My introversion is strong, so I feel the need to spend time alone to recharge my batteries. That does not mean I hate people. That is my elitism and narcissism. I do recognize the benefits of meeting new people, especially the complete stranger phenomenon described in Crossing Paths: Sometimes a complete stranger can answer our questions…
Motivated Reasoning aka soldier mindset: This phenomenon in which our unconscious motivations (our desires and fears) shape the way we interpret information. So some information and ideas feel like our allies and we want them to win. We want to defend them. And other information and ideas are the enemy. We want to shoot them…
Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley My rating: 5 of 5 stars This historical fiction novel covers this history of the a black family. How their ancestor started in Africa, was brought to America as a slave, and how the family fared under that despicable institution. Alex Haley learned the stories…
Daniel H. Cohen makes an interesting case that: We equate arguing to war; such that there are winners and losers. The loser is the one who makes a cognitive improvement, so losing gains the most. So, we should strive to lose. “It takes practice to be a become a good arguer from the perspective of benefitting…
In my naive freshman year I was arriving at campus around 7:30am to get a relatively decent parking spot and only have a ten minute walk to class. I could arrive at 7:45am, but the walk would be closer to fifteen minutes. Plus, I could use the extra 20 minutes to study before my 8:00am…
(There seem to be two Black Guns Matter campaigns. One about Blacks owning guns. The other about owning tactical rifles also showing up as #blackriflesmatter.) Several years ago before Orlando, before Charleston, and maybe even before Sandy Hook, I had a conversation with my mother about guns and gun rights and gun control. I made a…
I posted a web comic poking fun at the irrational fear of the ocean. My carefulness last weekend maybe kept me from getting stung by jellyfish and definitely from stepping on a stingray or skate. There were no sharks that I saw. But then, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” 🙂 After some…
Well, calling the current political, social, or even game discourses debates is probably too generous. That implies discussion which means an attempt at listening to the other if only to hear their point of view enough to counter it. At this point, much of what I see are the use of memes to perpetuate Straw…
Sally Kohn gets an unbelievable amount of hate mail for doing her job: being a liberal pundit on Fox News. Political persuasion begins with emotional correctness: the respect and compassion we show one another. Our challenge is to find the compassion for others that we want them to have for us. That is emotional correctness.…