Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Meta
Category Archives: Psychology
Links and Comments: The Good Old Days; Accusations of Moral Decline
Wall Street Journal (via a ‘sponsored’ post in my Fb feed!): Why We Can’t Stop Longing for the Good Old Days, subtitled, “Neurology and nostalgia help explain why people have always worried that the world is going downhill.” It’s an … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Gift-Giving; Australia is Fake; Facebook as Doomsday Machine
NYT: You’re Choosing a Gift. Here’s What Not to Do., subtitled “Many of our natural impulses turn out to be wrong. Psychological research can help us choose wisely.” Another essay about how intuition and “common sense” can seem appropriate for … Continue reading
Posted in Lunacy, Psychology
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Links and Comments: How People Think; the Election and the Pandemic
It’s been a few days since last bunch of links and comments, and I’ve collected several since then that perhaps can be fit together into some kind of overe-arching theme. It’s about how different people think differently. I should say … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Pandemic Responses and Routines
The Atlantic, 24 Nov: Your Individually Rational Choice Is Collectively Disastrous, subtitled “Stopping the virus from spreading requires us to override our basic intuitions.” This isn’t about haywire individual thinking (cognitive biases, the appeal of simplistic stories to explain the … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Politics and Conspiracy Theories; Epistemology
Another batch of links and comments, again on topics of politics and conspiracy theories, not because I’m trying to dissuade anyone in particular of any such beliefs (let alone supernatural ones), but because all these examples (more and more of … Continue reading
Posted in Lunacy, Politics, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Obama; Conspiracy Theories; Big Government; Liberty
Guardian: review of Barack Obama’s new book. Obama makes clear he believes the whiplash from the 44th to 45th president is no accident. On the contrary, the mere fact that an accomplished, intelligent, scandal-free black man inhabited the White House … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Psychology, Social Progress
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Principles and Moral Guidelines, Update
I polished my Principles page today, tightening a bit, and adding a section at the end listing my favorite alternatives to the Biblical Ten Commandments.
Posted in Humanism, Morality, Philosophy, Psychology
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Link and Comments: Cory Doctorow on Story
Slate: Cory Doctorow: The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories, subtitled, I’m changing how I write fiction—for the benefit of the real world. The essay is on occasion of the publication of Doctorow’s latest novel, Attack Surface, a follow-up to … Continue reading
Posted in Narrative, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Make-Believe worlds and Donald Trump and his supporters
As evidence for my thoughts, in this post Notes for the Book: Magical Thinking, Cognitive Dissonance, Group-Thinking, about how many people live in a kind of make-believe world, for reasons of group solidarity, and despite the inevitable cognitive dissonance with … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Cognitive Dissonance and Fox News
As if on cue, following my past few posts, here’s a NY Times columnist today on Why Fox News Is Still in a Coronavirus Bubble. Subtitle: “Humans will do figure eights to make facts suit their fictions. Laura Ingraham and … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Psychology
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