Owl & Ibis - A Confluence Of Minds

Kudos to Ed Outlaw for his superb November 28, 2020 Owl and Ibis presentation, "Confirmation Bias/My Side Bias." A PDF copy of Ed's PowerPoint presentation is available here . Ed's points of argumentation were: 1a: Confirmation Bias is common and significant in the way people think about political issues on both sides in our current politically polarized environment. 1b:This is both a cause and an effect of political polarization, leading to a cycle that perpetuates a politically divided community. 2a: Understanding one’s own Confirmation Bias can make a person’s political beliefs stronger, better-founded, and more convicted (counterintuitively). 2b: While at the same time working against political polarization.   The discussion that followed explored a number of areas. Here are a few: - Ed's points of argumentation were unopposed. - When one is objectively on the "right" side (moral high ground) of a moral, political or social issue, is one a victim of ...

Kudos to Doug Nichols on his Saturday, October 31, 2020, Owl & Ibis – A Confluence of Minds presentation, “Our Responsibility for Climate Change Induced Migration.” In his multi-media presentation Doug began by focusing on human population growth and the increase of harmful climate change since the Industrial Revolution. He then informed the Confluence of the unintended consequences of these two major demographic and ecological transformations on human migration; and the ensuing impact of migration on the world’s political, economic, and existential present and future. A stimulating discussion followed where many facets of migration and climate change were explored. Notable was unanimous agreement that what was most urgently needed, of all options most likely to succeed, were cooperative global responses versus the now trending competitive nationalistic approaches. In closing, Doug presented his point of argumentation as follows: We should demand that the United States:   ...