Bush on “the lesson of Viet Nam”
According to our president, here is the lesson about Iraq that America learned from Vietnam: "We'll succeed unless we quit." Keith Olbermann doesn't see it that way.
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a coincidence
Jason’s post about conspiracies reminded me of several books that support Jason’s argument.
The first book is How We Know What Isn’t so: the Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, by Thomas Gilovich (1991). Gilovich points to a number of experiments demonstrating that people strive to find order in the world where there is none. We don’t find random distributions easy to process. Rather, we allow our imaginations to run wild on randomness:
With hindsight it is always possible to spot the most anomalous features of the data and build a favorable statistical analysis around them. However, if properly trained scientist (or simply a wise person) avoids doing so because he or she recognizes that constructing a statistical analysis retrospectively capitalizes too much on chance and renders the analysis meaningless. . . . unfortunately, the intuitive assessments of the average person are not bound by these constraints.
Here’s another good example of people finding order where there isn’t, on Mars.
People are also “extraordinarily good at ad hoc explanations.” Our motives and fears ignite our imaginations:
…Once a person has misidentified a random pattern as a “real” phenomenon, it will not exist as a puzzling, isolated fact about the world. Rather, it is quickly explained and readily integrated into the person’s pre-existing theories and beliefs. These theories, furthermore, then serve to bias the person’s evaluation of new information in such a way that the initial belief becomes solidly entrenched. . . . people cling tenaciously to their beliefs in
Dangerous Intersection: Comments Policy, Email Policy and other Notices
I'm still relatively new at administering a blog, but it has now become clear that we need to give our readers notice as to what will and won't fly regarding comments. The starting point is that we love comments. Without them, our posts lack life. Therefore, if you are tempted to…
Teach secular morality in public schools
Silence implies acquiescence.
We live in a culture that is rife with moral controversy, but public education is largely silent with regard to many of these controversies.
In a Free Inquiry article titled “Wanted: Moral Education for Secular Children” (December 2006), Paul Kurtz asks why we aren’t doing a better job of stepping into the moral void to give our children a secular moral education: “Secularists, humanists, and naturalists face a pivotal and deeply practical challenge: how to develop educational curricula and institutions that can provide moral guidelines for our children.”
Kurtz crowns pop culture as a prime contributor to the problem:
“banal and demeaning values often permeate the mass media: popular television, movies, music, radio, the Internet, and literature read by children. These values can herald violence, greed, vindictiveness, and immorality.”
Teaching children to be moral without reference to religion is easier said than done, of course. Secular versions of morality conflict with many authoritarian versions of morality:
…[The authoritarian tradition] holds that “deference to authority” is essential and stresses moral commandments that children simply need to accept and obey. The primary emphasis is on obedience to ancient creeds and codes. Second is the liberal tradition, which encourages young people to be responsible and to think for themselves. This approach stresses personal autonomy and freedom of thought. It is part of a new morality that has become influential since the Enlightenment: an effort to improve the lives of individuals in the current world.
Unfortunately, it is often difficult to