This past week's class started off with a discussion about prioritizing solutions. How do you choose which problems you want to solve first. Most of the points brought up in Bjorn Lomborg's video on TED Talks were not new to me, just presented from an economist's perspective which was a new point of view for me. It was different because there did not seem to be any bias. An economist was able to normalize the questions and look at it in a pragmatic way, rather than putting forth biased opinions that specialized experts might contribute to the discussion.
The questions he raised about how we set priorities were brought to my attention a few years ago when I participated on a Model UN committee in high school. My committee was the World Health Organization and one of our debate topics was achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. These goals are a lists of problems that the UN wishes to conquer by the year 2015. Most of these issues are huge, and the question is how do you go about solving them in an effective way? Which ones do you start with?
My school was representing an African country (I don't remember which one, we had 6 different African countries throughout my years on Model UN) in the conference and I had to participate in the debate advocating for what my country would want to support. That threw a different perspective on the issue--not only did I have to answer which world problems should we solve first, but I had to take on an international persona (which reminded me of a section of Wrong that talked about how you cannot let your personal biases help you make judgments about how another country would respond to a given question)! It was a challenge for me as a high school student and now that I am analyzing the critical thinking decisions that go into making a non-biased judgment I can see just why those decisions were so difficult.
When working to tackle the problem of adverse fan behavior, we should take into account our biases and find a way to normalize the question--find a way to compare the different solutions that puts each one on an equal level so that they can be compared to find the best solution, or order of solutions to solving this problem.
The questions he raised about how we set priorities were brought to my attention a few years ago when I participated on a Model UN committee in high school. My committee was the World Health Organization and one of our debate topics was achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. These goals are a lists of problems that the UN wishes to conquer by the year 2015. Most of these issues are huge, and the question is how do you go about solving them in an effective way? Which ones do you start with?
My school was representing an African country (I don't remember which one, we had 6 different African countries throughout my years on Model UN) in the conference and I had to participate in the debate advocating for what my country would want to support. That threw a different perspective on the issue--not only did I have to answer which world problems should we solve first, but I had to take on an international persona (which reminded me of a section of Wrong that talked about how you cannot let your personal biases help you make judgments about how another country would respond to a given question)! It was a challenge for me as a high school student and now that I am analyzing the critical thinking decisions that go into making a non-biased judgment I can see just why those decisions were so difficult.
When working to tackle the problem of adverse fan behavior, we should take into account our biases and find a way to normalize the question--find a way to compare the different solutions that puts each one on an equal level so that they can be compared to find the best solution, or order of solutions to solving this problem.
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