Site-Wide Activity

Following on from AmigaJoe in #25, I was looking at the fandom rivalry – sorry, history – at the history of Protestant and Catholic conflict (a common enough theme in Europe that I’m not surprised it was imported […]

AmigaJoe #25 Being from the other side of the Atlantic, I’d never heard of the “Know Nothing” party, so that was interesting. What strikes me is how predictable the right wing always are, no matter which era of […]

Zeuglodon Beta #24, Yes, Sartre said as much in that remaining versatile to possibly having to abandon or adjust a pet theory, credo or position when self reflection or critical challenge reveals flaws or […]

Some of you may recall my last post from March (Ever heard of Tetrachromacy?) That prompted me to go back through my old (and few!) Facebook posts to find any other crap I’d scribbled. Well, stumbled across this […]

Michael 100, at #86:   In all honesty I wouldn’t consider what I wrote a proper review so much as a bit of extra commentary on the topics raised by Sapolsky. I’m still going through the book, picking out […]

Zeuglodon # 83.  That was a first rate review of Sapolsky’s book.  I always appreciate cross references.     One thing I want to expand on is the Norway model of criminal justice.  I agree that it seems altrui […]

Strato, at #22:   The one I always worry about is the confirmation bias, because it’s so easy to forget to check for counterevidence and especially any fatal evidence that undermines an argument. I like getting […]

Zeuglodon Beta #21, That long helpful list of cognitive biases and logical fallacies is authoritative The list should first be convicting to oneself before one is qualified to deploy them in exposing errors in […]

Marco #20, Yes, Marco, Sapolsky has imparted a major understanding for me, as Richard’s books did. Since reading those, I’ve looked at the world through the Darwinian lens all the time. Now it’s Robert Sapolsky […]

“a recognized fallacy: the argument from perfection”   Damn, that’s confused with Aquinas’ argument from degrees. What I actually meant was the Nirvana Fallacy or the related Perfect Solution Fallacy.   My bad!

Sort of following on from my (hopefully soon-to-be-published) comment in the Book Club 2024 about retributive impulses, dysrationalia, and the “medicalization” model of social problem-solving, I’d like to bring to […]

For the record: really not a big fan of these shortened editing times. 15 minutes was usually enough to tweak what I wanted to say. 5 minutes? Not so much.

Strato #5 I reread these posts which the Mods have rolled over into the May discussions.  Me too, and I agree with you, Strato – they’re an excellent introduction to the subject of free will for people like me, […]

Recently been reading Determined by Robert Sapolsky – though it has details I didn’t know about (the subsections of the prefrontal cortex which I wasn’t familiar with, for instance), I do feel it was a bit of an […]