Quick item from Facebook today. From Adam-Troy Castro, a science fiction writer seemingly better known for his Facebook posts than for his fiction. This is about Flat-Earthers, conspiracy theorists, psychology, and the argument from personal incredulity.
I’ll quote the whole post:
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Quick post, likely the last one for several days, perhaps a week. Topics: RFK’s lies; Big Think’s “Explain It Like I’m Smart” series; How the humanities have become more political; the most mystifying open questions in science; why a university is expanding a pseudoscience program; Charles Stross on tech billionaires; appreciating the winter solstice; the idea of ‘solastalgia’; right-wing media trends in climate change narratives; and Charlie Warzel on how nobody can keep up online anymore.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign of conspiracy theories: PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year
First of all, I can’t resist noting this. To me this represents the insularity and cluelessness about the real world that religions, at least Catholicism and Christianity, represent.
Joe.My.God, 21 Dec 2023: Catholic League: Atheists Are Miserable During Xmas
I’ve mentioned before that I don’t actually follow “science news” very closely, because true developments in science tend to be incremental, not revolutionary, while journalism of any kind, even the most responsible journalism, tends to focus on some kind of newsworthy ‘angle.’ Thus the media tends to exaggerate the significance of what are actually tentative findings, or at best provisional conclusions, likely needing further study or verification.
Here’s a bunch of examples from this past year.
Big Think, Ethan Siegel, 18 Dec 2023: The 10 most overhyped physics and astronomy claims from 2023, subtitled “Misinformation was extremely popular in 2023, as bad science often made global headlines. Learn the truth behind these 10 dubious stories.”
I would say that economics, and psychology, are sciences to the extent their practitioners recognize the results of ‘experiments’ (even those necessarily that play out in the real world) and adjust their theories and conclusions accordingly. Some don’t.
NY Times, Opinion, Paul Krugman, 18 Dec 2023: Beware Economists Who Won’t Admit They Were Wrong
Are the colors of squares A and B the same?
Astronomy Picture of the Day, 18 Dec 2023: The Same Color Illusion
Yes they are. Click on the link, and hover over the image. A prime example of how our senses, in this case sight, are extremely context-sensitive and therefore cannot be relied on to report object reality. One of my ongoing themes.
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NY Times, Opinion by David French, 17 Dec 2023: Behold, MAGA Man
What happens to people like this? Are we all susceptible depending on time and place and circumstances? I.e. are our morality, our integrity, our honesty, context-sensitive?
Busy pre-holiday weekend — making rusks and another batch of lemon bars. So only a single item for today, setting aside yet again the more substantial topics I alluded to yesterday.
Here’s one of those pieces where I react to the headline: they are? OK if so, why?
NY Times, Michelle Goldberg, 15 Dec 2023: What’s Driving Former Progressives to the Right?
Here’s a piece that takes a wide perspective on the presence of democracy in human history.
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Vox, Zack Beauchamp, 15 Dec 2023: What Trump has already taken from us, subtitled “Democracy is a culture — and Trump is destroying it.”
In the long arc of human history, the modern democratic era is a mere blip.
The dictatorship theme continues.
Washington Post, Marianne LeVine and Isaac Arnsdorf, 13 Dec 2023: Trump backers laugh off, cheer ‘dictator’ comments, as scholars voice alarm
NY Times, Charles M. Blow, 13 Dec 2023: America’s Thirst for Authoritarianism.
