On and Off the Tracks
Being a human is hard work and we all fall off the rails sometimes. Kahneman described many reasons to fear this. But John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" gave us an amazing way to find our way back on track
Being a human is hard work and we all fall off the rails sometimes. Kahneman described many reasons to fear this. But John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" gave us an amazing way to find our way back on track
The content of this thread following Glenn Greenwald's Tweet is exactly what we should expect to get more of as long as so many of us continue relishing two-party tribalism rather than engaging in nuanced heterodox thinking. Read the thread and you will find cheap theater staged by Rachel Maddow and AOC on this issue. Too many of us are working in overtime to score cheap political points instead of working to have meaningful discussions regarding complex issues. The HxA way would be a good start.
Looking back only 18 months . . .
John McWhorter lists some today's most prominent fictions pushed by the political far left in his NYT article: "Here’s a Fact: We’re Routinely Asked to Use Leftist Fictions."
These days, an aroma of delusion lingers, with ideas presented to us from a supposedly brave new world that is, in reality, patently nonsensical. Yet we are expected to pretend otherwise. To point out the nakedness of the emperor is the height of impropriety, and I suspect that the sheer degree to which we are asked to engage in this dissimulation will go down as a hallmark of the era: Do you believe that a commitment to diversity should be crucial to the evaluation of a candidate for a physics professorship? Do you believe that it’s mission-critical for doctors to describe people in particular danger of contracting certain diseases not as “vulnerable (or disadvantaged)” but as “oppressed (or made vulnerable or disenfranchised)”? Do you believe that being “diverse” does not make an applicant to a selective college or university more likely to be admitted?In some circles these days, you are supposed to say you do.
The WP apparently trying to mitigate damages in the libel suit they are now apparently worrying about. Responsible professional journalism would have been evidence-based from the very beginning. I probably need to add that I'm no fan of Kyle Rittenhouse. He is not any sort of hero to me. I write this as someone who has seen the widespread decline in the the ability of legacy news outlets that I formerly trusted.
Michael Leviton has written quite a thought-provoking article. He was raised to be too honest and when he encounter the real world as an adult, he found that it kept him from getting hired and made romance impossible. He discovered that he needed to be less honest, but how? Here's an excerpt from "What I Learned About Love When I Stopped Being Honest."
There were no support groups for people who wanted to be less honest. Therapists advised people to speak their truth, not to shut up for once. Whatever advice everybody else needed, I needed the opposite. So I came up with my own system, made myself lists of subjects that I’d no longer discuss and various rules for myself, such as:
Hide your feelings and observations.
Instead of searching for people who will appreciate who you really are, try to be what the person in front of you wants. Learn to make small talk.
Do NOT be yourself.
This felt both stupid and impossible. My brain had been built to be honest. I couldn’t even answer “How are you?” with “Fine” without feeling ill.