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
Search Results for: how the mind works
Nonfiction Notes: Michael Shermer: WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS
Michael Shermer: Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. (W.H. Freeman, 1997) Here’s one of the earliest books that address human irrationality in terms of both the evidence against various pseudoscientific beliefs, and the … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Psychology, Science
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Nonfiction Notes: Neil F. Comins, HEAVENLY ERRORS: Misconceptions about the real nature of the universe (2001)
This is a book I’ve had for nearly 20 years, since its publication in 2001, and finally I sat down last year, 2020, and read it. I had thought it would be a book about common misconceptions of the universe … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Psychology, Science
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Notes and Quotes: Frank Wilczek’s FUNDAMENTALS: TEN KEYS TO REALITY
Frank Wilczek is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, whose earlier book A BEAUTIFUL QUESTION: Finding Nature’s Deep Design (2015) I have but have not yet read. (It looks fascinating – the kind big picture book, that tries to understand history or … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Science
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Notes and Quotes: Ezra Klein’s WHY WE’RE POLARIZED (2020)
Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized was published a full year ago, in January 2020. Ezra Klein is a co-founder of the ‘explainer’ website Vox, and writes essays and columns for various other outlets. (And he lives somewhere here in Oakland.) The … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, 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: Christian Nationalism; Covid and Climate Denial
NYT: Trump or No Trump, Religious Authoritarianism Is Here to Stay, subtitled “Their unlikely ally may have lost the White House, but Christian nationalists still plan to win the war,” by Katherine Stewart. The 2020 election is proof that religious … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Religion
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Rutger Bregman, UTOPIA FOR REALISTS: How We Can Build the Ideal World (2014/2017)
This is a breezy, fast-reading book that summarizes grand conclusions simply and directly, and then provides background references to support those conclusions in 40 pages of notes at the end. The Dutch author is “one of the continent’s most prominent … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Social Progress
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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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Notes for the Book: Magical Thinking, Cognitive Dissonance, Group-Thinking
Extending thoughts from previous posts about the future of enlightenment and similar matters. About group-thinking and how people get along in their lives just fine without understanding how the world actually works (as well-established by physics, chemistry, biology including evolution, … Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Psychology, Religion, The Book
Comments Off on Notes for the Book: Magical Thinking, Cognitive Dissonance, Group-Thinking
