How civilization might have been driven by the desire for alcohol; about the NYT interviewing Republicans; the perspective on conspiratorial thinking from an American living in Britain; paranoia and the GOP; DeSantis’ war on “wokeness”; Paul Waldman on 6 things people believe about politics that are wrong.
And pasta.
David Brooks on how America is on the right track; Ezra Klein on the fractured Republican Party; and items about gas stoves, red states and their blue cities, the partisan divide in COVID deaths, and how politics doesn’t do nuance.
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Vox, Kelsey Piper, 11 Jan 2023: Why is science slowing down?, subtitled “Science is the engine of society, and the decline of truly disruptive research is a warning sign for all of us.”
Is this really a new problem? Or one of those issues that keeps welling up in popular media because the answer is not well-understood?
Let’s begin with an item from December, on a website called Topia: A World of Good, promoted on Facebook today by David Brin since it reproduces a list Brin compiled on his own blog some time ago.
21 COSMIC WEBSITES YOU NEED TO KNOW: How big is space? Sci-fi legend David Brin investigates
These sites display the scientific urge to understand a universe that humans cannot correctly perceive intuitively.
Here’s a book I read near the end of last year that, like the Dawkins book recently reviewed, is a book directed at young people. Like the Dawkins, it’s heavily illustrated; unlike that, Harari’s book is essentially a rewrite of a book he has already written, his popular and bestselling SAPIENS from 2015 (my review here), aimed at younger readers. Apparently the first of several books. This one is subtitled “Vol. 1: How Humans Took Over the World.”
Today’s reading is yet another example of how narratives — stories that simplify the world and make it more understandable, even if they’re completely fictional — dominate so many people’s beliefs, especially in politics, that they amount to a denial of reality. (This isn’t about that anthology that tries to correct myths of American history; this is about what’s happening right now.)
Yet another item about that anthology of historical essays. Plus items about pandemics, bestseller lists, wokeness in the military, the attraction of conspiracy theories, and violence on TV.
Today in the papers, both an op-ed about and a review of a new book called Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past, edited by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, published by Basic Books a few days ago. It’s an anthology of essays by various writers.
There are interesting points to be made from these, though I doubt I’ll buy or read the book. Consider this post a meta-review perhaps, a reaction to what others are saying about the book. It’s of interest to me because it relates to my running theme of how humans understand the world through stories, and how this plays out politically, why some are more attracted to stories than others.
Continue reading
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Two items today. Continue reading
Just one item today.
It’s always cool when some remark I make in my blog is amplified the next day by a widely read newspaper columnist. Actually, two or three remarks, from recent days, in today’s column from Paul Krugman.
NY Times, Paul Krugman, 5 Jan 2023: Making America the Opposite of Great
