Month: January 2021

Why Status Matters for Inequality – Cecilia L. Ridgeway, 2014

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122413515997

Abstract

“To understand the mechanisms behind social inequality, this address argues that we need to more thoroughly incorporate the effects of status—inequality based on differences in esteem and respect—alongside those based on resources and power. As a micro motive for behavior, status is as significant as money and power. At a macro level, status stabilizes resource and power inequality by transforming it into cultural status beliefs about group differences regarding who is “better” (esteemed and competent). But cultural status beliefs about which groups are “better” constitute group differences as independent dimensions of inequality that generate material advantages due to group membership itself. Acting through micro-level social relations in workplaces, schools, and elsewhere, status beliefs bias evaluations of competence and suitability for authority, bias associational preferences, and evoke resistance to status challenges from low-status group members. These effects accumulate to direct members of higher status groups toward positions of resources and power while holding back lower status group members. Through these processes, status writes group differences such as gender, race, and class-based life style into organizational structures of resources and power, creating durable inequality. Status is thus a central mechanism behind durable patterns of inequality based on social differences.”

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*** Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era | Daniel Levitin | Talks at Google

Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era | Daniel Levitin | Talks at Google

https://youtu.be/3hK7Gd8UgmI

“Last time I was here, I said that I thought that regular Google search–I had just been told in the lunch that I had before I came here last time that Google was very proud of the fact that when they first started out– well, when you first started out, when Google was in a dorm room effectively– and you searched Google in the early days, you had to scroll down quite a ways

before you would find the thing you were really looking for.

And Google has been working tirelessly of course,
to make the thing you’re really looking for the first hit on the list, so that you’re not wasting time.

And there’s been a lot of discussion about how, because Google knows your IP address, whether you’re signed in or not, and it knows your search history, it tends to tailor the results for you.

So if I were to search for something about climate change, I might get a very different result than you get, searching about climate change, depending on the kinds of things we’ve clicked on in the past. I might never get any of your results, and you might never get any of mine.

 And so I wonder what you all think I’d be curious to know your feelings about how or whether this has contributed to
this echo chamber phenomenon that we’ve been accused of living in, this bubble phenomenon that we’re only hearing views that support our own views.

And we’re not being exposed to what the great promise of the internet was. The great democratizing force was that for once and for all we could have a free marketplace of ideas. You could encounter any idea that was out there and judge it for yourself.”

 

Creating a Community of Practice