Category Archives: Culture

Ls&Cs: Interviews and Excerpts: Pinker, Harari, Graeber & Wengrow

Posted on Thursday 11 November 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Michael Shermer interviews Steven Pinker about Rationality; NYT interviews Yuval Noah Harari about the simple story that can save the planet; and an excerpt from Graeber & Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything.

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Ls&Cs: Stuff, Terms, Panics, Rules

Posted on Saturday 30 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Maybe we should all just buy less stuff. How citizenship has given way to consumerism. Why partisans deliberately confuse terms like expenses and investments. And how some rewrite history in support of ideological narratives.

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Links & Comments, Social Progress | Comments Off on Ls&Cs: Stuff, Terms, Panics, Rules

L&Cs: Christakis on COVID and Altruism

Posted on Saturday 23 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

A Big Picture item: what does our COVID response say about humanity’s capacity for altruism?

Posted in Culture, Evolution, Politics, Psychology | Comments Off on L&Cs: Christakis on COVID and Altruism

Ls&Cs: Problem-Solving, Ethics, Out-Group Prejudice, and Padding Bestseller Lists

Posted on Monday 11 October 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Several links that I collected on April 20th, the day I went to the hospital for what led to my heart transplant.

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Links & Comments, Psychology, Technology | Comments Off on Ls&Cs: Problem-Solving, Ethics, Out-Group Prejudice, and Padding Bestseller Lists

Ls&Qs: Rationality and Fear

Posted on Sunday 26 September 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Two long quotes today, from opposite ends of the spectrum from rationality to fear.

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Ls&Cs: Interesting Times

Posted on Saturday 25 September 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

The latest on strategies to avoid long-term calamities, knowing of calamities and lying about them, the US compared to South America and Europe, and Americans’ grasp of reality.

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Ls&Cs: Utopias; Crises; Paranoia

Posted on Friday 25 June 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

A sidebar article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine interviews Rutger Bregman. How to Think Like a Utopian. Bregman is a young Dutch historian who wrote UTOPIA FOR REALISTS (which I blogged about here) and more recently HUMANKIND: A … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments, 6 April 2021: Sciencey Things

Posted on Tuesday 6 April 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

When life began in the universe; how or whether civilizations die; why people like closed-captioning

Posted in Culture, Science | Comments Off on Links and Comments, 6 April 2021: Sciencey Things

Links and Comments: Things Change, 1

Posted on Thursday 11 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Will MAGA panic subside with an old white man back in the presidency? How American political parties have disintegrated in the past, and the Republican party may now be doing. How Britain has become the dumbest society in the world, … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Politics | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Things Change, 1

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

Posted on Sunday 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 →

Posted in Book Notes, Changing One's Mind, Culture, Social Progress | Comments Off on Nonfiction Notes: Bobby Duffy, WHY WE’RE WRONG ABOUT NEARLY EVERYTHING