The book, Infinity, Causation, & Paradox by Alexander Pruss, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. I just finished reading it as my first book by this author. I knew of him via other philosophers’ dealing with his work and through reading his blog. My first impressions of him from reading his blog was that he was a natural born philosopher, an original thinker, creative, and a top level contemporary philosopher. Or as the philosopher William Lane Craig described him, “scary smart.” Background on the author: Pruss is a theist philosopher and currently Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University…
Read morePerseverance Mars Rover Launched
On July 30, 2020, NASA launched the Perseverance rover scheduled to land on Mars on February 18, 2021. It will land in Jezero Crater which is thought to have filled with water creating a lake in the ancient past (a couple billions years ago, I think). This makes it a prime target to look for evidence of microbial life. The rover will take several soil samples and place them in tubes, leave them on the surface for future missions to Mars to collect the samples and return them to Earth. Looks like the target date (earliest) for this would be…
Read moreWhen Prophecy Fails: The Story of a UFO Cult, Cognitive Dissonance, and Belief Perseverance
Continuing with my series of overviews of cognitive biases, we have “cognitive dissonance” and “belief perseverance”. The story of how cognitive dissonance and belief perseverance were first recognized or described in Social Psychology is an interesting story to me. It involves the sociological study of a 1950s UFO cult by the psychologists Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter . This was published in their book, When Prophecy Fails in 1956. I originally read this book in the ’90s. The group’s leader claimed to be in contact with extraterrestrials (through automatic writing if I remember right) and they told her the earth would be…
Read moreMain Topics I Will Cover On This Blog
I have started at least a dozen blog posts and articles on various subjects. Since this is a new blog that covers several topics, I figured I’d give an overview of what you can expect based on what I have been interested in for the past few decades and what I am currently researching and reading. My main, long term reason for creating this blog was I want to write on major intellectual interests of mine. I am an artist, but since I am on the high end of the autism spectrum, I have an intellectual bent and find writing…
Read moreThe Possibility of Extraterrestrial Life
The possibility of alien (extraterrestrial) life elsewhere in our milky way galaxy, and in the billions or perhaps trillions of other galaxies in the Universe, is something that has occupied my thinking and imagination for most of my life. This is a major topic this blog will look at. This includes most major aspects of it such as the origin of life, galactic habitable zones, SETI, exoplanets, UFOs, etc. As will be the usual case, I will have blog posts, YouTube videos, book reviews, articles, etc. by myself and others that I think are interesting or important on the subject.…
Read moreI Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup
I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GLMFmFvXGyAcG25ni/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup As promised, here’s a link to Scott Alexander’s long essay on political in/out-groups hosted on LessWrong. For me, it bogs down a little in sections III and IV, but after that is very well written and important. All sections should be read as the sections build on previous ones.
Read moreScott Adams on NYT Doxxing Scott Alexander
Here’s Scott Adams’ take on the NYT doxxing Scott Alexander and his deleting of his blog as a result. Has profanity (F-bomb).Starts at 22:55.Ends at 27:40.
Read moreAnother Trigger For Creating This Blog: Doxxing, Cancel Culture, and Censorship
I created this blog in part because I decided I’ve had enough.Of several different, but connected things. There was one incident recently that kind of pushed me over the edge in terms of my complacency.I was trying to decide what I should do about it (my inaction and silence) since. I was having some trouble doing my artwork at times as a result of the internal turmoil. The “last straw” incident for me was hearing “Scott Alexander” was going to be doxxed by the NYT and he deleted his valuable, and at times, brilliant blog as a result. Which of…
Read moreThe Principle of Charity
My second blog post recommended using the Principle of Charity when dealing with people and avoiding the Fundamental attribution error (subject of third post). Here’s a very basic look at the Principle of Charity applied to people’s statements and actions in everyday life. An article for a more complete look at the principle as applied to arguments by others:
Read moreThe Dunning-Kruger Effect
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a somewhat well known cognitive bias. It is the tendency of most people to overestimate their knowledge of a subject and their competency in the field and in their skills. The less a person knows about a topic the more they tend to think they know about it or are good at it. To some extent, the reverse is true (to a point). The more you know, the more you know you don’t know about a subject and the less you think of your competency. After a while, though, your confidence in your knowledge picks up…
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