Overview: Politics

I interviewed three prominent futurists---  about how business leaders can get themselves into a more future-oriented mindset.... they explain how companies and the people running them can learn to predict major shifts ...  in technology, workforce, social trends — and how to adapt accordingly... Read a ton, and consult experts... Futurists use t…

scholars’ assumptions about the value of academic research... has left us ill-equipped to navigate the stormy waters of evidence informed policy and practice. He proposes that instead we extract key insights from policy theories and use them to inform discussions about how to promote evidence use.

Take the Pro-Truth Pledge to encourage politicians – and everyone else – to commit to truth-oriented behaviors and protect facts and civility. ... Pledge-takers are held accountable through crowd-sourcing the truth.. volunteers who evaluate whether public figures violate the pledge by sharing misinformation.... this peer-reviewed article... Publ…

A place where users with radically different political opinions interact productively and politely, where a willingness to participate thoughtfully is the rule rather than the exception, and where people readily admit when their views on a subject have been altered... Reddit’s Change My View forum... promotes respectful conversation between people…

There are many grassroots communities emerging with vital understandings of the importance of continued EU membership... an agile swarm of passionate activist communities can run rings around a top-down Westminster-based operation and engage voters whom politicians cannot reach.... Such is the multifaceted nature of our EU membership that a single…

reddit community called Change My View ... a ready-made natural experiment ... feed it into programs ... to understand the back-and-forth between human beings ... discovered two things: what kind of arguments are most likely to change people’s minds, and what kinds of minds are most likely to be changed. https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/ : po…

naive realism, the tendency to believe that the other side is wrong because they are misinformed, that if they knew what you knew, they would change their minds to match yours... maybe WE are the ones who are wrong. We never go into the debate hoping to be enlightened, only to crush our opponents... When confronted with people who disagree, you te…

The European Citizens’ Consultations (ECCs) are a new experiment in improving the quality of democracy at the EU level by giving European citizens the possibility to express and exchange their opinions about the Union and its future.... This report presents the results of the research and analysis... the member states have stuck to the flexibilit…

This year, we are ... focusing on the strategic impact communities are having and how they are supporting key business goals.... three key findings: Communities are change agents... impact multiple functions, stakeholders, and departments ... agents of change by efficiently dispersing knowledge and information across organizations and their market…

the more fear a 4-year-old showed in a laboratory situation, the more conservative his or her political attitudes were found to be 20 years later... fear center of the brain, the amygdala, is actually larger in conservatives than in liberals.... no one had ever turned conservatives into liberals. Until we did.... Imagining being completely safe…

the psychology of warnings - why some warnings get heard, why many are ignored and the pitfalls of being a prophet.... a vicious cycle ... As the planet warms, the permafrost thaws... dead animals and plants and fungi start to decompose. More decomposition means more carbon released ... means warmer temperatures... even more melting of the permafr…

Celebrating a small milestone for the K4P project on Medium.

Every government has bureaucrats, who are by nature unelected. The EU, with about 33,000 civil servants, is dwarfed by the British ... 400,000. ... many senior ones are appointed rather than elected; yet this, too, is true of all governments.... the 28 commissioners ... are nominated by member countries and approved by the European Parliament, whi…

A workshop proposal for EuroPCom 2018 with @albawhitewolf, Mike Galsworthy (@Scientists4EU) and the original Captain Europe, reposted to Facebook by popular demand.

Latest on the K4P Medium Publication

political scientist Lilliana Mason ... new book, Uncivil Agreement ... we actually agree about most things... “our conflicts are over who we think we are, rather than reasoned differences of opinion... Our opinions can be very fluid... if we wanted to come to a compromise we could, if there were not these pesky identities in the way... we disagree…

the next iteration of technology applied to politics will be a huge leap forward with a greater ability to target people... address each of the 156 million of registered voters on the US with personalized messages.... a falsehood delivered in a personalized way is likely to be more efficient but less visible than a blatant lie put on Twitter; it w…

Technology has altered the foundations of news and media, and as trust in media continues to decline, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithms have come to play a critical role not only as threats to the integrity and quality of media, but also as a source of potential solutions. The core threats to information quality associated …

talk-show hosts like journalists ... know how to grab the brain’s attention and stimulate fear, sadness or anger.... We value the ancient power of storytelling, and we get that good stories require conflict, characters and scene. But in the present era of tribalism, it feels like we’ve reached our collective limitations... I met psychologists, med…

If Facebook is to thrive ... it’ll need to evolve. Here’s where we think it’s heading… developers and platforms ... will be unable to post content on behalf of personal Facebook profiles... can only post to business profiles and pages on both Facebook and Instagram... Facebook might be hoping that more unique content shared by users, reaching mor…

“So I and fellow Australian-in-Brussels Richard Medic decided to ask some friends to help answer a couple of questions: How can the EU support its superheroes, without destroying their credibility in the process? And under what conditions should it even try?”

The most powerful engine of elitism is the European Union... Founding Fathers of Europe deliberately removed a great deal of decision-making from the hands of the (nation-bounded and short-sighted) public... Confronted with popular revolts against the rule of experts they have simply dug in their heels... For the EU, technocratic decision-making …

Contribute to EU policy and law-making by giving your feedback on Commission initiatives as they take shape. You can also make suggestions on simplifying and improving existing laws. Subscribe to receive notifications on topics or initiatives of interest to you.  

the Knowledge Pyramid... DIKW pyramid, it features data as the basis and shows how information is built on it, then knowledge, and finally wisdom.... implies that the higher you go the better things get... What’s not to like? Well, just about everything.

To counter disinformation and revalue quality journalism we need a competitive ecosystem of credibility indexes to stimulate innovation and avoid a Ministry of Truth, de facto or otherwise.- more on Medium

May, 2018: the EU Commission’s cross-EC Knowledge4Policy platform for evidence-based policymaking goes live in Beta mode.

The endless search for rewards of the tribe, and the variability that often comes with it, are key components of ... Stack Overflow... over 5,000 questions are posted and answered daily... Many of these answers take hours to complete and require a high degree of technical expertise.... the site’s creators ... put usage limitations ... fear of crea…

the IFG publication charts ... are always topped by MINDSPACE – our guide to applying behavioural insights to policy... has attracted much overseas interest and has even inspired the establishment of a unit in the intellectual home of 'nudge' - the US... are people right to be concerned about the increasing interest of governments in applying beha…

Cambridge Analytica conducted data research for one of the leading Brexit campaign groups and then misled the public and MPs over the work ... the work with Leave.EU involved analysis of data provided by Ukip... Nix has repeatedly denied there was any involvement... "We have not undertaken any paid or unpaid work for them, OK?”... Leave.EU did no…

How should policies be made? Ideally by policy makers making decisions after weighing the facts and reconciling the different values that exist in plural democratic societies.Reality often looks different! Operating at both sides of the science-policy interface is made challenging due to the over-supply of knowledge on one side and the complexity …