Category Archives: Psychology

Link and Comments: School Debates and Motivated Reasoning

Posted on 11 November 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

From last month: NYT, Are School Debate Competitions Bad for Our Political Discourse? subtitled, They can be a good credential for aspiring leaders, but they favor a closed-minded and partisan style of argument. By Jonathan Ellis and Francesca Hovagimian, at … Continue reading →

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Link and Comment: Krugman on Terrorism

Posted on 9 August 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman regularly criticizes President Trump and the entire Republican party for engaging in fantasy economics– the kind of economics, which actually has never worked, that says cutting taxes on the wealthy will spur business and … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Human Progress, Lunacy, Psychology | Comments Off on Link and Comment: Krugman on Terrorism

Links and Comments: Sapiens; Leaving Religion; Conspiracy Theories; Weather Forecasting

Posted on 22 July 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

1. From yesterday’s NYT Book Review. Chuck Klosterman likes Harari: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/books/review/chuck-klosterman-likes-writers-who-arent-self-absorbed-sociopaths.html What’s the last great book you read? I picked up “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” by Yuval Noah Harari. I thought: “This will probably be O.K. I’ll probably … Continue reading →

Posted in Human Progress, Psychology, Religion, Technology | Leave a comment

Links and Comments: Suffering Death without Religion; Fox News; Fundamentalism

Posted on 4 June 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

New York Times: Surviving the Death of My Son After the Death of My Faith, subtitled, I had lost the one thing that could have numbed my pain. By Amber Scorah. A woman leaves her religion, gets on with her … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Psychology, Religion, Ten Commandments | Leave a comment

Links and Comments: Anti-Vaxxers

Posted on 14 March 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

From Sunday’s New York Times, essay by Frank Bruni: The Real Horror of the Anti-Vaxxers, subtitled “This isn’t just a public health crisis. It’s a public sanity one.” (The print title was “The Anti-Vaxxers’ War on Truth”.) How many studies … Continue reading →

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Levitin: A FIELD GUIDE TO LIES

Posted on 16 February 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

Daniel J. Levitin’s A FIELD GUIDE TO LIES: Critical Thinking in the Information Age (Dutton, 2016) is a nice complement to the book previously reviewed. Levitin an academic at UC Berkeley and has written three previous books, including This Is … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Politics, Psychology | Leave a comment

Ariely: PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL

Posted on 12 February 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

Dan Ariely’s PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Harper 2008) is one of the earliest popular books that summarizes various findings of experimental psychology in recent decades that reveal the biases of human nature. Key point: traditional … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: World Getting Better; Choosing What to Believe; Questions for Atheists; Mathematical Ideas; Trumpian Cruelty

Posted on 19 October 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

Vox: 23 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much better. From 2014, but updated this month. These data echo the theme of Steven Pinker’s recent books. File under: human progress, despite conservative paranoia and fears \\ … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Conservative Resistance, Human Progress, Mathematics, Psychology | Leave a comment

Links and Comments: Unread Books; Psychology and Logic; GOP Paranoia; Political Extremes

Posted on 19 October 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

From recent weeks’ NYT. Essay by Kevin Mims: All Those Books You’ve Bought but Haven’t Read? There’s a Word for That. The print title, October 14, was “The Importance of Unread Books” subtitled “Why a personal library should include books … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Psychology and Economics; SF and Fantasy

Posted on 8 October 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

Several items from Sunday’s NYT. First a review of a new book by Steven Johnson, FARSIGHTED: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most; the review is by Adam Grant: How Do We Make the Long-Term Decisions That Matter?. … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Psychology, science fiction | Leave a comment