The Debate, and the Continuing Christian Insurgence

Posted on Sunday 30 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

  • Comments about the debate between Biden and Trump three days ago, on Thursday;
  • Items about Christian Insurgence in Oklahoma schools, and David Barton;
  • And how humans are wired to believe anything their parents or culture tells them to believe, up to a point, when the native intelligence of our species sets in, and young humans begin to question everything.

I cringed at the debate the other night, between Biden and Trump, and thought it was a disaster for Biden. I covered my eyes at times; I could barely watch. At the same time, as many have pointed out, Biden looked like a feeble old man, but at least he discussed policies and accomplishments, whereas Trump lied in virtually everything he said, as if he’s lived in some alternate world in which global leaders respected *him* until January 6th (!) before Biden took over and ruined everything. Some people, especially those who do not follow the news outside of partisan sources, will believe anything, anything he says. And CNN did not fact-check-challenge him. Do you want an old man who’s good some days and not others, but who has the right values and tells the truth, or a slick con-man who can play his audience to accept a constant stream of lies? A couple major news sources have called for Biden to step down; at least one, based on his lies, has called for Trump to step down. How did we get to this place?

But I’m not inclined to pursue this any farther.

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on The Debate, and the Continuing Christian Insurgence

Hectic Week

Posted on Saturday 29 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

In my retirement I’m getting very accustomed to routine days with no urgent tasks awaiting me. I read the paper, I do a chore or two for Locus Online or sfadb.com, have lunch and take a nap, then read a book for two or three hours in the afternoon, and finally write a blog post, sometimes a book write-up but often simply commentary about what I saw in the paper or online during the day. Then dinner, and TV (Jeopardy, then whatever), until 9 or 9.30pm. Early to bed, early to rise (typically awake by 6 or 6:30am).

This past week has seen one interruption to that routine almost every day. So I’m behind on blog posts, writing up Pinker, and reading anything at all.

Last Saturday was the Locus Awards, which I’ve already discussed.

Continue reading →

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You Are Here

Posted on Thursday 27 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

If you know how to look, you can see amazing things, far vaster and more impressive than anything imagined by our ancient ancestors. But you have to know how, and be willing to.

This is an image from an article in the magazine New Scientist, which I don’t subscribe to and so can only read the opening of; discovered via Google News.

New Scientist, 26 Jun 2024: This mind-blowing map shows Earth’s position within the vast universe, subtitled “See the circle of galaxy clusters and voids that surround us in this map of the nearby cosmos, extending 200 million light years in each direction”

Continue reading →

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Are We Living in the Worst of Times?

Posted on Wednesday 26 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Or is it only human nature to think so?

  • A Scientific American piece about the denial of reality. Maybe the evidence suggests we *are* living in the worst of times.
  • Short pieces about MAGA infighting and accusations, economists warning about Trump’s policies, FRC about their privilege, casual Republican threats of violence, unintended consequences of the Texas abortion ban, and a GOP candidate (who lost yesterday) apparently living in the 14th century.

Scientific American, Marianne Cooper & Maxim Voronov, 18 Jun 2024: We’ve Hit Peak Denial. Here’s Why We Can’t Turn Away From Reality, subtitled “We are living through a terrible time in humanity. Here’s why we tend to stick our heads in the sand and why we need to pull them out, fast”

Well… I’m beginning to think that Continue reading →

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Steven Pinker: THE BLANK SLATE, post 4

Posted on Wednesday 26 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Another five chapters, mostly addressing the fears people have with the idea of an innate human nature, as opposed to the idealized blank slate: concerning inequality, imperfectibility, determinism, and nihilism.

Earlier posts about this book: post 1, post 2, post 3.

– – –

 

–Ch7, The Holy Trinity

Further examples of traditionalists trying to save the concepts of the blank slate, the noble savage, and the ghost in the machine, presumably as sources of meaning and morality. Their claims, even from scientists like Gould and Lewontin, are political, or moral, not evidence based. The ghost in the machine is especially important to the right, and to religious fundamentalists with their moral fears and Biblical literalism, as if without such morality we’d behave like beasts. This has led to the corruption of American science education. They don’t like neuroscience any more than evolution. Scientists reject the Intelligent Design folks, like Michael Behe, while leading (political) neoconservatives have embraced the idea. (Author quotes “Inherit the Wind” about how simple, poor people need to believe in something beautiful, so why take that away from them?)

The influence of the right on intellectual life is limited by its denial of evolution. Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, MInd, Science, Steven Pinker | Comments Off on Steven Pinker: THE BLANK SLATE, post 4

How Language Changes, Sometimes for Political Purposes

Posted on Tuesday 25 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Three items from the news the past few days. First, some quotes from a piece about how climate change deniers have refined their game.

TNR, The New Republic, Genevieve Guenther, 24 Jun 2024: The New Climate Denial Is Based on These Six Terms, subtitled “The new obstructionist approach doesn’t say global warming isn’t happening. Instead, it argues we don’t need to phase out oil and gas.”

The larger issue here is that deniers of climate change, evolution, vaccines, and so on, *always* have an ulterior motive. They’re never interested about the pure science of the matters (else there are *lots* of other things they might be concerned about). In the case of climate change, whatever their surface arguments are, their underlying motivation is to preserve the status quo, in this case the interests of the fossil fuel industries.

But OK, what are their six terms? The piece begins: Continue reading →

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Steven Pinker: THE BLANK SLATE, post 3

Posted on Monday 24 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Summaries and comments about three more chapters of Steven Pinker’s THE BLANK SLATE;
  • And YouTube tracks from one of my favorite film scores: Richard Robbins’ for The Remains of the Day.

I’ll try to get through the rest of book this week, though I’ll need to be more succinct, or I’ll never finish. Three chapters done previously; 17 to go. Three more in this post.

Chapter 3 described the steps that led to the fall of the walls between matter and mind — the material and spiritual, and so on. Via cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and evolutionary psychology.

— Ch4, Culture Vultures

Culture is not simply absorbed by people; it depends on learning, which relies on faculties of the mind. Much of culture is simply accumulated local wisdom. People tend to follow the norms of their community. Many things in life lie along a continuum, but decisions must often be binary. [[ well, this is a good point ]] And some conventions exist only in people’s minds [[ one of Harari’s central themes ]]. Cultures, like languages, become different when separated. Why do some cultures dominate others? It’s not about race, cf books by Thomas Sowell and Jared Diamond [[ the latter is GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL ]]. Geography was destiny. Nonscientists fear a kind of reductionism. But there’s greedy and good reductionism; the latter is hierarchical [[ as we’ve seen in Carroll and currently in Brian Greene ]]. The very word ‘understanding’ means a kind of reductionism, i.e. descending to deeper levels of analysis. Summary para:

Our understanding of life has only been enriched by the discovery that living flesh is composed of molecular clockwork rather than quivering protoplasm, or that birds soar by exploiting the laws of physics rather than defying them. In the same way, our understanding of ourselves and our cultures can only be enriched by the discovery that our minds are composed of intricate neural circuits for thinking, feeling, and learning rather than bank slates, amorphous blobs, or inscrutable ghosts.

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, MInd, Music, Science, Steven Pinker | Comments Off on Steven Pinker: THE BLANK SLATE, post 3

Understanding Human Nature

Posted on Sunday 23 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Ultimately, everything in the daily news makes sense through an honest understanding of human nature. (It is not there are two legitimate “sides” to every issue.) Two thought pieces for today, then a bunch of shorter items.

  • About how macaques — and humans — actually cooperate in stressful situations, despite popular narratives;
  • About how philosopher Charles Taylor thinks the world needs the pre-scientific understanding of the world, to restore “a shared sense of meaning and purpose”;
  • Shorter items about how Iowans don’t want to hear about climate science; a list of GOP lies; a left-wing charge that NYT and WaPo are exaggerating the threat of Trump; how FRC claims tolerance is evil; how since Reagan the GOP has slid into authoritarianism and ignorance; how conservatives don’t want to hear that crime rates are falling.

NY Times, Rachel Nuwer, 20 Jun 2024: After a Weather Disaster, a Surprise: Some Ornery Monkeys Got Nicer, subtitled “Macaques, reeling from a hurricane, learned by necessity to get along, a study found. It’s one of the first to suggest that animals can adapt to environmental upheaval with social changes.” [shared link]

I heard this exact story somewhere else recently — on 60 Minutes? Yes, it’s right here. Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Evolution, Human Progress, Humanism, Philosophy | Comments Off on Understanding Human Nature

Locus Awards 2024

Posted on Saturday 22 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Quick post at nearly 8 in the evening, just home from the Locus Awards. Like last year, they were held live at Preservation Park in downtown Oakland; last year’s report is here, and I’m going to borrow a photo from that post for tonight’s report.

Neither the Silverbergs nor Connie Willis attended this year. In Connie’s place, sorta, was Cory Doctorow, masked throughout the afternoon, who gave a keynote speech of sorts mid-way through presentation of the awards. He talked about Luddites, the talk drawn from one of his Locus columns (posted here) about how SF is not about prediction, but about contestation, in particular to challenge the narratives of Silicon Valley elites who seem to be trying to live out the visions of science fiction novels they read as teenagers… Didn’t have a chance to chat with Cory, or to say hi. (Not sure he’d remember me.)

The awards ceremony was led by Henry Lien, dressed up as mythical science fiction character, Emperor Stardust [ added 25jun24 per Facebook comments ] playing a long Chinese banjo, singing about Princess Locus and providing clever two-line intros to each of the award categories. The presenters ranged from Locus folks like Liza Groen Trombi and Tim Pratt, to some young writers I had never heard of before, to Cory Doctorow himself. None of the winners was there; all appeared via pre-recorded videos for their acceptance speeches.

Like last year I had seen the winners in a pre-publication PDF of the July issue that I got a couple days ago. As I write Locus hasn’t posted the winners yet, but I expect them to do so any minute…

We did have nice chats with Bob Blough, Tim Pratt, and Jacob Weisman, and said hi in passing to the other Locus VIPs.

Posted in Personal history, science fiction | Comments Off on Locus Awards 2024

Loyalty vs. Principles

Posted on Friday 21 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Three threads today, all related.

  • Considering whistle-blowing as an example of wrestling loyalty vs. principles, and how this applies to Trump and his followers;
  • Related items about how Trump supporters vow to “lie, cheat, and steal”; how Donald Trump knows what he’s doing; how the GOP Louisiana lawmaker can’t answer the question about why she presumes her own religion’s rules should be imposed upon everyone;
  • And Salon’s Amanda Marcotte on how Republicans violate the Ten Commandments every day, and how MAGA folks think rules are for other people.

Here’s a piece that triggers wide-ranging thoughts. More nascent conclusions.

Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams, 20 Jun 2024: The toll of truth: What happens when you expose medical wrongdoing?, subtitled “Whistleblowers are often shunned and discredited, but honoring one’s moral code is ultimately worth it”

I’m not even quoting from this piece; my concern is the broader question of loyalty vs. principle.

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Evolution, Morality | Comments Off on Loyalty vs. Principles