- Hannah Seo at Vox: people are nicer than you think;
- Ethan Siegel at Big Think: 10 scientific truths that became unpopular in 2025;
- Briefly noted: the Texas governor wants to install Turning Point USA chapters in every high school; Trump’s idea of culture is hosting UFC cage matches; Trump critics are to be identified as “domestic terrorists”; and apparently it’s religious discrimination to punish students for harassing trans kids.
Here’s an idea with broad applicability.
Vox, Hannah Seo, 9 Dec 2025: People are nicer than you think, subtitled “We consistently underestimate how much other people like us, and it may be hurting our social lives.”
It’s an idea I don’t necessarily endorse in full, partly because I haven’t yet read the essay. But it’s a take on an eternal question: are people generally good, or generally bad? The answer, of course, is neither completely; we’re mixes, and each of us behaves differently depending on circumstances. Further: modern civilization has only become possible by cooperation, which entails trusting other people. But many make claims on a definitive answer. There’s the Hobbes vs. Rousseau debate, addressed by Pinker (who’s on Hobbes side; see BETTER ANGELS) and others, including a book by Rutger Bregman I haven’t written up here yet (he’s on Rousseau’s side). Christianity and conservatives seems to assume everyone is bad (unless they are “saved”). There’s the way people behave in disasters. Hollywood would have you believe that life returns the savagery, the law of the jungle; actual evidence shows that in crises people are almost always helpful to their neighbors. Just think of the stories about car wrecks in which passers-by leap in to help a victim get out of an overturned vehicle — as opposed to robbing him.
But let’s read the article. It doesn’t give any background on the writer, but the web does, here.
It’s probably happened to you: A stranger starts talking to you at a party. In this moment, you’re not nearly as clever or charming as you hoped you’d be, and you struggle to volley with the anecdotes, opinions, and witticisms lobbed your way. At the end of it, you come away thinking, “They totally thought I was a complete idiot.”
But research shows, they probably didn’t. In a phenomenon dubbed the “liking gap,” people consistently tend to like you better than you think they do. All sorts of other “gaps” — or “social prediction errors,” as experts would call them — govern our social lives. We consistently underestimate everything from people’s empathy toward us to how willing they are to help us. These patterns are strongest when we interact with strangers or acquaintances but can persist for many months into a friendship. They permeate relationships with all kinds of people, from classmates to roommates and coworkers. This pessimism about other people’s attitudes toward us also has consequences, like undercutting our own willingness to connect with others.
She describes the dropped-wallet experiment, in which wallets “are returned way more than people expect.”
We misjudge not only other people’s altruism or empathy, but also how they’ll react to our overtures. Other research shows that people consistently underestimate how happy someone will feel after we show them a random act of kindness, pay them a compliment, or shoot a message just to get in touch. This all starts at a pretty young age, too. One 2021 paper found that the liking gap begins appearing in children as young as 5, and research from 2023 showed that children as young as four underestimate how much another person will appreciate an act of kindness.
And then she discusses the social consequences of misjudging people. Then considers more broadly.
One theory behind these persistent underestimations is that people are “naturally super driven to stay connected to the group, and super vigilant for signs of rejection,” says Vanessa Bohns, a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University. “We get super cautious about putting ourselves out there because we don’t want to take social risks,” she says. “But we forget that other people are also driven by those same concerns.”
This touches on my own take: it’s not whether people are good or bad, it’s that some people treat others with provisional trust, and some people treat others with uniform distrust. It’s the tribal mentality again; the divide between those who think small, and those who think big.
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Some of these are very pertinent, others rather esoteric.
Big Think, Ethan Siegel, 9 Dec 2025: 10 scientific truths that somehow became unpopular in 2025, subtitled “Scientific truths remain true regardless of belief. These 10, despite contrary claims, remain vitally important as 2025 draws to a close.”
Key Takeaways
• Our scientific picture of reality has been constructed painstakingly, over centuries and millennia, by gathering enormous suites of evidence and rejecting all theories that fail to explain what we observe. • Through this, we’ve learned about the laws that govern the Earth, fundamental particles, atoms and molecules, our environment, the Universe, and more, refining and enhancing them, over time, wherever possible. • But here in 2025, many of the lessons we’ve learned, although still true, have fallen out of favor, having been replaced by untrue sentiments that now dominate public discourse. Still, the truth remains true, and everyone should know what it is.
There *is* a scientific reality, even if many conservatives deny it in favor of ancient myths.
No matter what it is that humans do — what we think, feel, accomplish, believe, or vote for — our shared scientific reality is the one thing that unites us all. The same laws and rules govern everything within this cosmos.
…
However, many scientific truths have fallen out of public favor in recent times. Now, in 2025, some of the misinformation that’s replaced those truths has been elevated to prominence, and many cannot tell fact from fiction any longer. Whether you believe them or not, here are 10 scientific truths that remain true, even though you might not realize it here in the final month of 2025.
These include:
- 2024, the latest full year on record, saw the highest CO2 levels and the highest average temperatures since we first began tracking them;
- The germ theory of disease is real, and vaccination is the safest, most effective strategy to combat these deadly pathogens.
- SARS-CoV-2 led to COVID-19 in humans as the result of a natural, zoonotic spillover event, not as the result of a leaked pathogen from a Wuhan Lab in China.
- You still need to know science in order to do it; “vibe science” is nothing more than AI slop.
The other six concern interstellar interlopers, distant galaxies, the finite capacity of Earth’s satellites, the universe’s expansion, what peer reviews mean, and evidence for organics on Mars.
With lots of illustrations and graphs.
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From the peanut gallery, briefly noted.
- JMG, 9 Dec 2025 (from Texas Tribune): Abbott: I’ll Punish Schools That Oppose TPUSA Clubs
- That is, Abbott wants to install Turning Point USA chapters in every high school campus in Texas.
- This is religious propaganda.
- JMG, 9 Dec 2025: Trump: WH To Host “Eight Or Nine” UFC Cage Matches
- Exactly the level of sophistication I would expect from Trump.
- JMG, 9 Dec 2025: DOJ To Label Trump Critics As “Domestic Terrorists” (from Democracy Docket)
- Yet another item from the authoritarian playbook.
- LGBTQNtion, Greg Owen, 9 Dec 2025: Trump admin sues school for religious discrimination for punishing Christians who harassed trans kid, subtitled “The administration says the school violated the Christian students’ religious freedom by suspending them for harassing their trans classmate.”
- Christians always claim they are the victims. Apparently it’s religious freedom to harass others.
