Social Workers at Portland State University Attempt to Educate Former Professor Peter Boghossian on Campus “Safety” and “Gender”

Following the unexpected cancellation of his "Reverse Q&A" at Brown University, philosophy professor Peter Boghossian (who recently resigned from his post at Portland State) created an ad hoc event on the streets of Portland. He was attempting to explore the reasoning behind agreement or disagreement with the claim: "There are only two genders." He was approached by a group of social work students who attempted to educate him about campus safety and the meaning of gender.

Continue ReadingSocial Workers at Portland State University Attempt to Educate Former Professor Peter Boghossian on Campus “Safety” and “Gender”

Woke Racism, Where Ideology Defeats Science

John McWhorter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) warns us that four of the mainstays of Woke Anti-racism are long on ideology and short on scientific validity:

- Microaggressions - Diversity Equity & Inclusion Departments - Implicit Bias Testing - Systemic Racism

Ideology twisting scholarship with dangerous consequences is a phenomenon hardly limited to the Soviet Union. It's happening here, right now, in America, in an effort to spread an intolerant orthodoxy masquerading as 'Anti-racism.'

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The Newest Neocon Joyride

I posted a Tweet of Glenn Greenwald on Facebook today (and see here):

I added some additional commentary by Glenn Greenwald:

The amazing thing is it's the same people, it's David Frum and Nicolle Wallace and Matthew Dowd and Bill Kristol and Max Boot," Greenwald said. "All these neocons back then who were doing this and made themselves the enemy of the country. They ended up in complete disrepute by the end of the second Bush-Cheney term, are now back in the saddle doing it on behalf of Democrats on their cable networks, on their newspapers' op-ed pages. And it's like people have no historical memory, they cheer for these people because they rehabilitated themselves by opposing Trump and that's all they know.

Right on cue, I received this comment:

The invasion of Ukraine is NOT like Vietnam,Korea, etc. and equating it with that is aPutin-friendly talking point. Do you work for FOX now?

To which I responded:

Are you suggesting that because I'm against a war with no stated end-game and no stated benefit to ordinary Americans, a war that is enriching America's vast military-industrial complex, a war that pushes us ever closer to the trigger point of an already extremely dangerous risk of nuclear holocaust, and a war that is sucking up massive financial resources that should be helping desperate Americans,, that I'm pro-Putin and that I work for FOX?

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Some Practical Advice from Psychologist Dan Gilbert

I recently listened to an episode of Steven Levitt's excellent podcast, "People I (Mostly) Admire." On Episode 73, Stephen's guest was Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert, who is quite a character. I would invite you to listen to the entire podcast, which was quite entertaining. There were several points in the podcast where it occurred to me that Gilbert was offering some practical advice that I could use in my own life. I recorded those portions of the podcast and created a transcript. Here are those excerpts:

[The End of History Illusion]

Dan Gilbert: The End of History illusion, is very simple idea, which is that people tend to believe that they will change in the future, less than they actually do. Almost all of us have this sense that development is this process that's brought us to this point, we've now become our actual selves. And from here on out, there will be wrinkles and pounds, but will basically be who we've always been. And what we discovered in our research was that when people look back, they say, Wow, have I changed a lot in the last 10 years, but I don't expect to change much in the next 10 years. That sounds probably like a teenager to win it. But it's also true of people in their 50s and 60s and older. . . . The rate of change does slow. It just doesn't slow as much as we anticipate. So you're right to think, you know, I'm probably not going to change as much between 50 and 60, as I did between 20 and 30, you're just wrong to say you're not going to change at all, I just turned 64. And somebody asked me what's it like? I said, it's like a whole new puberty!

[Shocking Boredom]

We were very interested in why people find it difficult to be alone with their own thoughts. We put people in a room with a shock machine, and they got to feel the shocks, so they could find out that they were pretty intense, and they hurt. And we even asked them how much money they would pay to avoid being shocked. And they were willing to pay a reasonable amount of money. How much would you pay to avoid the shock? You know, if I were an economist, that's the thing I would remember. But the point is, they didn't enjoy the shocks, they would even be willing to pay some amount of money, it doesn't even matter how much to avoid them. Because what comes next flies in the face of that declaration, which is when they're in a room alone, no phone, no wristwatch, no books, and they're just asked to sit and entertain themselves with their own thoughts. But they're told that if they want, they can certainly shock themselves. Guess what happens? The majority of men, and a healthy number of women, do so. . . . most people find it so aversive to have no stimulation whatsoever, that they're even willing to experience a little pain and play with that just to have something to feel.

Steve Levitt: I wish we could go back in time, and do this experiment. In 1975, when there were four TV stations, and there was no internet, no cell phones, we would have suffered horribly back in those days, if we weren't able to be alone with our thoughts. Do you think this is very much a product of modern technology?

Dan Gilbert: Think of a family living in a small log cabin, in the middle of Montana, going through the winter, barely going outside there in one room, there's no TV, there might be a Bible, who knows if anybody can read? Oh, my gosh, there's nothing to do. And yet, as far as we can tell, there are no reports of people killing themselves out of boredom. So my guess is people were once upon a time, much better at closing their eyes and entertaining themselves than we are today. In a world that's just so full of entertainment, that we barely have a chance to close our eyes. I think imagination is a remarkable capacity. And that in all past generations, it was required. Very little imagination is required to live in the 21st century.

[On Having Fun with Anything]

Dan Gilbert: I would say that the reason I put so much time and effort into my teaching is because I'm lazy. And lazy people don't like to work.

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Train Your Brain to be Disciplined by Telling Yourself “No” Many Times per Day

Dr. Andrew Huberman is a Professor of Neurobiology at Stanford University. In this video conversation with Shane Parrish, he suggests an exercise for controlling your impulses and keeping yourself focused. He describes two directional pathways that are triggered off of circuitry in the basal ganglia.  One is the "Go" or action-oriented pathways the includes thought and the other is "No-Go."  As kids, we are forced to engage in a lot of "No-Go" behaviors, including sitting still and not interrupting.

Our phones and other aspects of our environment cause us to shift our attention repeatedly. We are no longer children, so we don't have parents telling us "no" "no" "no." We tend to be action-oriented, "Go-Oriented," and we need to exercise our ability to resist impulses (to NOT check our phones and emails, for instance) in order to do deep focus for periods of 90-minutes with "tunnel-vision," resisting all distractions to get up and get away from the target of your focus. Huberman suggests several ninety-minute tunnel-vision sessions each day for productivity.  How do we get better at this?

Hubeman suggests practicing "No-Go" moments:

One thing that I've done over the years to try and reinforce these circuits in myself based on my understanding of how they work is every day I try and have somewhere between 20 and 30 No-Goes and the No-Goes can be trivial like i'm ready to pick up my phone --NO!--and I force myself to not pick it up.  All i'm doing is trying to reinforce that circuit, because the thing to understand about neural circuitry is that it's generic. It's not designed so that you have a strong No-Go response--just to picking up your phone--it actually carries over to multiple other things. At any moment we can be back on our heels flat-footed or forward center of mass. That's the way I try and visualize the waking portions of my life.

Most of our life is Go Go Go, starting at the moment we wake up.

We rarely rehearse our No-Go functions. No-Go functions are simply about suppressing behavior. So if you have a meditative practice there's a little bit of that, where you think i don't want to do it but i'm going to force myself to sit still even though I want to get up. That's a no-go, but think about it: If you get better at meditating, you actually have less of an opportunity to get into this No-Go mode to trigger the circuitry. So what I try and do is introduce 20 or so No-Go's throughout the day that I deliberately impose on myself as I'm about to get into reflexive action. It could be delaying a bite of food for a couple of minutes. I realize it sounds almost like an eating disorder, people with eating disorders probably want to stay away from that one--but there are all sorts of ways that we can do this. We find ways that we are are short-circuiting this process. I think we need to keep these No-Go circuits trained up. I think nowadays there's so much opportunity and so much reward for Go that we don't train the No-Go pathways.

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