Category Archives: Provisional Conclusions

Four More Provisional Conclusions

Here’s a first draft of four more provisional conclusions I’ve drawn in recent years; they summarize themes I’ve invoked many times in these posts. I’ll revisit this post and refine, before I add them to a standing page on this … Continue reading

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Links and Comments: Tribalism, Zero-Sum Politics, Trump, Gut Reactions, Weather Forecasting

First, Andrew Sullivan has an essay in New York magazine, America Wasn’t Built for Humans, subtitled, “Tribalism was an urge our Founding Fathers assumed we could overcome. And so it has become our greatest vulnerability.” He wonders how American has … Continue reading

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Our New Post-Fact World

Again, I’m having trouble getting back up to speed on this blog, partly a matter of resuming a routine that was interrupted by our big European trip in October, but mostly a matter of the election results and the bizarre, … Continue reading

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Carl Sagan, THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE (2006): History is a battle of inadequate myths

Here’s a book I had forgotten I had, relatively speaking; I obviously bought it back in 2006 or so, but I didn’t read it right away and so it sat on my shelves among many other books (by Sagan and … Continue reading

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Sean Carroll, THE BIG PICTURE

Sean Carroll’s THE BIG PICTURE: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, just published May 10th, is an ambitious, wide-ranging book not so much about cosmology (Carroll’s specialty at CalTech), as about the perspective we gain through … Continue reading

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Science Fiction As a Prism in the Dawn

Subtitle?

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Reading Haidt, arcs of history, false balance, how liberal views are closer to the truth, and science fiction

Beginning to read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion today, an eloquent, insightful exploration into how the parameters of human psychology explain the range of political and religious differences. I wrote a … Continue reading

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Links and Comments: Raising Kids with or without faith; Benford hosts evolution debate; the Lake Wobegon Effect

Slate: “Why Hold a Child Hostage to My Doubts?” The confusing, complicated desire of parents with no religion to raise their kids with faith. Why would parents with no religion think their kids need to be raised into a faith … Continue reading

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Rereading Early Heinlein, part 1

I reread three early Heinlein volumes in the past few weeks, and as with my Asimov rereads, these were revisits to stories I first read some 30 or 40 years ago, and mostly have not read since. Both Asimov’s and … Continue reading

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Sundry Links and Comments

» A Publishers Weekly review of a book about expanding human perception: We Have the Technology: How Biohackers, Foodies, Physicians, and Scientists Are Transforming Human Perception, One Sense at a Time, Kara Platoni, Author This is a superb account of … Continue reading

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