Concepts:
Hedgehogs vs foxes
Tetlock study on expert judgement
Mankiw (2008) highlighted ones in the powerpoint
 Fiscal policy has a significant stimulative impact on a less than fully employed economy
(90%)
 A large federal budget deficit has an adverse effect on the economy (83%)
 If the federal budget is to be balanced, it should be done over the business cycle rather
than yearly (85%)
 Effluent taxes and marketable pollution permits represents a better approach to pollution
control than important of pollution ceilings (78%)
Confirmation Bias
 A type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and look for what confirms
one’s beliefs, and ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts
one’s beliefs (carroll 2003)
Biased information seeking
 (Kunda et al. 1993)
 Happy/unhappy, extroverted/introverted
 Find things in themselves that would confirm that rather than not. Finding past memories
Biased interpretation of information
 Lord et al (1979) study, capital punishment
 Given info for both sides of capital punishment, details make the thinker believe more
strongly in their beliefs
 Doesn’t matter if new information is given, people will interperte the information how
they please

Persistence of discredited belief
Rebound effect
Truthiness/Truthy
 The quality of stating facts that you believe or want to be true, rather than stating facts
that are known to be true
 Think with head, ignore your heart, anyone can relay the news at you
 Definition coined by Colbert
 Different form of confirmation bias
Echo Chamber effect
 Room, you only hear what you said yourself
 People tend to surround themselves with people that agree with them
Filter bubble


Book,
Results for when someone types in Egypt on their computer; results different for each
person based on cookies
 Online sources moving toward what we want to see not what we want to see
 Track your hits and customize based on that
Wason (1960) sequence of numbers exercise
 Three numbers, people generally copied the trend and didn’t stray for a while
Wason (1966) (1968) E K 4 7
 Correct answer “e” and “7”
 Generally wrong
 Looking to confirm not to disprove it
Kunda et al. (1993) study
 Finding importance on how a question is asked, happy/unhappy, introverted extroverted
 Looking for information that confirms the way the question is directed
Lord et al. (1979) study
 Given info on both sides of capital punishment
 Results overall are impactful but details make them stronger in their original
 In the end strengthened their views either way
Pious et al (1979) study
 Positions strengthed about nuclear power and nuclear missiles no matter which way they
swong
Nhyan and Reifler (2010) study
 Persistence of discredited belief
 Horizontal axis- subjects are either democratic or republican
 Vertical the real truth about Bush, go 0 to 1, then says you are more likely to have a
misperception, if you go down you are less likely to percieve the wrong
 Corrected information doesn’t change at all, conservatives shown data are more likely to
believe truth.
 Means that although the statement by Kerry was wrong, liberals will wants to confirm
their bias and ignore the truth, but republicans are more open to the truth since it is about
a republican candidate
 TAX STUDY
 Bush Claim:tax cuts stimulated economy (not true), conservatives more likely to believe
the wrong statement (BACKFIRE EFFECT-persistance of discredited belief, people tend
to believe in whatever they want to, not necessarily the truth, suggest lying pays off)
Westen et al (2006) study
 MRI experiment
 Again democrats and republicans, same results with backfire effect (lying portion of the
brain)
 More biased interpretation of information
 Results- subjects emotionally upset about by both politicians contradictions, neutralnothing

Subjects activated the anterior cingulated and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex brain circuits
only when confronted by their own candidate’s contradictory statements (oh shit and
delete key on when confronted by their own candidate’s contradictory statements

LaMarre et al study (2009)
 No difference as to if Colbert was funny
 Conservatives more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely
meant what he said
 Liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when
offering political statements
Krebs (2008)
Plagirism and ways of avoiding it
The figure below may help to guide your decisions.
 word for word plagiarism, paraphrasing
Laffer curve
 came about when advising Regean about taxes and revenue
 taxes go up with tax heights to a certain point, case in point, leave taxes alone because
they should increase because GDP increases each year
Hostile media phenomenon
Unconsicous bias
Various interpretation of gun-control evidence
Logical fallacies
 Post hoc, ergo propeter hoc fallacy, After it does not imply because of it
 Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, Correlation does not imply causation
False balance
 Correlated to Okrent’s Law
 Looking at who is involved and trying to get a more balanced view point on different
studies and such
Okrent’s Law
 “The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true.”
Blinder and Krueger (2004) study
 Sources of economic news, most get from television, then news papers then internet
 Magazies are most important as a news source
 Next best are economists then news papers
 People rely on tv yet it is one of the worst sources for economic news
Kull et al (2003) study
 Deals with Iraq, study shows that it was evenly split between the country whether Iraq’s
Saddam was associated with al Qaeda
 Majority people after the war had a better understanding that the US did not find weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq while about ¼ still had this impression
 The popularity of the war is spread as well as to if it was opposed or not
 Verifying facts- the more misperceptions they had about the war, the more they supported
it
 “appears that the media cannot necessarily be counted on to play the critical role of
doggedly challenging the administration

Vallone et al (1985) study
 Graph- pro-arab tend to think the media is biased towards Israel and same for pro-israel
 X-axis, self-knowledge more known about the topic
 Try to be balanced yet others will still claim that they are biased
Baum and Gussin (2007) study
 Hostile media phenomenon
 Showed logos of different groups (Fox and CNN), yet same exact clip to different
viewers
 Higher up on graph- more people thought news clip was biased towards Bush, liberals
thought more probush for fox.
 Liberal line higher than Republican line (tend to see more Bush)
 The lines are slanted due to confirmation bias
 The separation of lines due to each thought more of less than the other in general
Kellermen et al (1993) study
 Correlation does not imply causation
 Other factors involved that may change the situation
Economic literacy
Facts about reasons for Iraq war
 US has not found evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al
Qaeda terrorist organization
 US has not found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
 Majority of people oppose US having gone to war with Iraq
Political literacy facts
Facts on effect of tax cuts on tax revenues
Plato
Justice as moral book keeping
 A just man pays back his debts
 Terms used in banking tend to come about in this topic, If you do something good for me,
then I “owe” you, I am in “your debt”
Socratic method
 Using questions as a way of discovering (or trying to discover general truths or
principles) (ex: gov’t restrictions on drugs, alcohol, people, organs, monopolies)
 General principles- don’t allow trades that happen only because (the trade benefits the
buy and seller, but harms other parties, one party is in a vulnerable position, one part
thinks the trade will make them happy, but we know that it actually won’t happen.
Wisdom of crowds
 Democratic judgement of the common will be more useful, different variety with some
experts and not and the common will generally come to a close conclusion
Utopia
 British Philosopher Sir Thomas More (“not” “place”) nowhere, a fictional society
 Plato called it Kallipolis (beautiful city)

Plato’s ideal society
 Governed by the philosopher kings
 Most of us love material goods (should be consumers and producers)
 Some of us love honor (should be soldiers, guarding the city)
 A few of us love reason and knowledge (should govern the city)
Plato’s view on government
 Only philosophers understand true justice, which leads to true happiness, ordinary people
just follow their desires, which they think will make them happy, but ultimately doesn’t
 Ideal society wont last because bad apple will enter into and war between kings to gain
more property, then timocracy (sooner or later honor goes out the door), then oligarchies
happen, then democracy because of inequality, then we go to anarchy with not rules, then
tyranny to instill control. Democracy is only one step less bad than Tyranny
Philosopher kings
 Aren’t allowed to own property or have families
Noble lies
 White lies or hiding information from the public for the better good (sometimes it isn’t
good for the public) (ex: Cuban missile crisis, Nixon: Watergate)
 Only permit deception in cases where citizens would (actually or in principle) agree to be
deceived for the stated purpose if necessary
 Safeguards: freedom of information act, legal protection of whistleblowers, active/free
press

Empathy
 Plato’s Ruler Empathy- philosopher kinds know better than their subjects what truly
makes those subjects happy.
Basic biographical facts about Plato
 Lived in Athens around 800 bc
 Student of Socrates
 Teacher of Aristotle
 Founder of the Academy, one of the first Western Universities
Galton exeperiment and main findings
Iowa Electronic markets
 Online website that allows general public to predict things coming and they are more
accurate than most other sources (especially “credited” or “specialist” websites)
Aristotle
Conservative ideology
Why Aristotle was a arguably a conservative
 How immeasurably greater is the pleasure, when a man feels a thing to be his own; for
surely the love of self is a feeling implanted by nature.
 One common thread running through all conservative argument is an anxiety about
change and the urge to distinguish between unnatural and natural change. The latter is
modeled on continous organic growth, rather than on disjointed, mechanical leaps and
bounds.
Aristotle’s views on slavery and on a women
 Slavery: For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by
nature intended to be lord and master, and that which can
with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by
nature a slave.”
 Views on women: the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one
rules, and the other is ruled
Basic biographical facts about Aristotle
 Lived in Athens around 350 BC
 Student at Plato’s Academy
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
Teacher of Alexander the Great
Founder of the Lyceum
Federal budget deficit 2011-$1.1 Trillion
Federal min wage- 7.25$
Social security benefit- 1,153$/month, social security expenditures already exceed social security
tax receipts
Percentage of Americans that do not have health insurance 15.7%
Quality news source- focuses on important news, verifies the accuracy of any factual claims,
uses only expert sources, promptly corrects any errors, discloses any conflicts of interest,
presents a balance of viewpoints
Final responsibility to decide if a law is consititutional or not- Supreme Court
Political part that dominate the States senate- Democrat
Nominates judges to the US Supreme Court- President
Who must approve for a international treaty to become law in US- the senate and the president
Elena Kagan- Supreme Court Justice
Reason tax revenue increases- a constant 18% income-tax share, steadily increasing GDP