Research (by psychologist Steven Sloman and marketing expert Phil Fernbach) shows that people who claim to understand complicated political topics such as cap and trade and flat taxes tend to reveal their ignorance when asked to provide a detailed explanation without the aid of Google. Though people on either side of an issue may believe they know their opponents' positions, when put to the task of breaking it down they soon learn that they have only a basic understanding of the subject being argued. Stranger still, once subjects (in such studies) recognize this, they reliably become more moderate in their beliefs. Radical beliefs' extreme expression is dampened. The research suggests simply working through explanations can weaken your conviction. Yet that opposite effect when subjects are asked to justify their positions on a contentious issue. Justification strengthens a worldview, but exploration weakens it.

Given their status as part of the family, with better health care and nutrition than perhaps ever before, in some respects the quality of life for many dogs is at an all-time high. However, this view of dogs as part of the family has a downside for some dogs. It is a wonderful thing that so many of us consider our companion animals as part of our family, but if we extend this to the point where we expect them to behave like human members of our family, without teaching them how we wish them to behave, then we do them a disservice. We'd better not. This can extend to assigning motives to dogs that may not exist, such as guilt, attempts to dominate human household members, and similar. The way in which we think about how dogs perceive their world; if we over or underestimate their sensory or cognitive abilities, or their ability to feel certain emotions, we may inadvertently be putting them in situations detrimental to their welfare

We are committed to reason. If we are asking a question, evaluating possible answers, and trying to persuade others of the value of those answers, then we are reasoning, and therefore have tacitly signed on to the validity of reason. We are also committed to whatever conclusions follow from the careful application of reason, such as the theorems of mathematics and logic. Though we cannot logically prove anything about the physical world, we are entitled to have confidence in certain beliefs about it. The application of reason and observation to discover tentative generalizations about the world is what we call science. The progress of science, with its dazzling success at explaining and manipulating the world, shows that knowledge of the universe is possible, albeit always probabilistic and subject to revision. Science is thus a paradigm for how we ought to gain knowledge ― not the particular methods or institutions of science but its value system, namely to seek to explain the world, to evaluate candidate explanations objectively, and to be cognizant of the tentativeness and uncertainty of our understanding at any time.

News, especially in its televised form, is constituted not only by its choice of topics and stories but by its verbal and visual idioms or modes of address. Presentational styles have been subject to a tension between an informational-educational purpose and the need to engage us entertainingly. While current affairs programmes are often ‘serious' in tone sticking to the ‘rules' of balance, more popular programmes adopt a friendly, lighter, idiom in which we are invited to consider the impact of particular news items from the perspective of the ‘average person in the street'. Indeed, contemporary news construction has come to rely on an increased use of faster editing tempos and ‘flashier' presentational styles including the use of logos, sound-bites, rapid visual cuts and the ‘star quality' of news readers. Popular formats can be said to enhance understanding by engaging an audience unwilling to endure the longer verbal orientation of older news formats. However, they arguably work to reduce understanding by failing to provide the structural contexts for news events.

As the case on the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement shows, it was important for Canada to gain the attention of US political leadership to increase Canadian power in the negotiation. Lack of attention by the stronger party is often a statement that it does not consider the other side particularly powerful or significant. Such lack of attention may manifest itself in many ways, but it is almost always demonstrated by entrusting the negotiations to relatively low-level officials who have limited authority and access to their country's political leadership. Canada faced this problem in this negotiation. The tactics of attention-getting may include stalling and walking out of the negotiations. In the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement talks, Canada walked out when they felt that the United States was not taking the negotiations seriously. This action provoked a diplomatic crisis between the two long-time allies and succeeded in getting US attention, which led to high-level American participation in the negotiations. Canada enhanced its power by playing on the historically strong relationship between the two countries.