Einstein, Vigilante Justice, the Gin and Tonic Workout

Posted on Wednesday 7 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Albert Einstein and what he didn’t say;
  • More on Republican support for vigilante justice;
  • How a drink or two enables an intense workout.

NY Times, Benyamin Cohen (a specialist on Einstein), 4 Jun 2023: Einstein and a Theory of Disinformation

The essay opens:

A decade ago, Ivanka Trump offered her Twitter followers a bit of wisdom from one of the world’s favorite geniuses to impress her legions of Twitter followers. “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts. — Albert Einstein.”

There was one problem: Einstein never said that.

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Transition

Posted on Tuesday 6 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

I think I am going to switch from posting here from the evenings, to the mornings. I’ll still spend the late afternoon compiling a post, but will wait until the morning, to refine and edit, before posting. Tomorrow’s post will be about Einstein, Republican support for vigilante justice, and those who drink before working out. And an item about Donald A. Norman and my problem this evening turning on my stove.

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Ted Chiang, Carl Sagan, Peter Singer

Posted on Monday 5 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Ten Chiang characterizes the current examples of “artificial intelligence” as “applied statistics”;
  • How Carl Sagan was wrong about the “reptilian brain”, in The Dragons of Eden;
  • And an interview with Peter Singer, the controversial philosopher, author of The Expanding Circle and The Most Good You Can Do

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The Holocene and Other Calendars

Posted on Sunday 4 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a concept I’ve heard of, fascinating and beneficial in ways, problematic in others.

Wikipedia: Holocene Calendar

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Climate Change, Founding Fathers, UFOs and Scientific Literacy

Posted on Saturday 3 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Topics today:

    • Insurance companies, whose business depends on understanding risks, are taking steps to acknowledge climate change and its threats, even if many ordinary people still don’t “believe” in climate change;
    • How the “founding fathers” were woke, compared to the modern-day GOP;
    • How NASA’s latest response to “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (colloquially UFOs) is significant for its discussion about scientific literacy (thus, no Oxford comma in the title above);
    • And some music: early Philip Glass.

Those who still dismiss climate change as a hoax, or real but not a problem, consider how insurance companies — who need to manage risks! — are changing their policies in reaction. (There have been similar stories about the US military taking actions to protect bases in low-lying coastal areas.) Pay attention to those have financial stakes at risk.

Vox, 2 Jun 2023: Climate change is already making parts of America uninsurable, subtitled “‘We’re steadily marching toward an uninsurable future.'”

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Last Questions and Possible Answers, 2

Posted on Friday 2 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a sequel to a post I did back in March, Last Questions and Possible Answers, 1, in which I considered the John Brockman book The Last Unknowns, in which he gathers deep unanswered questions about “the universe, the mind, the future of civilization, and the meaning of life” from numerous scientists and philosophers and other of the “smartest people on the planet.”

Out of the perhaps 250 contributors to this 325 page book, in that earlier post I addressed 19 contributors from the first 100 pages or so. Today I’m covering 13 more contributors from the next 70 pages. I’ve also refined and polished that earlier post. And obviously I have a couple more posts to go, to get through the whole book, even selectively.

Again, I’m quoting their questions and giving my own take on the nature of possible answers, based on my reading and thoughts over many years.

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Tribalism and Cooperation

Posted on Thursday 1 June 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Today’s topics:

  • How tribalism, evolutionary evolved, solved some problems and created others, especially in the modern world;
  • The counter idea of “coöperism”;
  • Current events about Chick-fil-A and Republican condemnation of anti-racism.

I talk of politics as manifesting ‘tribalism’ a lot; tribalism is a real thing, and it evolved for a reason. But the world has expanded, and many of the problems of the world today come from competing tribes, who by definition don’t want to cooperate. So are we doomed to the corrosive effects of competing tribes forever? Can the world never come together to solve global problems? Here’s an excerpt from a recent book that I noticed as interesting, but haven’t decide to buy, at least not yet.

Big Think, David R. Samson, 30 May 2023: Humanity solved the “trust paradox” by going tribal — and paid a horrific price, subtitled “Evolutionary pressures drove the formation of tribes who encoded their values in myths and symbols. Was this cooperation cursed?” Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Evolution, Morality | Comments Off on Tribalism and Cooperation

The Lies that Bind

Posted on Wednesday 31 May 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How the Christian curriculum ACE lies about science;
  • How some people are happy to submit to tyranny;
  • Wondering if it matters children are lied to about reality, and concluding that it doesn’t, given certain purposes of life;
  • And reflecting again about how the religious right’s support for Trump completely discredits their moral authority;
  • And music for today: an early film score by Hans Zimmer.

Yesterday there was an item about the lies some home-schooling parents tell about public schools. Today we have an item about the lies taught by a popular Christian homeschooling curriculum.

Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, 31 May 2023: How Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) denies science and cheats students, subtitled “New research highlights how the ACE curriculum leaves students with no real understanding of science, including evolution and climate change”

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Narrative Bias and Control

Posted on Tuesday 30 May 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Another take on why conspiracy theories have become so popular;
  • How home-schoolers who decided to send their kids to public schools exposed the three lies about home-schooling that convinced them to do so;
  • The Week on the state of book banning and criminalizing teachers;
  • Heather Cox Richardson on fascism;
  • And today’s music: a film score by Alexandre Desplat.

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First, familiar material. The human inclination to cast everything in terms of narrative (stories) has always been with us. So why is it they seem to be taking over? The effects of social media? No, something more, this writer says.

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Then They Came for the Meteorologists

Posted on Monday 29 May 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Today’s items.

  • How conspiracy theorists are attacking meteorologists;
  • Naomi Oreskes on how the right attacks Social Security because it’s a “big government” program that actually works;
  • The connection between American Christians and Uganda’s “kill the gays” policy
  • And today’s music: The National: I Should Live in Salt

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