Category Archives: Culture

Nonfiction Notes: Bobby Duffy, WHY WE’RE WRONG ABOUT NEARLY EVERYTHING

Posted on 7 February 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Bobby Duffy, Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding (2018) (US edition Nov 2019) Here’s another book on a seemingly familiar theme: why people so frequently misunderstand the world, and what we can do to correct … Continue reading →

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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 →

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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 | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Pandemic Responses and Routines

This Week’s Facebook Memes

Posted on 27 November 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Quoted without comment. Opinions, not claims of fact; From Gloria Steinem: How about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion — mandatory 48-hour waiting period, parental permission, … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Science, Reality Bubbles, and Stories

Posted on 24 November 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

The most interesting one is at the bottom. \\ Scientific American: To Understand How Science Denial Works, Look to History, subtitled, “The same tactics used to cast doubt on the dangers of smoking and climate change are now being used … Continue reading →

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The Issues that Divide Us (in the US at least)

Posted on 6 November 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

I commented somewhere that the “issues” that divide the electorate today become more and more trivial the farther one zooms out to take a broader perspective of time and space. Issues so important at one time in history are irrelevant … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Bubbles and B.S.

Posted on 24 October 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Trump’s performance at the second vice-presidential debate indicated to numerous people that all he knows about the world are conspiracy-mongering talking points from Fox News and other right wing sites. In some cases all you have to do is read … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Religion and Government; Sophisticated Believers; Religious Indoctrination of Children

Posted on 17 October 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

NY Times, Wajahat Ali: If Amy Coney Barrett Were Muslim, subtitled “It’s not hard to imagine how conservatives would smear her religious beliefs.” For all that Christians complain that they are oppressed or victimized, in fact their religion so saturates … Continue reading →

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Link and Comment: The Pace of Change

Posted on 13 October 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Guardian: 25 years of His Dark Materials: Philip Pullman on the journey of a lifetime. Pullman reflects on the quarter decade since he began writing the sequence of novels about Lyra that began with Northern Lights, aka The Golden Compass. … Continue reading →

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Status; Links and Comments: Conservative Willful Misunderstanding of Coronavirus Deaths

Posted on 11 September 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

I’m behind on commenting on newspaper and magazine articles; it’s been almost two weeks! This is because, as I’ve detailed on Facebook (though I realize some readers of this blog might not see my Facebook posts), I’ve been busy finishing … Continue reading →

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