Plot Armor

Posted on Friday 6 September 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Beginning with this unusual topic. Not about Trump per se; more a general principle of story-telling. And faith.

OnlySky, Dale McGowan, 6 Sep 2024: For the Trump faithful, it comes down to plot armor, subtitled “It’s no surprise that Trump benefits from a feature you’ve seen on bad television.”

Did a brief skim; this seems to be related to the kind of plot device on TV where you know the heroes will survive because they have to be back for next week’s episode.

The writer begins by recalling comments from way back in 2004 from a Bush aide who contrasted the “reality-based community” with their own take: “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

It was a simpler time. We thought we had reached our presidential nadir. The reaction from those of us in the reality-based community (RBC) to the statement by the aide—now believed to have been Karl Rove—was utter disbelief that such gibberish could emanate from the White House.

Like I said, a simpler time.

Then came Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” and everything since.  Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, conservatives, Lunacy, Narrative, Religion | Comments Off on Plot Armor

Alternative Political Realities

Posted on Thursday 5 September 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

I continue to find examples like these fascinating. I know they are extreme examples, and not representative of conservatives in general. But that these claims and attitudes still exist, and are widely circulated, suggests to me that, in the big picture, that while humans like to think they have “evolved,” many have not, and retain tribalistic thinking. And how this is entirely understandable.

  • Republican false theories abut immigrant voting;
  • Musicians who’ve demanded that Trump stop using their songs;
  • In an alternative world, JD Vance is popular;
  • Brief items about milkshakes, not the time to talk about gun control, why women shouldn’t be in government, scandal machine Mark Robinson, accusations of “communist” and “Marxist” by people who don’t know what those words mean, Moms for Liberty, and a “terrible” film about Ronald Reagan;
  • How Trump talks constantly about “the likes of which nobody has ever seen”

NY Times, Alexandra Berzon, 5 Sep 2024: Republicans Seize on False Theories About Immigrant Voting, subtitled “Activists, party lawyers and state officials are mobilizing behind a crackdown on a supposed scourge of noncitizens’ casting ballots. Voting rights advocates say the effort is spreading misinformation.”

One woman wants to scrutinize the voting rolls of people with “ethnic names.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Morality, Politics | Comments Off on Alternative Political Realities

Essays by Harari and Chiang

Posted on Wednesday 4 September 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Both about technology, about AI.

The Sapiens author has a new book out next week: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. This is an excerpt.

NY Times, Yuval Noah Harari, 4 Sep 2024: Yuval Noah Harari: What Happens When the Bots Compete for Your Love? [gift link]

As always, Harari does 30,000-foot overviews really well. The excerpt begins:

Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Technology | Comments Off on Essays by Harari and Chiang

Borders and the Fringe

Posted on Tuesday 3 September 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • A speculation by Adam Lee about what will happen when we give up national borders;
  • Items from the fringe about Trump’s three rules; Musk’s preference for high status males; Christian nonsense about evolution; simply lying about the Arlington story; and Musk’s infantile response to Robert Reich’s criticism.

Today’s thought piece.

OnlySky, Adam Lee, 3 Sep 2024: When we abolished borders, subtitled “After a while, it was hard to remember why we’d drawn the lines to begin with.”

Offhand, I’d say borders, especially between nations, were created and became established as those nations grew from town to cities and eventually nations derived from different ‘tribes’ started bumping into one another. And so clear boundaries were necessary to establish territory. Similarly, formal passports were only established in 1920.

Let’s see what Adam Lee says. It quickly becomes clear (though I’m only quoting excerpts) that this is a fictional scenario.

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Culture, Evolution, History, Lunacy | Comments Off on Borders and the Fringe

Cory Doctorow on Marshmallow Longtermism

Posted on Monday 2 September 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

I read Cory Doctorow’s latest column for Locus Magazine last week, when I browsed through my advance PDF copy of the September issue. It’s a fascinating piece that considers the difference between the political left and the political right in terms of a classic experiment in child psychology. The column has now been posted on the Locus website, so I can link to it, and discuss it.

(photo copyright Julia Galdo & Cody Cloud)

Locus Magazine, Cory Doctorow, September issue, posted 2 Sep 2024: Cory Doctorow: Marshmallow Longtermism

The classic experience is the Stanford marshmallow experiment, and is about delayed gratification.

Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Psychology | Comments Off on Cory Doctorow on Marshmallow Longtermism

Lukianoff & Haidt, THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND

Posted on Sunday 1 September 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a book that was published six years ago this month, and which I read one year ago last month.

Subtitle: “How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure”

(Penguin Press, Sept. 2018, 338pp, including 70p of acknowledgements, appendices, notes, references, and index.)

In a structure similar to Robert Reich’s book just discussed, this one identifies a problem, explores how we got here, then provides suggested correctives.

By “coddling” the authors mean that Americans, students in particular, are over-protected. The problem, especially on college campuses, consists of three Great Untruths. These are discussed in the first three chapters.

1, The Untruth of Fragility: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Weaker;

2, The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always Trust Your Feelings;

3, The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life Is a Battle Between Good People and Evil People.

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Human Nature, Psychology | Comments Off on Lukianoff & Haidt, THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND

Infrastructure, the Constitution, Changing Minds, and Fringe Items

Posted on Saturday 31 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How expanding America’s highways doesn’t solve their congestion;
  • Ten ways the heat is changing us, including impacts on the infrastructure;
  • Another perspective on issues with the US Constitution;
  • Changing minds, appeals to fear, or persuasion;
  • Fringe items about a fake dog, telling jokes, giggling in public, choosing misery, and performing gender surgery.

Here’s a great story that challenges the presumptions of the growing economy.

Slate, David Zipper, 28 Aug 2024: How America Can Break Its Highway Addiction, subtitled “In the 1980s, an unlikely alliance slowed the construction of nature-destroying dams. We just might be able to pull it off again.”

This is about America’s propensity for building new highways. Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Lunacy, Morality, Science, Technology | Comments Off on Infrastructure, the Constitution, Changing Minds, and Fringe Items

Robert Reich, THE COMMON GOOD

Posted on Friday 30 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s another shortish book I read recently, not a memoir but a book at the intersection of politics, morality, and human nature, which is itself another theme of my reading the past two or three years. It’s by Robert Reich, about whom I’ve written before, e.g. here. I read this one on the plane during our last trip to Austin, in early June, and revisited it yesterday to write up these notes.

By “common good” Reich means the set of shared values of society, what we owe together as citizens of the same society, the norms we voluntarily abide by. Reich is quick to caution that this has nothing to do with communism or socialism, or about political parties. It’s something that seems to have been lost, he says, so in this book he explains what it is, what happened to erode it, and what might be done to restore it.

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Education, Morality, Politics | Comments Off on Robert Reich, THE COMMON GOOD

Human Nature, Morality, Politics

Posted on Wednesday 28 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

I think the title here is the name for the broad category of my interests. They all blend together. They connect.

For today:

  • Would conservatives ever allow a revision of the US Constitution? No matter how dysfunctional it’s become, no matter how they ignore it anyway?
  • How Republican policies are ‘anti-family’;
  • Links from my favorite aggregate site about conservative superstition and nonsense;
  • About Trump’s embarrassing appearance at Arlington;
  • How Rich Lowry defends Trump’s “character” and how Tom Nichols responds.

Can we change our ways based on experience? Or are we forever stuck with the wisdom of the ‘ancients’ (in this case the Founders)?

LA Times, Erwin Chemerinsky, 23 Aug 2024: Opinion: We’re living under a flawed Constitution. Let’s start fresh and rewrite it

How is it flawed? For example:

Continue reading →

Posted in Human Nature, Morality, Politics | Comments Off on Human Nature, Morality, Politics

Political Truths and Lies

Posted on Tuesday 27 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

A subject which never ends. My fascination with this, yet again, isn’t about politics per se, so much as trying to understand why people believe what they do, and how humanity struggles with the balance of survival vs understanding.

  • How Fox News spins crime data;
  • How Trump and RFK Jr. are epistemological pals;
  • RFK Jr. promises to investigate chemtrails!;
  • How Reagan tried out some of the ideas in Project 2025;
  • And David French on the Christian persecution narrative.

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Media Matters, Gideon Taaffe, 23 Aug 2024: Fox News is pushing data from a former Trump official to incorrectly suggest violent crime is rising during the Biden administration

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Epistemology, Politics | Comments Off on Political Truths and Lies