Magical thinking as a sometimes useful crutch

I'm almost finished reading Matthew Hutson's new book, 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane. I'm feeling fully engaged, in that Hutson addresses many of the issues that I've been grappling with at this website, and does it insightfully in a book that is easy to understand. There's no jargon in Hutson's book, and his main idea is the explosive one often addressed by Friedrich Nietzsche: our understanding of the world is dominated by false ideas that are sometimes useful. Hutson takes this idea to a new level, incorporating modern cognitive science and evolution, as well as many of his own observations: In Hutson's words,

Most of the world is religious, and millions more are openly superstitious, spiritual, or credulous of the paranormal. But I argue that we all believe in magic—luck, mind over matter, destiny, jinxes, life after death, evil, and heavenly helpers—even when we say we don’t. I draw on cognitive science, neuroscience, social and evolutionary psychology, and cultural observation to show that we engage in magical thinking all the time—and that it’s not all bad. Supernaturalism leads us to think that we actually have free will. It makes us believe that we have an underlying purpose in the world. It can even protect us from the paralyzing awareness of our own mortality. Irrationality makes our lives make sense.
I'm going to be repeatedly referring to 7 Laws of Magical Thinking in the coming months from a variety of angles. In the meantime, I recommend this video interview of Hutson.

Continue ReadingMagical thinking as a sometimes useful crutch

Germany’s renewable energy revolution

While we in the U.S. are barely moving forward on renewables, Germany is streaking into the future. Amory Lovins of Rocky Mountain Institute explains:

While the examples of Japan, China, and India show the promise of rapidly emerging energy economies built on efficiency and renewables, Germany—the world’s number four economy and Europe’s number one—has lately provided an impressive model of what a well-organized industrial society can achieve. To be sure, it’s not yet the world champion among countries with limited hydroelectricity: Denmark passed 40% renewable electricity in 2011 en route to a target of 100% by 2050, and Portugal, albeit with more hydropower, raised its renewable electricity fraction from 17% to 45% just during 2005–10 (while the U.S., though backed by a legacy of big hydro, crawled from 9% to 10%), reaching 70% in the rainy and windy first quarter of 2013. But these economies are not industrial giants like Germany, which remains the best disproof of claims that highly industrialized countries, let alone cold and cloudy ones, can do little with renewables.
Here's an example of how poorly some of us in the U.S. are postured for divesting ourselves of carbon. This is an example from my home state of Missouri, where the utilities and the coal industry apparently owns the place.

Continue ReadingGermany’s renewable energy revolution