“I lived on a day-to-day basis. … [M]ost guys thought it was really better for everybody to be an optimist. I wasn’t naturally that way; I knew too much about the politics of Asia when I got shot down. I think there was a lot of damage done by optimists; other writers from other wars share that opinion. The problem is, some people believe what professional optimists are passing out and come unglued when their predictions don’t work out.”
The Stockdale Paradox—have faith, but confront reality—can be seen in slightly different forms in many cultures.
Stockdale himself was a follower of the ancient Greek Stoic philosophers, who were noted for their concern with understanding reality correctly and shaping one’s response to it optimally. The maxim of Epictetus, “What, then, is to be done? To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it naturally happens,” has similarities to both Buddhist doctrine and the Alcoholics Anonymous Serenity Prayer. (“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference”). Therapy techniques such as radical acceptance similarly emphasize the point of letting go of desires and beliefs about what should be and seeing reality as it is.
In the words of Marsha Linehan, the founder of radical acceptance: “Radical acceptance doesn’t mean you don’t try to change things … You can’t change anything if you don’t accept it, because if you don’t accept it, you’ll try to change something else that you think is reality.”
Research by Leach and others indicates that people who survive disasters are able to regain cognitive function quickly after the event, assess their new environment accurately, and take goal-directed action to survive within it. This is the balance that the Stockdale Paradox facilitates: the realism to let go of intrinsic survival mechanisms and the deep-seated faith to learn the new ones.
the pattern of human response to disasters has been shown to be remarkably consistent across cultures, and for disasters of many different causes, effects, and durations, from earthquakes to shipwrecks to kidnapping.
Advice and exercises for leaders
Begin meetings by having each person introduce themselves by their name, job title, mission, and their immediate tasks
This provides practical information to rescuers, but also has the effect of bringing people back to themselves and helping them begin to focus again.
One question should be regularly asked at meetings: “What is something that doesn’t fit in, that doesn’t make sense?”
Normalize admitting these mistakes and analyzing them. Discuss weak spots, harm reduction, and damage control—people will sometimes fall when traveling uncertain terrain, so how can they fall without injuring themselves?
Create ways for your team to surface both their deep faith and their real fears.
In mental contrasting, a person:
Visualizes a goal and its rewards, and then
Visualizes what obstacles—including their own behavior—stand between them and their goal. (It is important to do it in this order.)
In their paper on the Stockdale Paradox, authors C. W. Von Bergen and Martin S. Bressler point to previous studies that show when people focus on only positive thoughts about the future, “they literally trick their minds into thinking they have already succeeded and, so, do not need actual efforts to attain something perceived as already acquired.
This story reads as the one about Matthias Corvinus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Corvinus and Vlad Tepes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler or Vlad the Impaler., or Vlad Dracula.
After the Ottoman Empire attacked Vlad Tepes from the South, Matthias Corvinus, one of the recognized most educated sovereign in his times, start spreading rumors that Vlad sucks blood from his peasants, to spread demoralization, so he can expand to the East on account of Vlad Tepes’ lands.
My commissioned interpretation of Rembrandts Anatomy lesson using women medical students to represent the Edinburgh 7, the first women to study medicine in Britain 150 years ago but not then allowed to graduate. @EdinUniMedicine rightly granted them posthumous degrees last year. pic.twitter.com/Gg3DoTJIz3
according to Pew Research Center, 68 percent of American adults get their news from social media—platforms where opinion is often presented as fact.
results of the international test revealed that only 14 percent of U.S. students were able to reliably distinguish between fact and opinion.
News and Media Literacy (and the lack of) is not very different from Information Literacy
An “information literate” student is able to “locate, evaluate, and effectively use information from diverse sources.” See more About Information Literacy.
How does information literacy help me?
Every day we have questions that need answers. Where do we go? Whom can we trust? How can we find information to help ourselves? How can we help our family and friends? How can we learn about the world and be a better citizen? How can we make our voice heard?
Standard 1. The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed
Standard 2. The information literate student accesses needed information effectively and efficiently
Standard 3. The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system
Standard 4. The information literate student, individually or as a member of a group, uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
Standard 5. The information literate student understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally
Project Information Literacy
A national, longitudinal research study based in the University of Washington’s iSchool, compiling data on college students habits to seek and use information.
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Developing Your Research Topic/Question
Research always starts with a question. But the success of your research also depends on how you formulate that question. If your topic is too broad or too narrow, you may have trouble finding information when you search. When developing your question/topic, consider the following:
Research always starts with a question. But the success of your research also depends on how you formulate that question. If your topic is too broad or too narrow, you may have trouble finding information when you search. When developing your question/topic, consider the following:
Is my question one that is likely to have been researched and for which data have been published? Believe it or not, not every topic has been researched and/or published in the literature.
Be flexible. Consider broadening or narrowing the topic if you are getting a limited number or an overwhelming number of results when you search. In nursing it can be helpful to narrow by thinking about a specific population (gender, age, disease or condition, etc.), intervention, or outcome.
Discuss your topic with your professor and be willing to alter your topic according to the guidance you receive.
Getting Ready for Research
Library Resources vs. the Internet
How (where from) do you receive information about your professional interests?
Advantages/disadvantages of using Web Resources
Why Keyword Searching?
Why not just type in a phrase or sentence like you do in Google or Yahoo!?
Because most electronic databases store and retrieve information differently than Internet search engines.
A databases searches fields within a collection of records. These fields include the information commonly found in a citation plus an abstract (if available) and subject headings. Search engines search web content which is typically the full text of sources.
The bottom line: you get better results in a database by using effective keyword search strategies.
To develop an effective search strategy, you need to:
determine the key concepts in your topic and
develop a good list of keyword synonyms.
Why use synonyms?
Because there is more than one way to express a concept or idea. You don’t know if the article you’re looking for uses the same expression for a key concept that you are using.
Consider: Will an author use:
Hypertension or High Blood Pressure?
Teach or Instruct?
Therapy or Treatment?
Don’t get “keyword lock!” Be willing to try a different term as a keyword. If you are having trouble thinking of synonyms, check a thesaurus, dictionary, or reference book for ideas.
Keyword worksheet
Library Resources
How to find the SCSU Library Website
SCSU online databases
SCSU Library Web page
Basic Research Skills
Locating and Defining a Database
Database Searching Overview:
You can search using the SCSU library online dbases by choosing:
Simple search
Advanced search
Identifying a Scholarly Source
Boolean operators
Databases:
CINAHL, MEDLINE, PubMed, Health Source: Consumer Edition, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition
Psychology:
PsychINFO
General Science
ScienceDirect
Arts & Humanities Citation Index
How do you evaluate a source of information to determine if it is appropriate for academic/scholarly use. There is no set “checklist” to complete but below are some criteria to consider when you are evaluating a source.
ACCURACY
Does the author cite reliable sources?
How does the information compare with that in other works on the topic?
Can you determine if the information has gone through peer-review?
Are there factual, spelling, typographical, or grammatical errors?
AUDIENCE
Who do you think the authors are trying to reach?
Is the language, vocabulary, style and tone appropriate for intended audience?
What are the audience demographics? (age, educational level, etc.)
Are the authors targeting a particular group or segment of society?
AUTHORITY
Who wrote the information found in the article or on the site?
What are the author’s credentials/qualifications for this particular topic?
Is the author affiliated with a particular organization or institution?
What does that affiliation suggest about the author?
CURRENCY
Is the content current?
Does the date of the information directly affect the accuracy or usefulness of the information?
OBJECTIVITY/BIAS
What is the author’s or website’s point of view?
Is the point of view subtle or explicit?
Is the information presented as fact or opinion?
If opinion, is the opinion supported by credible data or informed argument?
Is the information one-sided?
Are alternate views represented?
Does the point of view affect how you view the information?
PURPOSE
What is the author’s purpose or objective, to explain, provide new information or news, entertain, persuade or sell?
Does the purpose affect how you view the information presented?
analysis, based on 45 million documents indexed in the Web of Science over the period 1973-2013. It shows that in both natural and medical sciences (NMS) and social sciences and humanities (SSH), Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis increased their share of the published output, especially since the advent of the digital era (mid-1990s). Combined, the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013.
Disciplines of the social sciences have the highest level of concentration (70% of papers from the top five publishers), while the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five publishers). NMS disciplines are in between, mainly because of the strength of their scientific societies, such as the ACS in chemistry or APS in physics.
Young researchers need to publish in prestigious journals to gain tenure, while older researchers need to do the same in order to keep their grants, and, in this environment, publishing in a high impact Elsevier or Springer journal is what ‘counts’. In this general context, the negative effect of various bibliometric indicators in the evaluation of individual researchers cannot be understated. The counting of papers indexed by large-scale bibliometric databases—which mainly cover journals published by commercial publishers, as we have seen in this paper—creates a strong incentive for researchers to publish in these journals, and thus reinforces the control of commercial publishers on the scientific community.
p. 169 Marxism, humanism, and literature in the university
Marx was a student if economic and political forces who believed he was conducting scientific inquiries into social political and economic structures; yes his works, students complain, are not taught at all in the Brown economics and political science departments. Students committed to post modern ways of thinking discover conspiracy in this phenomenon, but it is more likely that the omission is owning to the fact that professional economists do not respect marks as an economist. Those who pursue the study of economics essay science do not consider Marxist economic theories sufficiently scientific, and on the basis of what Dusty a risk of done to the economics of the Soviet union in the peoples Republic of China, which claim to be Marxist states, who can blame the process for being skeptical?
A similar situation exists with regard to Freud. Just as marks is very little taught in political science or economic departments, sort throat is not crowded these days in Department of psychology or psychiatry, and for similar reasons. Though what Freud dead in his own time may have passed for science and though he may have considered himself a scientist, he is not a scientist at all by contemporary standards. If Marxist economics has not produced utopias in Marxist states, so, by the same token, Freudian techniques of analysis have not consistently demonstrated the power to cure the more serious ( or even the most trivial) psychological disorders.
p. 170 If Marxist economics is no longer perceived is a tool that can be used to help solve economic problems, and Freudian analytics techniques are no longer applicable in helping to cure patients with mental disorders, what residue of Marxism and Freudianism remains?
p. 171 though they find an inhospitable climate in the social sciences and in the heart sciences, Marks in Freud have been given a warm home in certain humanities departments committed to postmodern ways of perceiving the world. But they have not found a home there is scientists. They have found a home, rather, as profits, or perhaps more accurately, as gods. And those who espouse Marxian in Freudian views become the “true believers.”
what happens to Marxist and Freudian ideas when they lose their empirical grounding in their power to explain events in the physical world? Free-floating Marxist and Freudian ideas have been fused to established at least one of the foundations of post modernist literature theory and to promulgate an image of the human form it’s a robot controlled by “ideology.”
p. 172. Because ideology works most effectively through its unconscious hold on subjects, it resists being made conscious or explicit. And ideology structures ‘seeing’ in ‘feeling’ before it structures ‘thinking,’ and appears to have no historical or social specificity but to be simply the natural way of perceiving reality.
Other residues of do descientizied Marx and Freud are “the class struggle” in “sublimation.” But the class struggle is Marx conceived it never really took root in American culture.
Even know, empirical sociologists have difficulty in defining what constitutes “a class” in American culture, and in determining where one class ends and another begins.
It is well known that the vast majority of Americans define themselves as middle-class, which then makes it necessary for a sociologist interested in arriving it finally distinctions to divide the middle glass itself into upper, middle, and lower, and so on.
p. 173. Post modern Freudians are forced into similar absurdities. Freud based his theory of sublimation (neurosis-as-the-price-of-culture) on the very rigid Austro-German family, constituted by a strict, punishing, disciplinarian father, a submissive mother, and obedient son, and a subservient daughter. p. 174 Marks in Floyd analyzed Austro-German culture and thought they were analyzing the universe. For them Austro-German culture was universal culture, as it consequently becomes for believing Marxists and Freudians.
p. 179. And what are you, reader?
the humanities are in flux. Liberal democracy, on which the humanities real life for 16 ounce and which day in Torrance sustain, is under attack by ‘humanists”; literary criticism has nothing only become politicized, but politicized against the Vallas of liberal humanism.
p. 190. The Marxist-Gramscian thesis depends on a conspiracy theory according to which the “dominant classes” exert their influence over the “subordinate classes covered” the by means of educational, religious, and other institutions, and ‘ruling groups preempt the high ground of universal morality in truth.” Because the dominant classes dominate the oppressed classes in secrecy, by means of social institutions, de artist must respond to this dominance with symbolic representations.
