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POPSComplex decision? Don't sleep on it Since its publication two years ago by a Dutch research team in the journal Science, the earlier finding had been used to encourage decision-makers to make "snap" decisions (for example, in the best-selling book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell) or to leave complex choices to the powers of unconscious thought ("Sleep on it", Dijksterhuis et al., Science, 2006). But in the new study, to be published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, scientists ran four experiments in which participants were presented with complex decisions and asked to choose the best option immediately ("blink"), after a period of conscious deliberation ("think"), or after a period of distraction ("sleep on it"), which is claimed to encourage "unconscious thought processes". In all experiments, there was some evidence that conscious deliberation can lead to better choices and little evidence for superiority of choices made "unconsciously".
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POPSJohn "Christ" McCain? Showing the eloquence demanded by the head of the Georgia state GOP, Sue Everhard, demonstats the strange reasoning of religious politicians. She makes the direct comparison of McCain to Jesus Christ and then denies making this comparison immediately afterwards. Oh well. :-(
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POPSGive it a shot From the website: TED stands for Technology, "Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader." I've been a regular viewer of TED and have been meaning for a long time to clip it's site and finally have. Well worth a visit for thinking people.
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POPSShattering the war consensus: Cindy Sheehan stands up to the crack house crowd
Pelosi, though she is, like the Clintons, sneered at by the thug right (and thereby gains street cred in ultra-liberal San Francisco, the district she represents), has paved the way for Bush's war-funding requests to pass time and again with her political gamesmanship in the House. Among many other acts of accommodation, she was also secretly briefed, along with a few other members of Congress, on CIA torture practices in 2002, and in the spirit of bipartisan amorality saw no problem with it. "This is a progressive, populist campaign. Every day that we exist and bring up these issues is a victory for us," said Sheehan, the grieving mom who became the public face of opposition to the war in Iraq. Now, with a staff of two, she is turning her challenge to that war into a political campaign. To the extent that politics is about winning and losing, yes, hers is probably a lost cause. But I see it as something else. I see it as a clarion stand for principle and rallying point for all w
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POPSFBI Abuses Patriot Act FBI agents are human beings who, like all human beings, carry grudges, hold strong prejudices, have unreasonable fears, can become overly involved, and often become confused between security and privacy. Should they have uncontrolled access to our private records?
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POPSGimme That Ole Time Religion Some of us look back on this tragedy and discount it as due to ignorance. Yet it is more than that. Think of the present day belief in satanic possession that exists 316 years after this hysteria overtook the town of Salem. As far as I'm concerned they have much in common and display a disappointing lack of rationality in a large segment of the population.
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POPSJesus in My Oatmeal For those of you out there who have recently been awed by the appearance of Jesus or Mary in your marmalade here's a more rational explanation for you to try on. Rationality. It's really a good thing.
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POPSImmanuel Kant & Brittney Spears
The central question this poses is: did we do this to Brittney Spears? Isn't this somehow our fault? Spears poses an interesting challenge to this conventional interpretation of Kant. Consider this: it seem very clear now that Spears was merely a meat puppet, who's trials (both literal and figurative) and travails (mostly figurative) have destroyed her as a person. And to what ends? Nothing more than our temporary amusement, no doubt. The creation and destruction of Brittney Spears won't even provide long-term amusement, except maybe for later day insomniacs who watch VH1 20 years from now. But, did she not concent? Was not this devils bargain something she not only entered into fully appraised of the situation, but even sought it out? Didn't she get the life she wanted? (Albeit in a twisted and cruel way.) It seems Kant places too much confidence in people's rationality. We explained the ends to her and accepted it, but deep down didn't we all know something that s
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POPSDYNAMIC OPTIMISM Unimaginably vast in scope and complexity, reality cannot be fully recognized at any one time. a worthwhile read
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POPSOffended Muslim Syndrome In order to guard against OMS, health officials warn individuals who are at risk to make sure that the objective reality they are exposed to does not: * Make them aware of the outside world * Trigger curiosity about the Western notions of "logic" or "rationality" * Make life more enjoyable * Cause them to question the need for martyrdom * Have side effects such as independent thinking and longing to live as a productive individual * Create an illusion that communication with infidels is possible without hostage-taking
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POPSRomney and Magic Underwear Separation of church and state is a good concept. Even so, how about if someone belongs to a really bizarre cult? Now, I see nearly all religions as somewhat nutty, but Mormonism, to even a casual observer, seems to be the fruitcake of mainstream religions. How does this not reflect on its followers? Are we to ignore the implications of someone gullible enough to fall for the ravings of a convicted felon? IMO, these types of common concerns go directly to the rationality of Romney and need to be addressed. Would we remain silent if the candidate were a snake handling, gibberish spouting, holy roller? I think not.
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POPSThe Unshakeable BS of Belief With or without the vehicle of religion, some of us will only ever believe what suits our emotional needs, defence mechanisms, denial and the security of ignorance and irrationality.
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POPSThinking about Thinking: Metaphor Metaphor is a conceptual fixed star over the flux of thinking. Article introduces the foundations and will get you thinking and maybe going about your day spotting and collecting metaphors all over the place. Hey, how many metaphors in this blurb?
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POPSHow to Believe in God in Six Easy Steps - Sam Harris Reason is a compulsion, not a choice. Just as one cannot intentionally startle oneself, one cannot knowingly believe a proposition on bad evidence. To believe a proposition, we must also believe that we believe it because it is true. While lapses in rationality can often be detected in retrospect, they always occur in the dark, outside of consciousness. In every present moment, a belief entails the concurrent conviction that we are not just fooling ourselves. Faith enables a person to fool himself into thinking that he is maintaining his standards of reasonableness, while forsaking them. There is a powerful incentive to not notice that one is engaged in this subterfuge, of course, because to notice it is to fail at it. ...every religion has created a black market for irrationality, where people of like minds can trade transparently bad reasons in support of their religious beliefs, without the threat of criticism.
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POPSWhy Hawks Win The psychological biases for conflict and against peaceful resolution are numerous, deep-seated, and often irrational; properties that are amplified when extended by all-too-human leaders to countries' foreign policies. People prefer to avoid a certain loss in favor of a potential loss, even if they risk losing significantly more. When things are going badly in a conflict, the aversion to cutting one’s losses, often compounded by wishful thinking, is likely to dominate the calculus of the losing side.
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