This Week’s Sciency Bits

Posted on Wednesday 20 September 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • False Memories and the Narrative Bias;
  • Another piece with Lee McIntyre about misinformation vs. disinformation;
  • And how the world’s population will likely peak by the end of this century, and then drop;
  • And my thoughts on what the consequences would be if the world’s population were greatly reduced.

Big Think, Ross Pomeroy, 19 Sep 2023: Study reveals a big driver of false memories, subtitled “We are prone to false memories. One reason is that we are biased toward remembering tidy endings for events, even if they didn’t exist.”

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Today’s Political Items: History and Emergency

Posted on Tuesday 19 September 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman on the history and current state of the Republican Party, as enabled by people like Mitt Romney;
  • Tom Nichols on the current National Emergency, brought about by the Republican Party.

NY Times, Paul Krugman, 18 Sep 2023: The Road From Mitt Romney to MAGA

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Morality and Corruption

Posted on Monday 18 September 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How society is becoming more moral, not less;
  • How the press covers politics;
  • Quick takes on the Republican Party as a racket, and the laughable impeachment of the Biden family as “corrupt” by supporters of Trump and his family.

OnlySky, Jonathan MS Pearce, 18 Sep 2023: We are becoming more moral, not less. So why all the moaning to the contrary?

My interest here is how he claims we are becoming more moral. By what criteria?

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Flickering and Shining: Adam Lee on Red and Blue America

Posted on Sunday 17 September 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Nothing has caught my eye this weekend in the papers or on the websites to blog about. So let’s look at a couple recent essays by Adam Lee, who’s blogged for years and self-published one book collecting some of his work, Daylight Atheism, which I reviewed here back in 2014. His essays are currently appearing at OnlySky. Otherwise he hasn’t much of a profile; he has no entry at Wikipedia.

Yet I find him a straightforward, clear-thinking, nonapologetic thinker about religious and social matters. Here is a pair of essays from recent weeks characterizing (from his perspective) Red and Blue America. I’ll cover them in the order posted.

Adam Lee, OnlySky, 31 Aug 2023: The lights are flickering in Red America

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Planning, and Semesters

Posted on Saturday 16 September 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

When you’re retired, not working or going to school or driven by any particular schedule, as I’ve been more or less for a decade now, you tend to mark the passage of time by the holidays or vacations or family gatherings. Or periodic doctor visits. How does one manage one’s time to get anything done, rather than just sit back in retirement, relax, and do nothing? I have *many* things I’d still like to accomplish in my life, and sometimes I struggle with how to plan and close out plans and finish things.

(What I have done since my retirement in late 2012 is virtually all of sfadb.com, daily posts on Locus Online from mid-2010 through late 2017 until Locus HQ decided they no longer needed my services, nearly thirty lengthy review-essays for Black Gate in 2020 and 2021, and of course this entire blog, since 2013. And read many many books, which have informed my worldview and has motivated me to work on my own essays, and book.)

Here’s an idea that’s similar to what I’ve done, or have tried to do.

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Why Some Religions Seek Atheist Approval

Posted on Friday 15 September 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Greta Christina on how some religious believers, oddly, seek an atheist seal of approval. It makes a weird sort of sense.

Greta Christina, AlterNet, 14 Sep 2023: Opinion | Why religious believers are so desperate for the atheist seal of approval

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Conspiracy Theories from Apollo 11 to Today

Posted on Thursday 14 September 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Looking at today’s Phil Plait column at Scientific American, about his responses to a 2001 Fox TV program that claimed the Apollo 11 Moon landing was a hoax;
  • The history since then about so many other conspiracy theories;
  • And how some conspiracy theories are driven by “personal incredulity,” a reliance on “common sense,” and an unwillingness to deal honestly with the real world.

Today, let’s mull on this piece by astronomer Phil Plait from his current gig as a columnist for Scientific American.

At least back in the 1970s you didn’t have politicians spouting conspiracy theories like this one.

Phil Plait, Scientific American, 14 Sep 2023: Moon Landing Denial Fired an Early Antiscience Conspiracy Theory Shot, subtitled “Apollo moon landing conspiracy theories were early hints of the dangerous anti-vax, antiscience beliefs backed by politicians today”

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Another Day of Examples of Beliefs vs. Reality

Posted on Wednesday 13 September 2023 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Another example of conservatives retelling history, from PragerU;
  • How those with beliefs in subjective truths are more prone to conspiracy theories;
  • How China is now using AI to sow disinformation to gullible Americans, and wondering how long it will be until people believe no ‘photographs’ at all;
  • Another study about simply giving people money, and how this isn’t so different from governments who provide services like the military and libraries even to those who don’t pay taxes.

If you believe in a mythical past golden age, then you have to occasionally tweak real history to support the notion that there ever was a past golden age. Conservatives are good at this.

Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 13 Sep 2023: PragerU’s Confederate classroom propaganda: Co-opting history to prop up modern insurrectionists, subtitled “Abraham Lincoln is portrayed making arguments that sound like modern Proud Boys begging a judge for forgiveness.”

Noted especially for the first sentence. Continue reading →

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No Evidence vs. Evidence

Posted on Tuesday 12 September 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Two items today.

  • How Republicans are determined to impeach President Biden, despite lack of any evidence of his committing any crime (in striking contrast for former president Trump);
  • How many people think crime is worse than ever, and the economy is worse than ever, despite evidence otherwise.

Ideology is easy; drawing conclusions from evidence is hard. Politics is easy; solving problems is hard. Religion is easy; science is hard. Fantasy is easy; (honest) science fiction is hard. (By “hard” I mean difficult, but of course that word has a particular meaning when discussing science fiction.)

NY Times, David French, 12 Sep 2023: Where Is the Evidence, Speaker McCarthy?

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Odds and Ends from Recent Weeks

Posted on Monday 11 September 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Today I’m catching up on numerous items from recent weeks that I want to note even though I haven’t had time to thoroughly read or comment about them. A couple of them, at least, I will revisit, because I need to understand what they say.

Seventeen items: about Chris Rufo, varieties of socialism, the ‘X-Files’, vanilla, MAGA from a black perspective, geo-engineering, why liberalism is hard, “antiprocess” as the flip side of motivated reasoning, Marxism, civics, getting along, MAGA vigilantism, ideology in China, the dumbing of America, how conservatives impoverish people, building meaning and purpose, and the truth of art vs. science.

Vox, Zack Beauchamp, 10 Sep 2023: Chris Rufo’s dangerous fictions, subtitled “The right’s leading culture warrior has invented a leftist takeover of America to justify his very real power grabs.”

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