#Social Science

[mindblowingscience]

A trio of business analysts at Duke University has found that people who use AI apps at work are perceived by their colleagues as less diligent, lazier and less competent than those who do not use them. In their study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jessica Reif, Richard Larrick and Jack Soll carried out four online experiments asking 4,400 participants to imagine they were in scenarios in which some workers used AI and some did not, and how they viewed themselves or others working under such circumstances.

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[secondwheel]

Who else agrees? A similar post for the programming languages

[enslavingyou]

A female has no power but that which Men allow it.

A 'strong woman' is the ultimate social construct.

A female can be 'feisty', 'strong', 'noisy', 'awkward', 'difficult'; it can 'take up space'; it can 'lead', and even be a 'domme' ... Until a Man punches it in the face.

Then it's none of those things.

Then it's just a cunt.

[athinellis]

The tragedy in 1984 is that they do not actually kill the protagonist in the end but they kill him as an individual. And the final step to do so is not by destroying something directly related to himself but by destroying his feelings for another person. The final step to destroy a human being is to destroy their love.

[kundusaysthings]

Jason Todd fic idea

Jason rises from his grave, wanders into and around Gotham, is rescued by Talia, is taken to the League, hangs around being non-verbal and minimally self-sufficient, gets dunked in the best/worst natural spring, comes back rejuvenated.

He comes back with near-total amnesia. He remembers flashes of his death, of flying, and of a long, black cape. He has one clear memory - a large man, dressed in a dark costume, telling him that he is not Jason's father, that he doesn't need teenage rebellion.

Jason decides that given the nature of the memory, and Talia's offer of a place in exchange for guarding her son, he'll stay where he is. He is eventually led to the All-Caste, where he gains a taste for moral philosophy and a desire for formal education so that he can explain to Ducra why staying in a cave to cultivate a cult for fighting immortal monsters does not, in fact, solve the problem of evil.

He takes his A levels (since the November exams are a good way to graduate faster) and goes to university. Probably Oxford/Cambridge. Narratively, I'm going for a prestigious institute with credibility both in biotech and in philosophy/social sciences that is outside North America. This is to indicate that despite Jason's talent, Talia's connections were crucial in getting a seat. My hadcanon is that Talia is the most talented biotechnologist on the planet, it's just that Ra's in his obsession with eternal life has ignored her daughter's actual abilities and ideas.

He learns about effective social policy and graduates wanting to change the world with this newfound knowledge. He also learns that he is gay. His choice in boyfriends causes Talia much distress. (She maintains that they were all bad influences. Ronnie crashed his car twice in one semester.)

Once he's back, he convinces Talia that the three of them need to get out. Using whatever plot mechanics are convenient, Talia ends up in Metropolis heading Head Industries, and has to take Damian with herself. She can either try to hide him from Bruce, or rip the band-aid off and let him know.

It is decided that Damian will live with Bruce for a few years. Jason is there as a bodyguard. Jason is given a small brief about Bruce Wayne, and the three of them go to drop Damian and Jason off at Wayne Manor.

It's a weekend. The Bats are eating breakfast together when the summons come through.

The Bats see Batman Junior and have a collective freak-out. They may or may not recognize Jason. The standard fanon first interaction between Damian and the Bats happens. Jason provides unhelpful commentary as he watches Batman struggle to complete a single normal exchange with his newfound son.

Then Jason turns to Talia and tells her:

"You can no longer complain about my taste in men."

Talia raises an eyebrow.

"You had a kid with that guy."

Before Talia or Bruce can muster a response, Jason adds: "He can't be good enough in bed to justify that level of unearned privilege. Even the Eton kids at Oxford were better than this. Hell, I'm sure Ronnie was better than this."

"Ronnie picked up 12 points on his license in-"

"Your beloved has no idea what milk costs. Ronnie never stooped to that level."

The Batkids laugh out loud. Bruce is dumbstruck. Talia sighs.

[poetry-protest-pornography]

Hard science majors trying to plan and execute a social science experiment:

*laughs in anthropologist*

[licorice-and-rum]

SOC and Neoliberlism

So, as promised, here it is my analysis of Six of Crows and how neoliberalism is amazingly portrayed in Ketterdam, and how the city is an example of what happens in a community that is not provided for.

Before we begin, I wanted to say that English is not my first language, and, considering I read SOC in Brazilian Portuguese, I might translate some names literally or differently from the English version but I think it's manageable to read and understand my point. If not, I'll edit the text.

The first thing we have to understand is how neoliberalism works and the theory behind it, and then we'll talk about how it's portrayed in Ketterdam.

So neoliberalism is a theory born more or less at the end of the 20th century (70s-80s), and it finds its roots in laissez-faire capitalism, meaning that it's a political current that tries to suppress and/or eliminate the State's influence from the market. The neoliberalist view understands that the market can supply by itself the population's needs without help or limitations imposed by the State.

The thing here is that most people listen to this and think neoliberalism is about electronics, cars, and other stuff. The truth is, that neoliberalism aims to suppress the presence of State-run facilities in ALL corners of society, such as health care, housing, water access, electricity, etcetera.

So, we can use the American and Brazillian health systems to understand it better, for example:

In the US, the ones providing health care for the population are great corporations - they decide the price of care, they work together with pharmaceutical companies to define medicine prices, and the laws that bind them are pretty much only offer and demand. There is almost none State intervention to provide the population with accessible health care.

However, this brings problems, of course: not everyone (actually, most people) has real access to health care simply because they can't afford it, or they can't afford it without taking a big financial hit, which threatens their other basic needs, such as food, housing, water, electricity, etcetera. Not everyone can provide for their medical needs, such as diabetic and disabled people.

That leads to:

(a) an increase in poverty;

(b) a decrease in educational levels - if you don't have the means to pay for higher educational levels because of health care debt, or if you're sick and need to go to class and tough through it but you're not really learning anything, and so on, which leads to a major workforce in base level production and a minor class who has access to this education;

(c) an increase in overworking people - meaning that we have a lot of people taking on several jobs to be able to pay for things like health care, which increases the competitiveness between people, making individualism levels go up and breaking up human beings' natural sense of community.

I could also talk here about how this breeds isolation and increases the potential for mental health problems but I think you got what I was saying.

On the other hand, we have the Brazilian health care system (SUS), which is a universal gratuitous medical care service through the whole country. Its purpose is not profit, it's providing health care for the community, so therefore, any SUS unit is bound by State law and run by the State. By law, every SUS unit must provide for anyone who enters its premises in need of medical care. Everyone, Brazillian and foreigners, poor or rich, must be treated if they need to. It's the law.

Of course, that doesn't mean it's all rainbows and flowers, there are definitely many problems in SUS. However, what I'm trying to showcase here is that, when the needs of a population are met, the population itself is more resilient, their life quality goes up and so does their participation in their community.

On the other hand, in neoliberalism, when the State is absent from these areas of community service, the market is, in theory, the one providing for the community. In practice, however, what we observe from neoliberal policies in cities with a great poor population in Latam for example, is that when the State doesn't provide for the community, the market is unable to step up for them because of their obscene prices.

The poor population that doesn't have their needs met by the State or the market sees a great boom in criminal activities within their spaces. That's mainly why criminal organizations are so present in slums and favelas throughout Latin America: criminal organizations are a way for the community to provide for themselves and, as a means to become more powerful, they provide for the community in exchange for their services (not to say they do that for the good of their hearts, of course not).

It's why it's so common, for example, that criminal organizations such as PCC in Brazil pay for kids from favelas to undergo Law school, for example.

And that's is where I wanted to go to start the conversation in SOC: one of the main traits of Ketterdam is the Barrel and, in the Barrel, we have the presence of many criminal organizations, such as the Dregs, the Dime Lions, the Menagerie staff (not the girls, ofc), etcetera.

This, as observed by Kaz himself, is one of the only ways to survive on the Barrel - you filiate yourself to a gang because you need to be able to provide for yourself and, more times than others, for your family as well.

Kaz's story is actually a perfect example of how Ketterdam is the representation of America in the early 20th century in full policies of laissez-faire (neoliberalism): as we can see in Titanic and many other historical fictions, the said American Dream had people believing the US to be this economical paradise where they could all enter the market and become millionaires.

The result of it is the Great Depression, of course, but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

When Kaz and Jodi leave Lij for Ketterdam, Jodi believes he'll become a merchant - which is a pretty common belief of those who arrive at Ketterdam, as Pekka Rollins and Kaz himself state in Crooked Kingdom.

The reality of it, though, is much harsher, because the truth is that when you have a market that controls everything, as we see in Ketterdam with the Merchant's Guild (I think that's how it's translated?) and the Stadwatch as a police force, you see perfectly how neoliberal policies really work in real life:

You have a higher class who controls the market and the riches (question: who do you think got the money Shu Han sent to Ketterdam at the beginning of the first book: the people of the city/country or the merchants in the "government"?), and a lower class that, without support from the State or the market to have their needs met will turn to their own means to do so.

So you have the trafficking that brought Inej to the island, the unlimited gambling that Jesper was trapped in, the cons Jodi and Kaz fell for - it's all product of liberal policies.

And so, you have Ketterdam and its neoliberal policies (:

(I really love to make this kind of analysis, please, if you have something you want me to talk about, don't hesitate to ask)

[mindblowingscience]

Well-being increases when working hours are reduced—while productivity remains the same or even increases moderately. This was supported by a Germany-wide study conducted by the University of Münster under the scientific direction of Professor Dr. Julia Backmann and co-led by Dr. Felix Hoch. "The four-day week led to a significant positive change in life satisfaction, which was mainly due to the additional free time," remarked the researcher. Before the pilot project, 64% of the employees therefore expressed the desire to spend more time with their families. After the introduction of the four-day week, this figure was reduced to 50%.

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[mindblowingscience]

A "copy" of the Magna Carta, the medieval English document that has formed the basis of constitutions around the world, owned by Harvard Law School is actually an exceedingly rare original, British researchers said Thursday. Experts from King's College London and the University of East Anglia (UEA) said the document, which the US institution acquired in the 1940s for $27.50, is just one of seven from King Edward I's issue of Magna Carta in 1300 that still survive. The Magna Carta is seen as a precursor of democracy and the basis of legal systems across the world as well as human rights conventions.

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[mindblowingscience]

Lesbian, gay and bisexual people experience exclusion more frequently than heterosexual people. This is the finding of a recent study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by researchers from the University of Basel and the RPTU University of Kaiserslautern-Landau. According to the study, people who are perceived as less gender-conforming are more frequently socially excluded. This could also affect heterosexual people if they deviate from traditional gender roles. In three studies with a total of more than 3,200 participants in Germany and the U.S., the research team investigated the experiences of exclusion of sexual minorities.

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