Reporting on the acceptance of evolution in 34 countries, the journal Science found that the United States ranked next to last, ahead of only Turkey. Among the factors contributing to America's low score are poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible…
It is because we tout ourselves as the smartest animal on the planet we are oh-so-vulnerable. As one can read in Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
Human cognition is an unwieldy and fallible bag of mental tricks. Anyone who has seriously studied human cognition knows this. As Leda Cosmides and John Toby wrote:
“The mind consists of a set of adaptations, designed to solve the long standing adaptive problems humans encountered as hunter-gatherers.”
Many people think, however, that they know how they think; they have faith that conscious common sense is always accurate and on target. Common sense fails consider Freud’s rock solid finding: conscious awareness is only the tip of the cognitive iceberg.
Common sense seduces us with powerful illusions, illusions that look like “uncontestable facts” to those of us who believe we can merely sit around and think in order to figure out how we think. Although common sense has led us well us for eons, it often leads to errors. The Sun does not circle the Earth. Our ears do not operate like microphones and our eyes do not work like cameras. “I” am not really a little person who seems to dwell in my head. Science has shown that what the “thing” that constitutes me is a complicated and often self-contradictory bag of skills and strategies. For many good examples of how we are often misled by the same heuristics on which we usually depend, see the …
The Nation explains that Ned Lamont was successful tonight because he was much more than an anti-war candidate. Lamont continually pointed to the domestic losses caused by the diversion of big money to finance the Iraq occupation: How did Lamont succeed where others – including 2004 presidential contender and current Democratic…
The Associated Press reports this recent development in the American military's effort to keep America safe. A decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist was dismissed from the U.S. Army under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, though he says he never told his superiors he was gay and his accuser…
As reported by The Birmingham Post (UK), insufficient sleep can make you fat: The Warwick Medical School study, led by Professor Francesco Cappuccio, found that adults who slept for less than seven hours and children who regularly got less than ten hours' rest faced an increased risk of obesity .…