Are Opinions Based on Science: Modelling Social Response to Scientific Facts

As scientists we like to think that modern societies and their members base their views, opinions and behaviour on scientific facts. This is not necessarily the case, even though we are all (over-) exposed to information flow through various channels of media, i.e. newspapers, television, radio, internet, and web. It is thought that this is mainly due to the conflicting information on the mass media and to the individual attitude (formed by cultural, educational and environmental factors), that is, one external factor and another personal factor. In this paper we will investigate the dynamical development of opinion in a small population of agents by means of a computational model of opinion formation in a co-evolving network of socially linked agents. The personal and external factors are taken into account by assigning an individual attitude parameter to each agent, and by subjecting all to an external but homogeneous field to simulate the effect of the media. We then adjust the field strength in the model by using actual data on scientific perception surveys carried out in two different populations, which allow us to compare two different societies. We interpret the model findings with the aid of simple mean field calculations. Our results suggest that scientifically sound concepts are more difficult to acquire than concepts not validated by science, since opposing individuals organize themselves in close communities that prevent opinion consensus.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to PLoS ON

A Case For Negative & General Facts

In this paper I take a closer look at Bertrand Russell's ontology of facts, pro- posed in his 1918 lectures on "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism". Part II is devoted to the question what Russell considered facts to be, and what kinds of facts he assumed. In part III, the controversy over two kinds of facts Russell postulates is described; the opinions of Raphael Demos and Keith Halbasch are considered for this purpose. Following this discussion, part IV investigates the question as to what kind of analysis Russell is conducting that leads him to negative and general facts. Finally, in part V, my conclusions drawn from the combined information of parts II to IV are elaborated; the main claim being, that due to the kind of analysis Russell is conducting, he is not making a mis- take when he assumes negative and general facts

AKTIVITAS KOLABORASI DAN KEMAMPUAN MENGEMBANGKAN GAGASAN DALAM MENULIS KALIMAT IKLAN PADA PEMBELAJARAN BAHASA INDONESIA DI SMPN 3 CIBINONG KABUPATEN BOGOR

ABSTRACT This research is based on student collaboration activities and the ability of students to develop ideas in writing advertising sentences. The formulation of the problem in this study is (1) How is the collaborative activity in learning Indonesian at Cibinong 3 Public Junior High School Bogor? (2) What is the result of the ability of students to develop ideas in writing advertising sentences in learning Indonesian at Cibinong 3 Public Junior High School Bogor? This study aims to describe: (1) collaborative activities on learning Indonesian at Bogor Cibinong 3 Junior High School (2) the results of students' ability to develop ideas in writing advertising sentences in Indonesian language learning at Bogor Cibinong 3 Junior High School. The method used in this research is the qualitative method. The results of this study in the form of collaborative activities on learning Indonesian at SMPN 3 Cibinong Bogor are as follows. a) identifying sentences of facts and opinions on products, b) giving ideas about sentences of facts and opinions, c) giving opportunities (taking turns, giving ideas about sentences of facts and opinions), d) discussing the answers of his group friends, e) utilizing time effectively, f) conveying ideas of facts and opinions in accordance with the product, and g) confirming the ideas of sentence facts and opinions recorded to group friends. The results of students' ability to develop ideas in writing ad sentences on learning Indonesian at Bogor Cibinong 3 Junior High School are good. This is based on data on the results of student skills, there are 32 data facts or correct sentences of 82.05% and 34 correct opinion sentence data or equal to 87.18%.Keywords: collaboration activities, advertising sentences, facts, opinion

Research Directions, Challenges and Issues in Opinion Mining

Rapid growth of Internet and availability of user reviews on the web for any product has provided a need for an effective system to analyze the web reviews. Such reviews are useful to some extent, promising both the customers and product manufacturers. For any popular product, the number of reviews can be in hundreds or even thousands. This creates difficulty for a customer to analyze them and make important decisions on whether to purchase the product or to not. Mining such product reviews or opinions is termed as opinion mining which is broadly classified into two main categories namely facts and opinions. Though there are several approaches for opinion mining, there remains a challenge to decide on the recommendation provided by the system. In this paper, we analyze the basics of opinion mining, challenges, pros & cons of past opinion mining systems and provide some directions for the future research work, focusing on the challenges and issues

Kemampuan Membedakan Kalimat Fakta Dan Opini Melalui Kegiatan Membaca Intensif Siswa Kelas X SMK-SMAK Padang

The purpose of this study were to (1) describe the ability of students to determine the sentence facts through intensive reading class X-SMAK SMK Padang, (2) describe the ability of students to determine the sentence opinions through intensive reading class X-SMAK SMK Padang, (3) describes the differences of students' ability to distinguish between fact and opinion sentences through intensive reading class X-SMAK SMK Padang. The data of this research is a test answer sheet that was held on December 6, 2012. Tests to be objective about the amount of about 30 grains of matter, which consists of 15 questions and 15 questions facts opinions. The data sources of this study are writing as a source of primary sources of the student-SMAK SMK Padang. Data collected view of providing intensive reading test paragraphs of the matter abjektif given researchers. The findings of the study showed that there is a difference in determining the sentence facts and opinions. The ability to determine the facts sentences (69.80%) and subjective (63.88%)

Do computer simulations support the Argument from Disagreement?

According to the Argument from Disagreement (AD) widespread and persistent disagreement on ethical issues indicates that our moral opinions are not influenced by moral facts, either because there are no such facts or because there are such facts but they fail to influence our moral opinions. In an innovative paper, Gustafsson and Peterson (Synthese, published online 16 October, 2010) study the argument by means of computer simulation of opinion dynamics, relying on the well-known model of Hegselmann and Krause (J Artif Soc Soc Simul 5(3):1-33, 2002; J Artif Soc Soc Simul 9(3):1-28, 2006). Their simulations indicate that if our moral opinions were influenced at least slightly by moral facts, we would quickly have reached consensus, even if our moral opinions were also affected by additional factors such as false authorities, external political shifts and random processes. Gustafsson and Peterson conclude that since no such consensus has been reached in real life, the simulation gives us increased reason to take seriously the AD. Our main claim in this paper is that these results are not as robust as Gustafsson and Peterson seem to think they are. If we run similar simulations in the alternative Laputa simulation environment developed by Angere and Olsson (Angere, Synthese, forthcoming and Olsson, Episteme 8(2):127-143, 2011) considerably less support for the AD is forthcoming