In regards to the tragedy of the commons, I wonder if the Nash equilibrium ever yields such detrimental results that cooperation becomes necessary. For example, over fishing is an example of the Nash equilibrium where fishing companies take all they can get. Yet, once there are no longer enough fish for everybody to benefit, do the companies fish until extinction or scale back and allow multiple companies to cooperate and succeed? I find these problems very interesting because it also applies to what I am learning in political science. Most major world conflicts arise from countries acting for their maximum benefit and refusing cooperation. Similarly, I wonder if free rider problems can solve themselves or if an outside factor such as repercussions are needed to alleviate the problem. Or, once all others of the group realize how the free rider is benefiting then nobody benefits because no-one is there to do the work. I also believe that some people do not cooperate strictly out of stubbornness. It can be difficult to give away what could have been yours to see somebody else- usually a competitor- walk away with what you gave. For example, watching free riders benefit off of your hard work or throwing some younger fish back and watching the next fisherman pull them in. I understand the authors point about issuing threats and needing them to be capable, but it think that in many cases the issuing of threats is what limits communication and cooperation. Overall this piece was very interesting and I look forward to applying it to real world situations.

I found this piece very interesting because it is very relevant in today’s political and social climate. Before reading this piece, I personally did not agree with the idea of open borders, but I thought viewing it from a moral and ethical standpoint was a very interesting perspective to take rather than the usually economic or judicial. With a topic such as immigration, I think this is where ethics/ morals and reality tend to conflict. On one hand, the economic and social pitfalls of illegal immigration can be easily pointed out and defended. Yet, I agree with Hidalgo’s points that barring somebody from entering the country is unjust and can promote global poverty. They point that I think Hidalgo neglects to address is the actual “rights” of illegal migrants. She commonly references the “rights” of migrants that citizens must respect, but speaking through legality, illegal immigrants don’t have rights in a country they are not a citizen of. They are not given the same rights because they are disregarding the law. On the contrary, if Hidalgo is simply talking about ethical human rights, then I understand where she is coming from talking about the duties of citizens to disobey unjust laws.

In this first part of this piece, the author classifies people who say “I know these stereotypes quite well, but I don’t for a moment endorse them”. I related this back to the last article we read about mindbugs in the way that it is important to recognize the implicit biases one has but to also control them. Similarly, the article mentioned IAT tests. The author stated that the constant unintentional propaganda such as commercials, stories, and jokes is what propels many people’s unintentional biases, even if they don’t consciously hold these harmful views. Similarly, the self-defeating stereotypes are a product of societies views on specific groups that one is a part of.

Another thing about the mindbug experiments that stood out to me was when the author talked about the test takers  “total lack of awareness that the gender of the name played any role in their decision about fame”. I am curious how to hold people accountable for their biases and these mindbug tests that can come off as insensitive even though they don’t know the implications of their actions. I for one would be nervous to take a test like this in front of a group of people. Then again, I took the Black Americans/ Harmful Weapons test they mentioned and revealed no correlation.

I just took the IAT test about weapons/ harmless objects and white/black Americans. My results had little to no automatic response to the association between the four. This result didn’t really surprise me. I understood what the test was trying to research, but it felt more like memorization than bias testing. I thought some of the other tests looked interesting and I am looking forward to trying them. I am also a little bit nervous because like our previous reading talked about, I am sure I have some unconscious biases.

The first thing about this article that stood out to me was the mentioning of natural selection. This is something that we continuously talked about in my previous LDST 102 class and a topic I find very interesting. The thought of the “unconscious mind” is one that I wonder how much it affects me in my daily life. I am very curious about how many unintentional mental interpretations I make every day without realizing. I also don’t understand how the people who make these illusions come up with them in the first place if they are not aware yet. Similarly, I find it interesting how I our minds perception can switch once told about a different perception.        This also made me think about the unintentional biases and opinions our minds make in society. If we make an assumption strictly through the use of our unconscious mind are we in the wrong, and do we have natural selection to blame (that sounds confusing, so an example would be assuming somebody’s place of origin or gender)? Similarly, the misinformation effect has scary implications as well. Many times, when witnessed are being interviewed I wonder how they could not remember such a crazy event (assuming it is a murder, car accident, ect.) yet there are so many instances where I have made split second decisions and not been able to recall the timeline or my surroundings after. In all, I find this topic of unintentional doings of the mind extremely interesting, but not something I could comprehend well enough to study.