Re: [asa] Re: short question on the environment stuff

On 1/6/07, Dawsonzhu@aol.com <Dawsonzhu@aol.com> wrote:

>"...So emissions from cars (due to regulation which our resident
>troll faithfully ignores) probably have diminished since the early 70s.

@ Walter Lippman: "Where all think alike, no one thinks very much."

Since I'm the only "regular" poster here who doesn't think in
lock-step with the majority of you, I assume you're referring to me
as "the resident troll".

If you think I've "faithfully ignored regulation", either you haven't
been paying attention, or you are deliberately ignoring what I
advocate and posted in the recent past, to wit:

Our efforts to reduce, control and remediate pollution should achieve
real environmental benefits.
"The term pollution is applied to a vast array of substances and
conditions that vary greatly in their effect on man. It is used to
describe fatal threats to human health, as well as to describe
physically harmless conditions that fall short of someone's aesthetic
ideal. Pollutants occur naturally or can be a by-product of
technology. Their origin does not determine their degree of threat.
Most carcinogens, for example, occur naturally but do not engender
popular fear to the same degree that man-made carcinogens do.
Microbiological pollutants, bacteria and viruses, though natural, are
by far the most injurious form of pollution. Technology and its
byproducts must be respected but not feared. Science is an invaluable
tool for rationally weighing risks to human health or assessing and
measuring other environmental impacts. Health and well-being are our
primary environmental measures. Science also provides a means of
considering the costs and benefits of actions designed to reduce,
control and remediate pollution or other environmental impacts so
that we may have a cleaner, healthier and safer environment.
..." http://web.archive.org/web/20050306053745/http://www.nwi.org/ACE.html

FYI:

Incompetence and the Failure of Feedback
One puzzling aspect of our results is how the incompetent fail,
through life experience, to learn that they are unskilled. This is
not a new puzzle. Sullivan, in 1953 , marveled at "the failure of
learning which has left their capacity for fantastic, self-centered
delusions so utterly unaffected by a life-long history of educative
events" (p. 80). With that observation in mind, it is striking that
our student participants overestimated their standing on academically
oriented tests as familiar to them as grammar and logical reasoning.
Although our analysis suggests that incompetent individuals are
unable to spot their poor performances themselves, one would have
thought negative feedback would have been inevitable at some point in
their academic career. So why had they not learned?

One reason is that people seldom receive negative feedback about
their skills and abilities from others in everyday life ( Blumberg,
1972 ; Darley & Fazio, 1980 ; Goffman, 1955 ; Matlin & Stang, 1978 ;
Tesser & Rosen, 1975 ). Even young children are familiar with the
notion that "if you do not have something nice to say, don't say
anything at all." Second....some tasks and settings preclude people
from receiving self-correcting information that would reveal the
suboptimal nature of their decisions ( Einhorn, 1982 ). Third, even
if people receive negative feedback, they still must come to an
accurate understanding of why that failure has occurred. The problem
with failure is that it is subject to more attributional ambiguity
than success. For success to occur, many things must go right: The
person must be skilled, apply effort, and perhaps be a bit lucky. For
failure to occur, the lack of any one of these components is
sufficient. Because of this, even if people receive feedback that
points to a lack of skill, they may attribute it to some other factor
( Snyder, Higgins, & Stucky, 1983 ; Snyder, Shenkel, & Lowery, 1977 ).

Finally, Study 3 showed that incompetent individuals may be unable to
take full advantage of one particular kind of feedback: social
comparison. One of the ways people gain insight into their own
competence is by watching the behavior of others ( Festinger, 1954 ;
Gilbert, Giesler & Morris, 1995 ). In a perfect world, everyone could
see the judgments and decisions that other people reach, accurately
assess how competent those decisions are, and then revise their view
of their own competence by comparison. However, Study 3 showed that
incompetent individuals are unable to take full advantage of such
opportunities. Compared with their more expert peers, they were less
able to spot competence when they saw it, and as a consequence, were
less able to learn that their ability estimates were incorrect. .."

Excerpted from:
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's
Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
http://www.geocities.com/sgraessle/folder1/incomp.htm

~ Janice

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Received on Mon Jan 8 03:16:56 2007