Category Archives: Psychology

Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow: Intro and Chapter 1

Posted on 13 September 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

This is perhaps the most influential book of the past couple decades on the whole subject of human mental biases, how the ways in which we think entail errors of perception, and employ heuristics that are often but not always … Continue reading →

Posted in Evolution, MInd, Psychology | Comments Off on Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow: Intro and Chapter 1

More from Cory Doctorow’s Locus Interview

Posted on 17 July 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

While editing the ‘excerpts’ from Cory Doctorow’s long interview in the current issue of Locus Magazine, excerpts that I posted online on Sunday (here), I captured several other passages from that interview that particularly appeal to the themes of this … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Psychology, Species Reset | Comments Off on More from Cory Doctorow’s Locus Interview

Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”

Posted on 16 June 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

Carl Sagan, one of the great scientist-communicators to the general public of the past century, author of the 1980 book Cosmos and host of the 1980 TV series of that name, has a list of ideas for how to evaluate … Continue reading →

Posted in MInd, Psychology, Science | Comments Off on Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”

Linkdump: Science, society, conspiracy theories, the fear of NRA conventioneers

Posted on 12 June 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

Science: The Atlantic: Are We Living in a Giant Cosmic Void?. Maybe. Scientific American: How the Science of “Blue Lies” May Explain Trump’s Support. Subtitle: “They are a very particular form of deception that can build solidarity within groups” Guardian: … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Cosmology, Lunacy, MInd, Psychology, Science | Comments Off on Linkdump: Science, society, conspiracy theories, the fear of NRA conventioneers

Parents, Children, Identities: Andrew Solomon’s FAR FROM THE TREE

Posted on 19 May 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

This is an enormous book, 962 pages long, 702 of that text (with the remainder consisting of encyclopedic notes, a lengthy bibliography, and an index). The book is about how parents deal with exceptional children, covering ten categories of exceptionality, … Continue reading →

Posted in Children, Culture, MInd, Psychology, The Gays | Comments Off on Parents, Children, Identities: Andrew Solomon’s FAR FROM THE TREE

Link and Comment: Modern Conservatism

Posted on 17 May 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

From a review in Sunday’s NYT Book Review, by Damon Linker, of a book about the famous conservative intellectual William F. Buckley, and his relationships to various presidents of the United States. The review is titled “William F. Buckley and … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Psychology | Comments Off on Link and Comment: Modern Conservatism

Links and Comments: Expertise, Dunning-Kruger, Tactics of Denialists

Posted on 10 April 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

NPR’s Adam Frank on Why Expertise Matters, commenting in part about Tom Nichols new book The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters. Frank quotes a couple key passages from Nichols: Nichols is profoundly troubled … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Distrust of Science; Trump’s conviction; Global society; a Two State solution

Posted on 8 March 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

This subject is everywhere — the rejection of reality by the current administration — and I don’t collect very many of these links, but here are a few more. Tom Nichols at Scientific American, via Salon: Don’t go with your … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Psychology, Science | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Distrust of Science; Trump’s conviction; Global society; a Two State solution

Is Trump the problem, or also his voters?

Posted on 27 February 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

I have a link saved from a few days ago of a column by Nicholas Kristof called Trump Voters Are Not the Enemy, which he tweeted a cautionary note about not demonizing the people who voted for Trump. It’s a … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Psychology | Comments Off on Is Trump the problem, or also his voters?

Links and Comments: Reason; Christian victimhood; dead progressives; dystopias; Republican blondes; the fight for reason; fake history

Posted on 21 February 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

From an Elizabeth Kolbert essay in next weekend’s New York Times Magazine: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds, subtitled “New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.” One way to look at science is as a system … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Psychology, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Reason; Christian victimhood; dead progressives; dystopias; Republican blondes; the fight for reason; fake history