An open letter to Messrs. Dawkins,
Dennett, Harris and Hitchens
Since the turn of the millennium, a new militancy has arisen among religious skeptics in response to three threats to science and freedom: (1) attacks against evolution education and stem cell research; (2) breaks in the barrier separating church and state leading to political preferences for some faiths over others; and (3) fundamentalist terrorism here and abroad. Among many metrics available to track this skeptical movement is the ascension of four books (continue reading…)
topics in this post:
atheism,
Dawkins,
Dennett,
freedom,
Harris,
Hitchens,
liberty,
Martin Luther King
Lessons in Evil from Stanford to Abu Ghraib
The photographs of prisoner abuse from Abu Ghraib shocked most Americans. But social psychologist Philip Zimbardo had seen it all 30 years before in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University, where he randomly assigned college students to be “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison environment. The experiment was to last two weeks but was terminated after just six days, when these intelligent and moral young men were transformed into cruel and sadistic guards or emotionally shattered prisoners. (continue reading…)
topics in this post:
Abu Ghraib,
psychology,
Stanford Prison Experiment,
Zimbardo
A new fMRI study debunks the myth that
we are rational-utility money maximizers
Imagine that your child’s private school tuition bill of $20,000 is due and the only source you have for paying it is the sale of some of your stock holdings. Fortunately, you got in on the great Google godsend and purchased 100 shares at $200 each, for a total investment of $20,000, and the stock is now at $400 a share. (continue reading…)
topics in this post:
behavioral economics,
economics,
game theory,
psychology
The inverse square law trumps the law of attraction
An old yarn about a classic marketing con game on the secret of wealth instructs you to write a book about how to make a lot of money and sell it through the mail. When your marks receive the book, they discover the secret — write a book about how to make a lot of money and sell it through the mail. (continue reading…)
topics in this post:
crazes,
fads,
physics,
pseudoscience,
self-help,
success
Self-deception proves itself to be
more powerful than deception
The war in Iraq is now four years old. It has cost more than 3,000 American lives and has run up a tab of $200 million a day, or $73 billion a year, since it began. That’s a substantial investment. (continue reading…)
topics in this post:
belief,
Carol Tavris,
cognitive dissonance,
psychology
