Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

FYI-FTR: Part 11, a paper on inducing mass pseudo-consensus

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Today, I must postpone my intended next FTR, but I believe we will find very useful,  the Olin Foundation paper as captioned, with abstract:

>>Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation

Timur Kuran* and Cass R. Sunstein**
An  availability  cascade  is  a self-reinforcing process  of  collective  belief
formation  by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives
the perception  increasing plausibility  through its rising availability in public
discourse.  The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and
reputational  motives:  Individuals endorse  the perception partly  by  learning
from  the apparent  beliefs of  others  and partly  by  distorting their public  re-
sponses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance.  Availability entrepre-
neurs–activists  who manipulate the content of public  discourse-strive  to trig-
ger  availability cascades likely to  advance their agendas.  Their availability
campaigns  may yield  social  benefits, but  sometimes  they  bring  harm,  which
suggests a need for  safeguards.  Focusing on the role of mass pressures  in the
regulation of risk associated with production,  consumption, and the environ-
ment, Professors  Timur Kuran and  Cass R.  Sunstein analyze availability cas-
cades and suggest reforms to alleviate their potential hazards.  Their proposals
include new governmental structures designed to give civil servants better in-
sulation against mass demands for  regulatory change and an easily accessible
scientific database to reduce people S dependence on popular (mis)perceptions>>

In short, if you thought we are living in a Plato’s Cave world with manipulative shadow-shows, manipulated headlined “crises” and demand for acceptance of questionable agendas/ marches of folly or else, we are.

Video:

[youtube d2afuTvUzBQ]

Also, see the blog on the Acts 27 test. Also, this one on Critical Theory/ Neo-Marxism and activism.

In a day when folly demands to rule our lives, we need soundness to stand in the face of what seems the overwhelming, inevitable tide. END

PS: Series to date:

>>Let’s discuss: >> Elizabeth Liddle: I do not think the ID case holds up. I think it is undermined by [want of . . . ???] any evidence for the putative designer . . . >>

FYI-FTR*: Part 2, Is it so that >>If current models are inadequate (and actually all models are), and indeed we do not yet have good OoL models, that does not in itself make a case for design>>

FYI-FTR*: Part 3, Is it so, that >> . . . What undermines the “case for design” chiefly, is that there isn’t a case for a designer>>

FYI-FTR: Part 4, What about Paley’s self-replicating watch thought exercise?

FYI-FTR: Part 5, on evolutionary materialism, can a designer even exist?

FYI-FTR: Part 6, What about “howtwerdun” and “whodunit” . . . >>[the ID case has] no hypothesis about what the designer was trying to do, how she was doing it, what her capacities were, etc.>>

FYI-FTR: Part 7, But >>if you want to infer a designer as the cause of an apparent design, then you need to make some hypotheses about how, how, where and with what, otherwise you can’t subject your inference to any kind of test>>

FYI-FTR: Part 8, an objection — >>nobody has solved the OOL challenge from an ID perspective either. And they never will until ID proposes the nature of the Designer (AKA God) and the mechanisms used (AKA “poof). >>

FYI-FTR: Part 9, only fools dispute facts (and, Evolution is a fact, fact, FACT!)>>

FYI-FTR: Part 10, In reply to RTH — >>your FYI / FTR posts are a bad idea >> >>