...we need true competition of ideas, where our own cherished certainties are challenged and the challenge can’t be ignored, because the power dynamics are fluid and no one party has a monopoly on political power.
According to personality psychologist Robert McCrae, openness to experience is a broad personality construct that “implies both receptivity to many varieties of experience and a fluid and permeable structure of consciousness”
The ideological mind is a fortress, ever vigilant against infiltration and treason. The ideological mind keeps its eye on the prize, keen to weed out those who impede progress. And so we have Establishment Democrats, Wall Street Democrats, and now Corporate Democrats: the Left's New Despicables.
Being a skeptic doesn’t mean you don’t care about the environment, wildlife, air quality, or water quality. The idea of being less dependent on fossil fuels is appealing regardless of how you feel about climate change. You don’t have to be worried about global warming to be in favor of reducing the cost of fuel through greater efficiencies.
Parry's right: you're not going to get anywhere with doom-and-gloom scenarios. Environmentalists have been predicting imminent catastrophe for decades and they’ve been wrong again and again. Skeptics are well aware of this track record of crying wolf while claiming the support of science.
Why do we signal virtue? Is it to give each other courage: you are not alone. I stand up for the good and the true - you can, too. Is it to do good by building collective confidence to fight the forces of evil - in other words, a tactic to combat evil? Is it a form of bragging? Is it to let your family, friends, and neighbors know that you're not one of Them?
...hear them out, ask follow-up questions, and avoid knee-jerk rebuttals of their points. If you want to show respect for a person’s position, you ask them what exactly that position is and how they have arrived at it.
Thoughts are inchoate until expressed in the head or the world. Expression generates thoughts from patterns of spreading activation.
The idea of reflection is Cartesian to its core: a stand-alone consciousness, calmly observing the parade of thoughts and feelings, assuming a higher vantage point, drawing lessons and extracting principles: a wise Self.
Sometimes the straw man is a “hollow man”, i.e., a complete fabrication of the opponent’s views. These are pretty easy to refute, since they can’t be supported by actual evidence. Harder to refute are strawman arguments based on half-truths.
Other countries, including Germany and South Korea, have added far more industrial robots per worker than the US over the same time period and yet have lost fewer manufacturing jobs than we have.
So it's more accurate to say humans are prediction machines: "devices that constantly try to stay one step ahead of the breaking waves of sensory stimulation, by actively predicting the incoming flow." (Clark, 2016)
The urge to label hovers before the stream of consciousness, ready to take the wind out of its sails. Of course, the weather's always changing and the wind often comes out of nowhere.
The study authors speculated that these characteristics may foster “Openness to Experience” (OE), which has been positively correlated to paranormal beliefs in other research.
Benefits often come with a cost... Burdens may yield benefits.... Benefits and burdens may be certain but small or uncertain but large...immediate but brief or delayed but long-lasting. Moral principles only go so far in helping us sort it all out.
Those who are truly stuck in poverty need different kinds of government help than those who are suffering brief periods of hardship.
To be a fearmonger is to traffic in fear. Fearmongering is one way ideological and religious movements gain adherents and then keep them. The world is a scary place. We offer the way out.
Air capture can remove far more CO2 per acre of land than trees. It also has the potential to pay for itself by producing a commercially viable product – low-carbon fuels – from the recycled CO2.
...research on treatment effectiveness should include a comparison condition that controls for personal factors: how the researchers interact with subjects. That means the same amount of compassion, touching, attention, encouragement, and all-around support given to subjects across groups.
Others don’t want to move forward with SRM research because they consider it a distraction from what our main focus should be: cutting greenhouse gas emissions. These critics want us to embrace the necessity of sacrifice, not rely on the hope that technology will save the planet before disaster strikes. Such hope would reduce the sense of urgency to act now, so we mustn’t feed that particular wolf.