Monthly Archives: December 2020

Links and Comments: Gift-Giving; Australia is Fake; Facebook as Doomsday Machine

Posted on 24 December 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

NYT: You’re Choosing a Gift. Here’s What Not to Do., subtitled “Many of our natural impulses turn out to be wrong. Psychological research can help us choose wisely.” Another essay about how intuition and “common sense” can seem appropriate for … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: The American Divide

Posted on 22 December 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Washington Post, Max Boot (a conservative who’s left the Republican party): No vaccine can end America’s pandemic of ignorance and irrationality But the biggest divide in modern America, I would argue, is between those who are rational and those who … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Religion and Abortion

Posted on 20 December 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

I’m fascinated by how the supposed verities of religion turn out to shift and sway with the times, especially with politics. The religious cherry-pick from scripture whatever they currently want to support, since it’s so easy to find in scripture … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Religion | Leave a comment

Link and Comments: Dawkins, via Coyne, on Science and Truth

Posted on 19 December 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Today Jerry Coyne’s site (even though it’s a blog, with chronological posts every day, sometimes several a day, he’s obstinate about not calling it a blog, but a site) links an article by Richard Dawkins at the UK magazine The … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Science | Leave a comment

Links and Comments: Trying to Be Smarter; Faith vs Fact

Posted on 16 December 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

NYT: How Do We Get to Herd Immunity for Fake News?, subtitled, “We need to match our focus on the supply of misinformation with a focus on the demand for it.” Yet the chorus of angst over misinformation has focused … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Religion, Science | Leave a comment

Links, Comments, and Memoirs: Republicans from Reagan Forward

Posted on 15 December 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Paul Krugman’s NYT column today is When Did Republicans Start Hating Facts?, subtitled “A straight line runs from Reagan to the Trump dead-enders.” I’ll quote from this and comment, and then discuss my own attendance at a Reagan rally way … Continue reading →

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Carl Sagan: Cosmos (1980)

Posted on 11 December 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Cosmos may fairly be called one of the foundational books of my life (even moreso than Sagan’s earlier The Cosmic Connection, revisited here in 2015) even though I hadn’t read the entire book until this year. The book was a … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Science | Leave a comment

Links and Comments: How People Think; the Election and the Pandemic

Posted on 10 December 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

It’s been a few days since last bunch of links and comments, and I’ve collected several since then that perhaps can be fit together into some kind of overe-arching theme. It’s about how different people think differently. I should say … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Pandemic Responses and Routines

Posted on 4 December 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

The Atlantic, 24 Nov: Your Individually Rational Choice Is Collectively Disastrous, subtitled “Stopping the virus from spreading requires us to override our basic intuitions.” This isn’t about haywire individual thinking (cognitive biases, the appeal of simplistic stories to explain the … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Psychology | Leave a comment

Links and Comments: Politics and Conspiracy Theories; Epistemology

Posted on 2 December 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Another batch of links and comments, again on topics of politics and conspiracy theories, not because I’m trying to dissuade anyone in particular of any such beliefs (let alone supernatural ones), but because all these examples (more and more of … Continue reading →

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