David McRaney, HOW MINDS CHANGE

Posted on Thursday 4 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion (Portfolio/Penguin, June 2022, 330pp)

Almost a decade ago I discovered two books by David McRaney, YOU ARE NOT SO SMART (2011) and YOU ARE NOW LESS DUMB (2013) that were popularizations of the discoveries of psychology over the previous decade or two. All about cognitive biases, how people commit logical fallacies, how they use heuristics. From his books, and others of the past two decades by Dan Ariely, Tom Gilovich, Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt, and others, I’ve learned a great about the difference between what people believe is true and what actually is true – a theme that dovetails with the notions of science fiction that suggest humans do not or cannot perceive more than our immediate experience, that a larger reality is out there for us to discover, if we can just think our way to it.

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Abortion Votes and Republicans on Parenting

Posted on Wednesday 3 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

When I opened Facebook this morning the first 10 items were all about the election results in Kansas (from news sources or friends citing them), in which an attempt to remove protections for abortion *failed* rather dramatically — by 60% over 37% or thereabouts. And here I just quoted this para from that Slate article about the New York Times, yesterday:

But most Americans—57 percent, according to Pew Research and 63 percent according to a more recent CNN poll—disapprove of the repeal of Roe. Treating the minority that embraces it with more curiosity and empathy than the majority who opposes it will lead it to skewed perceptions of the reality on the ground.

Thus, all today:
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Bothsidesism and Media Bias

Posted on Tuesday 2 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s an odd headline. What could this be about?

Slate, Savannah Jacobson, 1 Aug 2022: Why the New York Times’ Post-Roe Abortion Coverage Has Felt a Little Off, subtitled, “It’s the same problem that always plagues the Times.”

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Randy Olson, HOUSTON, WE HAVE A NARRATIVE

Posted on Monday 1 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

This is an interesting book that I’m disappointed by only because it’s not the book I wanted to read. That is, not the author’s fault. An interesting, useful, book nonetheless.

(University of Chicago Press, 2015, trade paperback, 260pp)

Olson’s book is about narrative, and science — but only science in terms of writing paper abstracts and press releases. About telling the ‘story’ of new scientific results.

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Recent Doonesbury and Utopian Ideologies

Posted on Sunday 31 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

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Demographic Studies: Red v Blue, Abortions, Social Services, and Mortality Gaps

Posted on Saturday 30 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Two items today that fit neatly together. They are illustrations of demographic trends that seem always to align. Red states, religion, support for authoritarian politicians, disapproval of abortion, disapproval of certain books, distrust of science, and lack of social services. And higher death rates.

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Reading Clubs and Robert Silverberg’s “Sailing to Byzantium”

Posted on Friday 29 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

I’ve never belonged to any kind of reading club, or ‘book club’ in the sense of a group of people meeting every couple weeks to discuss a book they’ve all read. (A recent example in pop culture is the movie The Jane Austen Book Club, based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler.) For one, I’ve never been a ‘joiner’ of clubs or groups. (In all the years I lived in Los Angeles, I never once visited LASFS, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, which met weekly at a clubhouse in North Hollywood.) For another, I have lots of books to read on my own, too many to consider interrupting my plans for the agenda of some club or group.

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Quick Post on a Late Thursday Afternoon, with Cars

Posted on Thursday 28 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Busy this afternoon with a long zoom meeting concerning a certain magazine and its future.

The meeting went longer than I’d thought.

For now, here’s a photo of a vintage car we saw a couple weeks ago on a walk through Shepherd’s Canyon, a bit north of us.

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Facebook Memes and Post

Posted on Wednesday 27 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

A collection of saves from the past two or three weeks. This first one has been around for a while, and of course speaks to the evidence of psychological studies…

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What People Know, Think They Know, or Believe, vs. How They Act

Posted on Tuesday 26 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

In particular, about a GOP congressman’s hypocrisy concerning his son’s gay marriage, how the Republican witnesses at the Jan. 6th hearing abandoned their jobs only at the last possible minute, and how people in red states have a distorted view of life in blue states.

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