Social Media is the New Version of Brain-Destroying Lead

In this Interview with Joe Rogan, Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology drew a haunting analogy.  The discussion begins at 1:24.

Throughout the 1900's, lead was increasingly used in paint, gasoline and other products.  It was hailed as a miracle substance.

What are the Health Effects of Lead? Lead can affect almost every organ and system in your body. In children six years old and younger even low levels of lead in the blood of children is poisonous. It can result in behavior and learning problems, lower IQ and hyperactivity, slowed growth and many other problems. Beginning in 1965, it took the heroic efforts by geochemist Clair Cameron Patterson (and see here) to convince the U.S. Government (over systematic misinformation from companies who profited from the sale of products using lead) that lead in the environment was dangerous to humans.

Tristan Harris argues that social media is the new lead.  Instead of brain damage, however, social media causes people to distrust each other, making it impossible for people from the opposing tribes to work with each other or compromise with each other. Social Media is thus causing a massive breakdown of our political system. The following exchange begins at 85:21):

TH: Let's replace lead with problem solving capacity . . .  Imagine that we have a societal IQ or a societal problem-solving capacity the US has a societal IQ, Russia has a societal IQ, Germany has a societal IQ:  How good is a country at solving its problems? Now imagine, what does social media do to our societal IQ?

JR: It distorts our ideas. It gives us a bunch of false narratives. It fills us with misinformation.

TH: It makes it impossible to agree with each other, and in a democracy if you don't agree with each other and you can't even do compromise . . .  People recognize that politics was invented to avoid warfare. So we have compromise and understanding so that we don't physically become violent with each other.  We have compromise and conversation.  If social media makes compromise, conversation and shared understanding and shared truth impossible, it doesn't drop our societal IQ by four points. It drops it to zero, because you can't solve any problem, whether it's human trafficking or poverty or climate issues or racial injustice. Whatever it is that you care about, it depends on us having some shared view about what we agree on.

Continue ReadingSocial Media is the New Version of Brain-Destroying Lead

You Get the Political Leaders You Deserve on COVID

Ten years ago, who would have ever believed that in the middle of a pandemic that has killed as many Americans as 1,000 commercial airliners crashing and burning within a period of 8 months (each of them carrying 250 passengers), many of us would have preferred political leaders who would falsely tell us that there was not a serious pandemic and we could simply go on with our lives? In the abstract, that proposition would have been absurd, but here we are.

Here is Christopher Christakis, a voice I trust on both the medical issues and on the political landscape regarding COVID (click through to hear the short statement).

If you'd like to hear more from Christakis, listen to Making Sense podcast #222 (with Sam Harris):

Continue ReadingYou Get the Political Leaders You Deserve on COVID

Bill Maher Discusses Dangers Awaiting the Democratic Party Despite Joe Biden’s Victory

IMO, Bill Maher is spot-on here. If the Democrats (and their supporters) don't find the courage to speak out about these excesses of the Woke fringe of the political Left, they won't even be able to win the office of dog catcher next election--we just witnessed how badly Democrats were hurt in lower tier federal and state elections from coast to coast.

xv

In a year Democrats hoped to capture the Senate and bolster their House majority, the loss of so much ground in Congress has touched off an intense volley of finger-pointing, insults and plotting by each feuding faction to keep the other out of party leadership posts. The familiar ideological rift between the left and the center-left is intensifying after an election in which the message sent by voters was so muddled: embracing Joe Biden while spurning so many down-ballot Democrats.

Joe Biden would have lost in a truly massive landslide except that Trump was the worst candidate who has ever run for the office of President. Biden (for whom I voted) should have won by at least 90/10 over such an arrogant proudly-ignorant self-absorbed bully, yet almost half of our country voted against Biden. As it was, had merely 200,000 people in key states swapped their votes, Trump would have been reelected by a "landslide" the equivalent of the "landslide" Biden's supporters are currently proclaiming. We can't depend on the Republicans ever again choosing such a bad candidate. This bodes terribly for 2022 as indicated (in Maher's video) by Abigail Spanberger (U.S House of Rep-VA).

Here's an inconvenient fact: Many Republicans were voting against the Democrats, not for Trump, and not because "they are all racists."  If you don't believe this, it is because you have been unwilling to listen to real life Republicans who live and work in your community. It's time for all of us to do some serious soul searching. We need to confidently reassert evidence-based principles that have largely (though admittedly imperfectly) worked over time: It is a good thing to reward hard work and competence. It's critically important to set aside our feelings and self-critically get the facts correct before we discuss any political issue. It is absurd to loudly proclaim, contrary to strong evidence, that every "white" person is a "racist." It is unhinged to argue that police should be "abolished" or "defunded" in light the inevitable consequences of defunding, especially on poor communities (who largely want more police presence, not less). Here's a recent crime report from Minnesota, which actively defunded its police:

Homicides in Minneapolis are up 50 percent, with nearly 75 people killed across the city so far this year. More than 500 people have been shot, the highest number in more than a decade and twice as many as in 2019. And there have been more than 4,600 violent crimes — including hundreds of carjackings and robberies — a five-year high.
Do the Democrats really want to take back some seats in 2022?  If so, we need to have the courage to speak out against the sanctimonious left fringe, which excels at making cartoons out of complex individual people by jamming them into identity-silos and rigging public speech with dozens of hair-triggers.

Most of us recognize Wokeness to be a terrible foundation for collaborating with each other to run our country, but we are hesitant to speak out because we might be called names by the fringe left. It often feels uncomfortable to speak up because the Woke are so well embedded in many of America's primary sense-making institutions, including universities, media and political entities.  It will all be much easier if we encourage each other to start publicly saying what almost all of us are privately thinking.  It's time to get to work.

Continue ReadingBill Maher Discusses Dangers Awaiting the Democratic Party Despite Joe Biden’s Victory

More Criticism of the Political “Left” and “Right” from Eric Weinstein

Eric Weinstein's apt Tweet:

Or, instead of off-script and on-script, should we refer to people as "Thinks for Themselves" and "Doesn't Think for Themselves"? Labels of Left/Right are (often intentionally) deceptive, obscuring massive internal dissent within the "two" tribes for purposes of feigning homogeneity. Tribes use these labels to fluff up their feathers to try to appear coherent, like politically powerful voting blocks.

The labels "Left" and "Right" look precise, but simplistically clean appearance of these labels disguises a lack of precision.  Primarily, these labels refer to heterogenous tribes that try to portray themselves as homogenous.  This is not merely academic. The use of the Left/Right labels (legitimized and amplified by lazy media and social media) is tearing our society apart.

Continue ReadingMore Criticism of the Political “Left” and “Right” from Eric Weinstein

Ancient Stoic Quotes for Today

I have recently become a subscriber to Ryan Holiday's podcast: The Daily Stoic. Listening to his episodes has encouraged me to read more on stoicism. Much has changed over the past 2,000 years, but the best advice by the stoics is as relevant as ever. Here are some examples.

"The Obstacle Is the Way." Marcus Aurelius

“Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?” – Marcus Aurelius

“And a commitment to justice in your own acts. Which means: thought and action resulting in the common good. What you were born to do.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.31

“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” – Seneca

"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are." Marcus Aurelius

“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.” – Seneca

“All ferocity is born from weakness.” Seneca

“A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.” Marcus Aurelius

“I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.” – Cato

"Learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference." Marcus Aurelius

He has the most who is content with the least. Diogenes

Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have. Epictetus

“He who fears death will never do anything worth of a man who is alive.” – Seneca

“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.” – Seneca

“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.” – Marcus Aurelius

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.” – Marcus Aurelius

“If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone.” – Marcus Aurelius

We should always be asking ourselves: “Is this something that is, or is not, in my control?” - Epictetus, Enchiridion

Floods will rob us of one thing, fire of another. These are conditions of our existence which we cannot change. What we can do is adopt a noble spirit, such a spirit as befits a good person, so that we may bear up bravely under all that fortune sends us and bring our wills into tune with nature’s. - Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant. - Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled — have you no shame in that?” — Epictetus

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be One.” – Marcus Aurelius

Continue ReadingAncient Stoic Quotes for Today