Astronomy and the History of Common Knowledge

Posted on Saturday 17 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How far away are the stars? and How has the cosmic distance records progressed over time?
  • My speculations about how people throughout history have perceived the size of the world;
  • Veritasium’s person-on-the-street interviews reveal that many people have no clue about these matters;
  • And a brief comment about how little science fiction does to honestly depict these things.

Big Think, Ethan Siegel, 14 Feb 2024: How far away are the stars?, subtitled “For thousands of years, humanity had no idea how far away the stars were. In the 1600s, Newton, Huygens, and Hooke all claimed to get there.”

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Evidence Maximalism, Pluralism, Seasonality

Posted on Friday 16 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Charlie Warzel on how everything on the Internet can be taken to support one’s preconceived ideas, given motivated thinking and confirmation bias, amplified by the Internet;
  • David Brooks on pluralism as a solution to democracy’s ills, the opposite of what conservatives demand;
  • Cal Newport on how to embrace seasonality — basically, to assuage base human nature — to avoid the workplace burnout of the modern era.

Everything online is evidence for preconceived theories, says the Internet.

The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel, 8 Feb 2024: ‘Evidence Maximalism’ Is How the Internet Argues Now, subtitled “A simple theory for why the internet is so conspiratorial”

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A Big Picture vs. Daily Trivia

Posted on Thursday 15 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • An overview of 75 years of American history, by Robert Reich;
  • Fringe items about Republican racism, who’s the traitor, the Taylor Swift conspiracy theory, assertions without evidence, the nanny state, moral certitude, and Fox News.

I think many of us spend too much time examining daily trivia (mea culpa) while perhaps losing sight of the big picture. Today Robert Reich — the UC Berkeley economist, once Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton — whom I’ve discussed a bunch of times, posted this “big picture” of “how we got into the mess we’re in,” with a video showing him drawing his major points on a big sheet of paper. But his major points are explained in the text of the post, and are quoted here.

Robert Reich, 15 Feb 2024: The Really Big Picture, subtitled “Sometimes a single very big picture is worth many thousands of words”

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Catching Up on Items from Facebook, about Conspiracy Theories and Religion

Posted on Wednesday 14 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • “If you don’t know how anything works, everything looks like a conspiracy.”
  • The conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl, which seems not to have happened, today;
  • Facebook posts about American accents, how the Bible and Quran contain only ancient knowledge, a presumptive proof of God, that Y2K statement I quoted earlier, and two absurdist takes on Christian theology.

Items from Facebook.

I’ll try linking to these posts, but some may not work, e.g. if they were directed only at friends, not the world. I’ll quote the text here in any case.

Steve Silverman, via Patrick Nielsen Hayden:

If you don’t know how anything works, everything looks like a conspiracy.

\\

OK, here’s one that’s not from Facebook, but it fits with the above. It’s a current event, today.

CNN, 14 Feb 2024: 1 in 3 Republicans believes baseless Taylor Swift election conspiracy theory, poll finds

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Peculiar Trends

Posted on Tuesday 13 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Why are Gen Z views splitting by gender? Complex answer;
  • Why are Republicans more likely to suffer hearing loss? Simple answer;
  • Shorter items: Trump doesn’t understand NATO; about that Super Bowl commercial fueled by the Christian right; whether there’s a difference between Christian groups and hate groups, in the modern world; how Republicans might view immigration differently if it were Brits and Swedes banging at our borders; how Republicans are increasingly open with bigoted attacks on political foes.

First today a couple items whose headlines made me think, Really? Why Would That Be?

OnlySky, Jonathan MS Pearce, 6 Feb 2024: Gen Z views are rapidly splitting in half by gender—and the gap is not small

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Pushing Back Against Education

Posted on Monday 12 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How nationalist and religious ideologists are against education, example 5,271,009;
  • How Trump has invited Putin to attack American allies;
  • About Biden’s memory, from a neuroscientist;
  • Short items about Nextdoor.com, the Supreme Court, how the Republican problem is metastasizing;
  • How Paul Krugman is now deeply worried for America;
  • And a link to Connie Willis’ latest summary of political developments.

*

NY Times, 10 Feb 2024 (in today’s print paper): ‘It Is Suffocating’: A Top Liberal University Is Under Attack in India, subtitled “A campaign to make the country an explicitly Hindu nation has had a chilling effect on left-leaning and secular institutions like Jawaharlal Nehru University.”

Print title: “Hindu Radicals Target Colleges As ‘Anti-India’.

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The True and the Real

Posted on Sunday 11 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • About the difference between “true” and “real” and recalling Delany’s DHALGREN;
  • An essay about the reality of mathematics, and whether math implies God.

Years ago there was a novel — it was Samuel R. Delany’s 1975 novel DHALGREN — that has this epigraph:

“You have confused the true and the real.”

The line was attributed to George Stanley, in conversation, which means there’s no looking it up, except as used in this book.

For years I’ve been puzzled by the phrase. Isn’t what’s real true in some sense? Are there things that are true yet not real? Perhaps that’s it.

But just a few days ago I had an insight. The phrase’s meaning depends on the contexts of the two key words, of course, and recent years of increasing mis- and disinformation have brought a context to those words, perhaps not one not intended by Stanley, or Delany. It’s the other way around from what I just suggested.

So here’s my take:

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Living Proper Lives, and More from the Fringe

Posted on Saturday 10 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • David Brooks on the value of humanist studies;
  • Shorter pieces on the psychology behind Trump; how evangelicals respond to the rise of the “nones”; measle rates rising in Europe; a David Barton case study; Fox News praising a vigilante who was wrong; and how Mike Johnson is even worse than Kevin McCarthy;
  • But I think I need to shift my focus.

David Brooks, nominally conservative columnist for the NY Times, is a deeper thinker than most conservative columnists, but still spends an odd amount of time worrying about whether people are living their lives in ways he thinks proper. As conservatives do. What is he worrying about this time?

NY Times, David Brooks, 25 Jan 2024: How to Save a Sad, Lonely, Angry and Mean Society

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From Looking Glass to Scary

Posted on Friday 9 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

My “looking glass” take two days ago was a cute way to avoid discussing the “tribalists” or the “cult” but perhaps things are actually getting too serious to dismiss those items as merely bizarre, upside-down-thinking about the world. If it were only flat earthers, maybe. But even the senior columnists seem to be getting honestly worried about the current state of Republicans and MAGA.

  • Adam Frank on whether our society has become too complex to survive;
  • My thoughts on the pace of change, science fiction, and the MAGA dream of a simplistic past;
  • David Brooks, a right-wing guy, is now shocked by how Republicans have given in to Trumpism;
  • Paul Krugman on whether Americans can survive a party of saboteurs.

Let’s start with this.

Adam Frank, Big Think, 9 Feb 2024: Have we created a society that’s too complex to survive?, subtitled “Human civilization has always survived periods of change. Will our rapidly evolving technological era be an exception to the rule?”

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Items about Science, Math, and Philosophy

Posted on Thursday 8 February 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

There are always looking glass items, as I described topics in yesterday’s post, but for today let’s look at more substantial items.

  • It’s been 100 years since Hubble discovered that our own galaxy wasn’t the entirety of the universe;
  • Steven Strogatz and Terence Tao discuss the idea of “good” mathematics;
  • Review of a book about Spinoza;
  • Arthur C. Brooks’ ideas from Schopenhauer about getting big things done.

Big Think, Marcelo Gleiser, 7 Feb 2024: 100 years after the “Great Debate”: How Edwin Hubble expanded the cosmos, subtitled “In 1924, Edwin Hubble found proof that the Milky Way isn’t the only galaxy in the Universe.”

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