By Stephen Gassman and David A. Martindale
New York Law Journal
Originally published August 29, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
As is evident from the decision, the trial court found the mother misused numerous mental health professionals in pursuit of her goal of cutting the father out of the child's life. While accepting the evaluator's findings and most of his conclusions concerning the mother's ongoing alienation, the court did not adopt the evaluator's specific recommendation on the ultimate issue of what custodial arrangement would serve the child's best interests.
The court carefully delineated its reasons for so doing, articulating those facts of which the evaluator had been unaware. Particularly noteworthy is the court's statement that one of the "salient facts revealed during the course of the Hearing" and, therefore, unknown to the evaluator, was that the mother had "received extensive—over 50 hours—of preparation for her forensic interview…from…Dr. Jonathan Gould," a well-known forensic consultant from North Carolina. Justice Colangelo stated that this intensive preparation was "to the detriment of [the mother's] position…." in terms of assessing credibility.
The entire article is here.
Showing posts with label Manipulation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manipulation. Show all posts
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Monday, August 18, 2014
When Cupid fires arrows double-blind: implicit informed agreement for online research?
By Anders Sandberg
Practical Ethics
Originally posted on Jul 31, 2014
A while ago Facebook got into the news for experimenting on its subscribers, leading to a fair bit of grumbling. Now the dating site OKCupid has proudly outed itself: We Experiment On Human Beings! Unethical or not?
(cut)
The harm angle is more interesting. While Facebook affected the emotions slightly on people who might not have expected emotional manipulation, OKCupid is all about emotions and emotion-laden social interaction. People date because of the site. People have sex because of the site. People marry because of the site. Potentially manipulations could have far more far reaching consequences on OKCupid than on Facebook.
The entire blog post is here.
Practical Ethics
Originally posted on Jul 31, 2014
A while ago Facebook got into the news for experimenting on its subscribers, leading to a fair bit of grumbling. Now the dating site OKCupid has proudly outed itself: We Experiment On Human Beings! Unethical or not?
(cut)
The harm angle is more interesting. While Facebook affected the emotions slightly on people who might not have expected emotional manipulation, OKCupid is all about emotions and emotion-laden social interaction. People date because of the site. People have sex because of the site. People marry because of the site. Potentially manipulations could have far more far reaching consequences on OKCupid than on Facebook.
The entire blog post is here.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Furor Erupts Over Facebook's Experiment on Users
By Reed Albergotti
The Wall Street Journal
Originally published June 30, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
The research, published in the March issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sparked a different emotion - outrage - among some people who say Facebook toyed with its users emotions and uses members as guinea pigs.
"What many of us feared is already a reality: Facebook is using us as lab rats, and not just to figure out which ads we'll respond to but actually change our emotion," wrote Animalnewyork.com, a blog post that drew attention to the study Friday morning.
Facebook has long run social experiments. Its Data Science Team is tasked with turning the reams of information created by the more than 800 million people who log on every day into usable scientific research.
The entire article is here.
The Wall Street Journal
Originally published June 30, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
The research, published in the March issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sparked a different emotion - outrage - among some people who say Facebook toyed with its users emotions and uses members as guinea pigs.
"What many of us feared is already a reality: Facebook is using us as lab rats, and not just to figure out which ads we'll respond to but actually change our emotion," wrote Animalnewyork.com, a blog post that drew attention to the study Friday morning.
Facebook has long run social experiments. Its Data Science Team is tasked with turning the reams of information created by the more than 800 million people who log on every day into usable scientific research.
The entire article is here.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Facebook’s Unethical Experiment
It intentionally manipulated users’ emotions without their knowledge.
By Katy Waldman
Slate
Originally published on June 28, 2014
Facebook has been experimenting on us. A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that Facebook intentionally manipulated the news feeds of almost 700,000 users in order to study “emotional contagion through social networks.”
The researchers, who are affiliated with Facebook, Cornell, and the University of California–San Francisco, tested whether reducing the number of positive messages people saw made those people less likely to post positive content themselves. The same went for negative messages: Would scrubbing posts with sad or angry words from someone’s Facebook feed make that person write fewer gloomy updates?
They tweaked the algorithm by which Facebook sweeps posts into members’ news feeds, using a program to analyze whether any given textual snippet contained positive or negative words. Some people were fed primarily neutral to happy information from their friends; others, primarily neutral to sad. Then everyone’s subsequent posts were evaluated for affective meanings.
The entire story is here.
By Katy Waldman
Slate
Originally published on June 28, 2014
Facebook has been experimenting on us. A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that Facebook intentionally manipulated the news feeds of almost 700,000 users in order to study “emotional contagion through social networks.”
The researchers, who are affiliated with Facebook, Cornell, and the University of California–San Francisco, tested whether reducing the number of positive messages people saw made those people less likely to post positive content themselves. The same went for negative messages: Would scrubbing posts with sad or angry words from someone’s Facebook feed make that person write fewer gloomy updates?
They tweaked the algorithm by which Facebook sweeps posts into members’ news feeds, using a program to analyze whether any given textual snippet contained positive or negative words. Some people were fed primarily neutral to happy information from their friends; others, primarily neutral to sad. Then everyone’s subsequent posts were evaluated for affective meanings.
The entire story is here.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence
In some jobs, being in touch with emotions is essential. In others, it seems to be a detriment. And like any skill, being able to read people can be used for good or evil.
Adam Grant
The Atlantic
Originally published January 2, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
Emotional intelligence is important, but the unbridled enthusiasm has obscured a dark side. New evidence shows that when people hone their emotional skills, they become better at manipulating others. When you’re good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests.
Social scientists have begun to document this dark side of emotional intelligence. In emerging research led by University of Cambridge professor Jochen Menges, when a leader gave an inspiring speech filled with emotion, the audience was less likely to scrutinize the message and remembered less of the content. Ironically, audience members were so moved by the speech that they claimed to recall more of it.
The authors call this the awestruck effect, but it might just as easily be described as the dumbstruck effect. One observer reflected that Hitler’s persuasive impact came from his ability to strategically express emotions—he would “tear open his heart”—and these emotions affected his followers to the point that they would “stop thinking critically and just emote.”
The entire story is here.
Adam Grant
The Atlantic
Originally published January 2, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
Emotional intelligence is important, but the unbridled enthusiasm has obscured a dark side. New evidence shows that when people hone their emotional skills, they become better at manipulating others. When you’re good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests.
Social scientists have begun to document this dark side of emotional intelligence. In emerging research led by University of Cambridge professor Jochen Menges, when a leader gave an inspiring speech filled with emotion, the audience was less likely to scrutinize the message and remembered less of the content. Ironically, audience members were so moved by the speech that they claimed to recall more of it.
The authors call this the awestruck effect, but it might just as easily be described as the dumbstruck effect. One observer reflected that Hitler’s persuasive impact came from his ability to strategically express emotions—he would “tear open his heart”—and these emotions affected his followers to the point that they would “stop thinking critically and just emote.”
The entire story is here.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
The Crazy Things That One Whistleblower Says Are Happening At JP Morgan Will Blow Your Mind
By Michael Snyder
Hawaii News Daily
Originally published March 16, 2012
Rampant silver manipulation?
Rampant gold manipulation?
Rampant LIBOR manipulation?
Hiding MF Global client assets?
These are all happening at JP Morgan according to an open letter reportedly written by an anonymous employee of the firm. The whistleblower also warns of a "cascading credit event being triggered" by derivatives related to Greek government debt.
Unlike Greg Smith at Goldman Sachs, this whistleblower has chosen to remain anonymous for now. According to the letter, the whistleblower is still an employee of JP Morgan and has not resigned. But that does make it much more difficult to confirm what he is saying. With Greg Smith, we know exactly who he is and what he was doing at Goldman. As far as this anonymous whistleblower is concerned, all we have is this letter. So we must take it with a grain of salt. However, the information in this letter does agree with what whistleblowers such as Andrew Maguire have said in the past about silver manipulation by JP Morgan. And this letter does mention Greg Smith's resignation from Goldman, so we know that it must have been written in the past few days. Hopefully this letter will cause authorities to take a much closer look at the crazy things that are going on over at JP Morgan and the other big Wall Street banks.
This anonymous letter was addressed to the CFTC, but unfortunately it looks like the CFTC has already chosen to ignore it.
The original letter from this anonymous whistleblower has already been taken down from the CFTC website. When you go there now, all you get is this message....
"The Comment Cannot Be Found. Please Return to the Previous Page and Try Again."
Fortunately, there are many in the alternative media that copied this entire letter from the CFTC website.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Reviewing Autonomy
Implications of the Neurosciences and the Free Will Debate for the Principle of Respect for the Patient's Autonomy
Sabine Muller & Henrik Walter. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. New York: Apr 2010. Vol. 19, Iss. 2; pg. 205, 13 pgs
Introduction
Beauchamp and Childress have performed a great service by strengthening the principle of respect for the patient's autonomy against the paternalism that dominated medicine until at least the 1970s. Nevertheless, we think that the concept of autonomy should be elaborated further. We suggest such an elaboration built on recent developments within the neurosciences and the free will debate. The reason for this suggestion is at least twofold: First, Beauchamp and Childress neglect some important elements of autonomy. Second, neuroscience itself needs a conceptual apparatus to deal with the neural basis of autonomy for diagnostic purposes. This desideratum is actually increasing because modern therapy options can considerably influence the neural basis of autonomy itself.Beauchamp and Childress analyze autonomous actions in terms of normal choosers who act (1) intentionally, (2) with understanding, and (3) without controlling influences (coercion, persuasion, and manipulation) that determine their actions. 1 In terms of the free will debate, the absence of external controlling influences, their third criterion, corresponds to the freedom of action: to do what one wants to do without being hindered to do so. Criteria one and two are related to volition: that a choice is intentional, that is, that it has a certain goal that is properly understood by the person choosing.
According to Beauchamp and Childress, the principle of autonomy implies that patients have the right to choose between different medical therapy options taking into account risks and benefits as well as their personal situation and individual values. To enable an autonomous decision the procedure of informed consent 2 has been developed. This procedure has become the gold standard in almost every part of medicine. Importantly, Beauchamp and Childress demand respect for a patient's autonomy under the premise that the patient is able to act in a sufficiently autonomous manner. 3 The crucial question in a special situation is whether this is the case.
Let us consider the example of the recent controversial discussion of Body Integrity Identity disorder: 4 If a patient asks a physician to amputate one of his legs although it neither hurts nor is deformed, paralyzed, or ugly (in the patient's view), and if the patient understands the consequences of the amputation and is not controlled by external influences, then one could deduce from the principle of respect for the patient's autonomy that the physician should amputate the leg. Although some commentators regard this as self-evident, we think that the case is not yet made, as it is important which internal processes have led to the wish of the patient.
We propose to add a fourth criterion for autonomous actions, namely, freedom of internal coercive influences. In the case of the patient who desires an amputation, it would have to be investigated whether his decision is based on internal coercion. Clear examples for that would be an acute episode of schizophrenia or a brain tumor. More controversial are neurotic beliefs, obsession and compulsion, severe personality disorders, or neurological dysfunctions not accessible with conventional diagnostic tools.
Although Beauchamp and Childress have not elaborated the principle of autonomy with regard to internal coercions, they clearly argue that the obligations to respect autonomy do not apply to persons who show a substantial lack of autonomy because they are immature, incapacitated, ignorant, coerced, or exploited, for example, infants, irrationally suicidal individuals, severely demented subjects, or drug-dependent patients. 5 But these kinds of patients are treated in medical ethics as exceptions and therefore as marginal cases. They are not considered to be important for the formulation of the principles.
The rest of the article can be found here. Without access to PubMed.gov, it is not available for free. A university library may also be helpful in reading the entire article.
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