The Awe of the Solar Eclipse

Posted on Sunday 7 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Three items today.

  • Addressing a piece that claims that the awe of the solar eclipse, tomorrow, will somehow unite humanity (I think not; it hasn’t before);
  • Another appreciation of Daniel Kahneman, who explained how humans think, and established the idea of “cognitive biases”;
  • And looking back to a song by Split Enz, the predecessor group of Crowded House and soloist Neil Finn.

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Here’s an article that wonders if tomorrow’s solar eclipse will somehow be a united force among all humanity. My initial reaction is: of course not. Has it happened after previous eclipses? No. At the same time, the awe is there for people opening to experience it.

Caption: “In-camera multiple exposure of the solar eclipse as seen in Salem, Ore., on Aug. 21, 2017. (Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)”

LA Times, 7 Apr 2024: These scientists think an ‘awe’-some eclipse could help unite Americans in troubled times

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How Humanity is Hobbled by Tribalism

Posted on Saturday 6 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

I do have a general scheme in work, for which all of these items are supporting evidence. (And how this really does relate to science fiction.)

  • A rogue GOP congressman who spouts unsupported conspiracy theories;
  • How RFK Jr. supporters rationalize their political choices;
  • And a host of items demonstrating conservative/tribal thinking: how some want to execute gays; how Trump spreads the lie about Easter; how the current economy under Biden is stronger than that of other developed nations and they refuse to acknowledge it; how Republican claims that crime has skyrocketed under Biden are simply not true; how Trump lied about speaking the family of a victim of an illegal immigrant; Roseanne Barr’s latest crackpot comments; an Arizona Republican condemns non-Christians and LGBTQ people to eternal damnation; others about Satan’s religion of the leftism, how Democrats will cheat in elections, how praying in tongues will stop witch attacks; … and more.
  • With, in the background, my gelling conclusions about morality, which takes into account, and understands, the conservative view. But concludes it’s simply not appropriate in the modern, global, multicultural, world. It’s become counter-productive. (Aside from simply being wrong on many counts.)

They just make stuff up, to twist reality into conforming with their preferred worldview.

NYT, 4 Apr 2024: G.O.P. Congressman’s Wild Claim: F.B.I. Entrapped Jan. 6 Rioters, subtitled “More than three years after the attack on Congress, a Republican subcommittee chairman offered a series of baseless and disproved claims about it, reflecting an effort on the right to falsify what occurred.”

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Conspiracy Theories: Solar Eclipse Edition

Posted on Friday 5 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Salon on how solar eclipses are a breeding ground for conspiracy theories;
  • Rolling Stone on how the far right is subject to conspiracy theories;
  • Free Inquiry on why solar eclipses are nowhere close to being evidence of a creator.

While yesterday’s post was about the new Harari book that revisited his ideas of how major human concepts, like money, government, and religion, are ‘stories’ that people agree upon to enable a functional society, today’s is about another application of ‘story,’ the continued propensity of humans to imagine conspiracy theories about everything unusual that happens in the world. Things can’t just happen; they must be part of nefarious plots by the evil ones. Everything is imbued with meaning and intent; it’s a demon-haunted world. (The is a phenomenon on the right, of course, and related to morality, as I’ll explain in future posts.)

Now we have the solar eclipse next Monday. Of *course* there are conspiracy theories about it! Apparently this has always happened, every time there’s an eclipse. Human nature being what it is. (Did we see any of this back in 2017, when my partner and I drove to Oregon to see that solar eclipse? I’ll have to check. But not right now.)

Salon, Nicole Karlis, 5 Apr 2024: Nothing true under the sun: Why solar eclipses are a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, subtitled “Experts explain why astronomical events are frequently fraught with conspiracy theories and magical thinking”

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Yuval Noah Harari, UNSTOPPABLE US, Vol. 2

Posted on Thursday 4 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: “Why the World Isn’t Fair.” (Bright Matter Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House; March 2024. xv + 189pp. With copious illustrations by Ricard Zaplana Ruiz.)

This is the second volume in what might be called SAPIENS-FOR-KIDS, short and heavily-illustrated books that run through the themes of Harari’s SAPIENS (which I reviewed here) but for middle-grade readers. I heard once that one of the all-time Jeopardy champions honed his general knowledge of all things by reading books for kids, and indeed, a book like this helps anyone to see the crucial themes that stand out from among all the details, at a 30,000 feet level, so speak. In this book, it’s about the unfortunate consequences of the agricultural revolution, and how complex society lives by stories.

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Imagine Prioritizing Truth Over Being Right

Posted on Wednesday 3 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s an amazing notion: there are some people who would rather find the truth, than be right. These are the scientists — some of them, anyway. This concerns Daniel Kahneman, whose death I noted a week ago here.

NY Times, Cass R. Sunstein, 1 Apr 2024: The Nobel Winner Who Liked to Collaborate With His Adversaries (shared link)

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It’s Time for Another Round of… Stupid? Or Cynical?

Posted on Tuesday 2 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Stupid or Cynical: Republican/Christian conservatives respond to the coincidence of Easter and Trans Recognition Day;
  • Some MAGA claims are just delusional, example from Steve Bannon;
  • Robert Reich on Trump’s 5-step fascist plan;
  • And how conservatives reject the idea of lab-grown meat.

NY Times, 1 Apr 2024: A Transgender Holiday Fell on Easter. Republicans Lashed Out at Biden., subtitled “President Biden, in acknowledging both days, drew the ire of many on the right, who attacked him as besmirching Christianity.”

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Nuclear Families and The Bible

Posted on Monday 1 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

I could probably spend every day compiling six or eight or ten of the most egregious examples of MAGA/Trump craziness, but I am trying not to. Let’s try a more substantial piece today. (I was busy with a family dinner yesterday, Sunday, and didn’t have time to post here.)

So, just one item today, about nuclear families and the Bible.

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You might argue this either way. I’m going to try to consider both sides.

LA Times, Susan Goldberg, 29 Mar 2024: Opinion: Nuclear families aren’t the ‘traditional’ ones. The Bible is full of blended and chosen families

Here’s what she says:

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Mirror Realities

Posted on Saturday 30 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Can’t resist another round of political links this afternoon, about the Alice in Wonderland, mirror-universe that conservatives and Trump-supporters apparently live in. In which they, and those of us living in the real objective world, believe the other is the purveyor of crime and evil. While, to anyone with half a wit of sense, …. well, you can finish. It’s obvious. Let’s start with this objective reporting of an event.

NY Times, 28 Mar 2024: Trump, Attending Wake of Slain N.Y.P.D. Officer, Pushes Campaign Message on Crime, subtitled “Mr. Trump called the officer’s death a horrible tragedy and, as he often does on the trail, broadly called for a crackdown on violent crime without mentioning specific policies.”

As hundreds of police officers and family members stood outside a Long Island funeral home, former President Donald J. Trump attended on Thursday the wake of a New York City police officer who was killed in the line of duty days earlier.

Then, Mr. Trump, who is facing four criminal cases, including one in Manhattan that is going to trial in less than three weeks, stood in front of more than a dozen police officers and proclaimed the need for the country to “get back to law and order.”

The obvious reaction of many: let’s start with you, Donald.

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A History of Progress and Backlash

Posted on Friday 29 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Two items about Fareed Zakaria and his new book;
  • Robert Reich on Roger Ailes;
  • How “DEI” is now substituting for the N-word.

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There’s a new book out this week by Fareed Zakaria, whose 2020 book, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, I quite admired. (Review here.)

So I bought the new one too, which is about “progress and backlash from 1600 to the present,” a theme which fascinates me. Why are so many people so eager to abandon the progress made since the Enlightenment, both in politics (democracy) and science (the anti-vaxxers and flat earthers and…)

NY Times, David Brooks, 28 Mar 2024: The Great Struggle for Liberalism

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Case Study of the Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists?

Posted on Thursday 28 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • First, a quote about progressives and conservatives, the future and the past;
  • Then more about the conspiracy thinking about the Baltimore bridge collapse, with examples from PolitiFact, CNN, and CFI (Center for Inquiry);
  • And how the construction workers who fell from the bridge were immigrants, whom many Americans demonize, yet like the ones who have built America.

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Saw this quote on Facebook, and verified it (never trust any quote on Facebook) to the extent of finding it on one of those websites that collects quotes.

For progressive people the present is the beginning of the future. For conservative people the present is the end of the past.

— Karl Mannheim

This is consistent with the MAGA crowd yearning to return to a (mythical) lost golden age, on the one hand, and on the other, that saying “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation” — long an epigraph on Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s Making Light blog — which it turns out (Google!) was said by Alasdair Gray, Scottish author of, among other things, Poor Things, basis for the recent film. Coincidence!

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