by Carl Howard | Mar 22, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Race, Society
Yesterday I posted about how compassion can be problematic in philanthropy. The “don’t donate to Japan” clusterfuck is a great example. It started with Good Intentions Are Not Enough suggesting that people wait to donate to Japan, to see if and how much is needed and...
by Carl Howard | Mar 16, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Race, Society
[ADDED on 6th Oct 2015]: This post is more about the subjective coverage of the two disasters as I’ve experience in the media, not about donations pledged by international organisations or similar outcomes. In the previous post, I mentioned some of the ways in which...
by Carl Howard | Mar 15, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Race, Society
[UPDATE: follow-up post here] There has been a huge reaction to the Japan earthquake in terms of media coverage, personal condolences and anguish on social media etc etc. While that’s a good thing I’m very dismayed at how much less support was shown in the Haiti...
by Carl Howard | Mar 15, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Race, Society
There has been a huge reaction to the Japan earthquake in terms of media coverage, personal condolences and anguish on social media etc etc. While that’s a good thing I’m very dismayed at how much less support was shown in the Haiti earthquake especially considering...
by Carl Howard | Nov 21, 2008 | Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Ethics, Race, Society
Racism is often attributed solely to the political right. Sure, there’s a lot of right-wing racists. But there’s a lot of racism on the left too. Yes it’s usually more subtle. But I wouldn’t assume that the left has a much lower percentage of racists than the right....
by Carl Howard | Jun 5, 2008 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Philosophy, Race, Science and Skepticism
It’s common to think of the idea that babies are caused by sex as sort of the ultimate Obvious Idea. When someone wants to make fun of another’s naivety or ignorance they will sometimes quip “he/she thinks babies come from storks”. This concept even gets the grandiose...