target="_blank">Nick Bostrom</a> proposes the <strong>"singleton hypothesis," </strong>maintaining that intelligent life on Earth will at some point organize itself into a so-called "singleton" – one organization that will take the form of either a world government, a super-intelligent machine (an AI) or, regrettably, a dictatorship that would control all affairs.</p><p>Other forms of a singleton may exist, and, ultimately, Bostrom believes one of them will come into existence. The philosopher argues that historically there's been a trend for our societies to converge in "higher levels of social organization". We went from bands of hunter gatherers to chiefdoms, city-states, nation states and now multi-national corporations, the United Nations and so forth, all the way to <em>globalization</em> – one of President Donald Trump's <a href="https://time.com/5406130/we-reject-globalism-president-trump-took-america-first-to-the-united-nations/" target="_blank">favorite targets for attack</a>. One view of that trend sees increased power going to multi-national businesses and world government bodies, making globalization somewhat of a punching bag concept, often seen not as a needed re-organization of societies around the world, leading to increased cooperation and a peaceful international order, but rather for its potential to bring about the loss of jobs and undermine the sovereignties of individual countries, making citizens beholden to faceless totalitarian bureaucrats from foreign lands. </p>
<p>But a singleton doesn't have to result in a bad outcome, argues Bostrom. In fact, he thinks it could also be a good thing or at least something that's neither obviously positive or negative – just neutral. One way to get to a singleton, according to the philosopher, is through technology. Improved surveillance and communication, mind-control tech, molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence could all bring about a singleton.</p><p>While some aspects of such technologies could certainly be unwanted and infringe upon individual freedoms, Bostrom thinks that there are situations in which there could be broad support for either a technological solution or a single government agency to take control of the society. As the world grows more complex, it's harder to achieve efficient coordination between countries and individuals within them. Tech solutions in conjunction with converging moral values and a democratic worldwide government could facilitate that. </p><p>Other scenarios, like catastrophic events, could also hasten the creation of singletons. The League of Nations, for example, came out of World War I, while the creation of the United Nations was a byproduct of World War 2. </p><p>Some may view the current political trends of rising nationalism, tariff wars and anti-immigration platforms to mean that globalization and an overall unification of people the world over is not coming any time soon. In fact, it feels like we are going backwards on such a path.</p><p>In an email exchange with <strong>Big Think</strong>, Bostrom cautioned us to not only look at what is happening over the course of a decade or maybe even a few decades. There are much larger, historic trends at work, which may see the current times as a blip rather than a change in the overall direction.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"I don't think there's much evidence in the year-to-year (or even decade-to-decade) political jitters for the question of the long-term fate of Earth-originating civilization," writes Bostrom, while adding "Still, it seems a bit sad whenever the world is moving in the direction of fragmentation and unilateralism."</p><p>He would rather see relationships between nations like the United States and China to be cordial rather than the "tussles and tensions" that we get now, with the added risk of a further breakdown in communication leading to even worse outcomes. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"I fear that people have forgotten how bad the Cold War was or have learned the wrong lesson - "well we survived it so it wasn't so bad," warns the philosopher. "But I think it's more like somebody played a round of Russian Roulette and survived and then they say "hey that wasn't so bad, let's play another round!" With the opening of the nuclear archives, we can see how close the world came to the brink on several different occasions. Allowing ourselves to slide into another situation even remotely like that of the Cold War would be a huge mistake."<br></p><p>Political tides certainly can come and go. It might be long until we can definitively tell which era we are living in now. Either advanced technology and a spreading democratic order will create a global techno-utopia of the future or we will be enslaved by corporate hegemony and international oligarchs. There are also options in between. It's important to remember that once created, a singleton could become the way of life for the foreseeable future as it will take measures to stay in existence and to keep away threats.</p>
<blockquote> "Earth-originating intelligent life will (eventually) form a singleton," <a href="https://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton.html" target="_blank">writes</a> Bostrom.<br></blockquote><p>Before you get set for your life to be dominated by a single agency, Bostrom's <a href="https://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton.html" target="_blank">classic paper</a> on the subject lays out some specific pros and cons of a singleton.</p>
<p><strong><u></u></strong><strong><u>Four Advantages:</u></strong></p><p>- avoiding <strong>dangerous arms races</strong> – these are costly and potentially disastrous. Without many competing world powers, arms races would be unnecessary.</p><p>- avoiding a <strong>space colonization race</strong>, again leading to potential war and extreme expenses.</p><p>- avoiding <strong>inequality</strong> - a singleton could distribute wealth.</p><p>- avoiding <strong>evolutionary outcomes</strong> we don't want - a singleton (especially an AI) could better keep track of dystopian scenarios, like epidemics, and work towards the survival of the population as a whole.</p>
Want to Retain American Jobs? Stop Blaming Globalization
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="oxK8j1xN" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="2cf425d7b91ed2a6fc4fe19d065f3408"> <div id="botr_oxK8j1xN_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/oxK8j1xN-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/oxK8j1xN-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/oxK8j1xN-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div><p><strong><u>Four Disadvantages:</u></strong></p><p>- having one entity control everything could lead to <strong>less control over decision-making</strong> and things could go bad for us humans. "All the eggs are in one basket" under this scenario, points out Bostrom.</p><p>- world without competition between states could be more vulnerable to <strong>systemic breakdowns</strong> than a world that is less arranged, in which "there are some processes that limit the destructiveness of certain kinds of failures," writes the philosopher.</p><p>- some singletons could lead to<strong> terrible bureaucracy </strong>and inefficiency – it's not certain whether that would outweigh the gains from such a coordinated society. That would depend on the "severity" of the problems.</p><p>- some singletons could be created by <strong>force</strong> - think Ghenghis Khan, Napoleon, Nazis and whatever new dictator is waiting in the wings. </p><p>Check out Nick Bostrom's paper<a href="https://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton.html" target="_blank"> "What is a Singleton?" here.</a></p>
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Bruce Lee: How to live successfully in a world with no rules
Shannon Lee shares lessons from her father in her new book, "Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee."
27 November, 2020
Bruce Lee: How to live successfully in a world with no rules ...
Videos
- Bruce Lee would have turned 80 years old on November 27, 2020. The legendary actor and martial artist's daughter, Shannon Lee, shares some of his wisdom and his philosophy on self help in a new book titled "Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee."
- In this video, Shannon shares a story of the fight that led to her father beginning a deeper philosophical journey, and how that informed his unique expression of martial arts called Jeet Kune Do.
- One lesson passed down from Bruce Lee was his use and placement of physical symbols as a way to help "cement for yourself this new way of being, or this new lesson you've learned." By working on ourselves (with the right tools), we can develop the skills necessary to rise and conquer new challenges.
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3 reasons for information exhaustion – and what to do about it
How to deal with "epistemic exhaustion."
26 November, 2020
Photo by Filip Mishevski on Unsplash
Mind & Brain
An endless flow of information is coming at us constantly: It might be an article a friend shared on Facebook with a sensational headline or wrong information about the spread of the coronavirus.
<p> It could even be a call from a relative wanting to talk about a political issue. </p><p>All this information may leave many of us feeling as though we have no energy to engage. </p><p>As a <a href="https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/hf1190" target="_blank">philosopher</a> who studies <a href="https://philpeople.org/profiles/mark-satta" target="_blank">knowledge-sharing practices</a>, I call this experience “epistemic exhaustion." The term “epistemic" comes from the Greek word <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/" target="_blank">episteme</a>, often translated as “knowledge." So epistemic exhaustion is more of a knowledge-related exhaustion.</p><p>It is not knowledge itself that tires out many of us. Rather, it is the process of trying to gain or share knowledge under challenging circumstances. </p><p>Currently, there are at least three common sources that, from my perspective, are leading to such exhaustion. But there are also ways to deal with them. </p>
<h2>1. Uncertainty</h2><p>For many, this year has been full of uncertainty. In particular, the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0141076820930665" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">coronavirus pandemic</a> has generated uncertainty about health, about best practices and about the future.</p><p>At the same time, Americans have faced <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/07/voters-anxiously-approach-an-unusual-election-and-its-potentially-uncertain-aftermath/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">uncertainty about the U.S. presidential election</a>: first due to delayed results and now over <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/politics/trump-power-transfer-2020-election.html?searchResultPosition=3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">questions about a peaceful transition of power</a>.</p><p>Experiencing <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/stress-uncertainty" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">uncertainty can stress most of us out</a>. People tend to prefer the planned and the predictable. Figures from 17th-century French philosopher <a href="http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/15537/1/Certainty%20and%20Explanation%20in%20Descartes%20HOPOS%20AcceptedFinal.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">René Descartes</a> to 20th-century Austrian philosopher <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/762159.On_Certainty" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ludwig Wittgenstein</a> have recognized the significance of having certainty in our lives.</p><p>With information so readily available, people may be checking news sites or social media in hopes of finding answers. But often, people are instead greeted with more reminders of uncertainty.</p>
<h2>2. Polarization</h2><p>Political polarization <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/robert-barrett-phd/the-stress-from-political-polarization-is-killing-us-slowly_a_23350469/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">is stressing many Americans out</a>.</p><p>As political scientist <a href="https://gvpt.umd.edu/facultyprofile/mason/lilliana" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Lilliana Mason</a> notes in her book, "<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo27527354.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uncivil Disagreement: How Politics Became Our Identity</a>," Americans have been increasingly dividing politically "into two partisan teams."</p><p>Many writers have discussed the <a href="https://theconversation.com/extreme-political-polarization-weakens-democracy-can-the-us-avoid-that-fate-105540" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">negative effects of polarization</a>, such as how it can damage democracy. But discussions about the harms of polarization often overlook the toll polarization takes on our ability to gain and share knowledge.</p><p>That can happen in at least two ways.</p><p>First, as philosopher <a href="https://www.kevinvallier.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kevin Vallier</a> has argued, there is a "<a href="https://www.kevinvallier.com/reconciled/low-trust-exacerbates-polarization/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">causal feedback loop</a>" between polarization and distrust. In other words, polarization and distrust fuel one another. Such a cycle can leave people feeling <a href="https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/284357/polarization-may-undermine-community-bonds-trust-others.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">unsure whom to trust or what to believe</a>.</p><p>Second, polarization can lead to <a href="https://time.com/5907318/polarization-2020-election/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">competing narratives</a> because in a deeply polarized society, as studies show, we can <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/for/16/1/article-p47.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">lose common ground</a> and tend to have less agreement.</p><p>For those inclined to take the views of others seriously, this can create additional cognitive work. And when the issues are heated or sensitive, this can create additional <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190926073348.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stress and emotional burdens</a>, such as sadness over damaged friendships or anger over partisan rhetoric.</p>
<h2>3. Misinformation</h2><p>Viral misinformation is everywhere. This includes <a href="https://iop.harvard.edu/get-involved/study-groups/propaganda-today%E2%80%99s-american-politics" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">political propaganda in the United States</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/review/peter-pomerantsev-this-is-not-propaganda.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">around the world</a>.</p><p>People are also inundated with advertising and misleading messaging from private corporations, what philosophers <a href="http://cailinoconnor.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cailin O'Connor</a> and <a href="http://jamesowenweatherall.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">James Owen Weatherall</a> have called "<a href="https://heterodoxacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/062_Cailin_oConnor_How_False_Beliefs_Spread.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">industrial propaganda</a>." And in 2020, the public is also dealing with <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01452-z" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">misinformation about COVID-19</a>.</p><p>As chess grandmaster <a href="https://twitter.com/kasparov63/status/808750564284702720?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Garry Kasparov put it</a>: "The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth."</p><p>Misinformation is often exhausting by design. For example, <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-plandemic-and-the-seven-traits-of-conspiratorial-thinking-138483" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a video that went viral,</a> "<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2020/05/08/why-its-important-to-push-back-on-plandemic-and-how-to-do-it/?sh=3e430c9e5fa3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Plandemic</a>," featured a large number of false claims about COVID-19 in rapid succession. This flooding of misinformation in rapid succession, a tactic known as a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/9/26/13036258/donald-trump-debate-win-lies-preparation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gish gallop</a>, makes it challenging and time-consuming for fact checkers to refute the many falsehoods following one after another.</p>
<h2>What to do?</h2><p>With all this uncertainty, polarization and misinformation, feeling tired is understandable. But there are things one can do.</p><p>The American Psychological Association suggests <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/stress-uncertainty" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">coping with uncertainty</a> through activities like limiting news consumption and focusing on things in one's control. Another option is to work on becoming more <a href="https://pemachodronfoundation.org/product/comfortable-with-uncertainty-book/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">comfortable with uncertainty</a> through practices such as meditation and the cultivation of mindfulness.</p><p>To deal with polarization, consider communicating with the goal of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phpr.12624" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">creating empathetic understanding</a> rather than "winning." Philosopher <a href="http://mjhannon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Michael Hannon</a> describes empathetic understanding as "the ability to take up another person's perspective."</p><p>As for limiting the spread of misinformation: Share only those news stories that you've read and verified. And you can prioritize outlets that meet high ethical <a href="https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">journalistic</a> or <a href="https://www.poynter.org/ifcn-fact-checkers-code-of-principles/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fact-checking standards</a>.</p><p>These solutions are limited and imperfect, but that's all right. Part of resisting epistemic exhaustion is learning to live with the limited and imperfect. No one has time to vet all the headlines, correct all the misinformation or gain all the relevant knowledge. To deny this is to set oneself up for exhaustion.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149615/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation"></p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mark-satta-1173820" target="_blank">Mark Satta</a>, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/wayne-state-university-989" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Wayne State University</a></em></p><p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/3-reasons-for-information-exhaustion-and-what-to-do-about-it-149615" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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