Confident Horror

America Sanitises The Horror Of Its Wars

Noam Chomsky | LitHub | 16th October 2024 | U

Chomsky is still writing at 95, albeit now with the assistance of co-author Nathan J. Robinson. This extract from their latest book looks at the ways in which the US has "curated" accounts of its post-war military exploits to hide their full impact from citizens. "Americans are never shown what it actually looks like when a US drone strike hits a wedding party, or a child is crushed by a US tank" (1,800 words)

Ignorant But Confident

John Timmer | Ars Technica | 15th October 2024 | U

On the illusion of adequate information, a corollary to the Dunning-Kruger effect. People tend to believe that they have enough data to make an informed decision, regardless of the information they actually have. This leads to an unearned confidence in their conclusions. The good news: people do change their minds once given more information. You can find the highly readable research article here (1,200 words)