September 2009
7 posts
WatchInterview with Aubrey de Grey on MSNBC
Converse on the Quasi-logic of Political...
Philip E. Converse, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics” (1964):
There is a broad gulf between strict logic and the quasi-logic of cogent argument.
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What is important is that the elites familiar with the total shapes of these belief systems have experienced them as logically constrained clusters of ideas, within which one part necessarily follows from another. Often...
Bacon on the Impossibility of Overcoming Bias
Francis Bacon, The Great Instauration (1620):
Now the idols, or phantoms, by which the mind is occupied are either adventitious or innate. The adventitious come into the mind from without; namely, either from the doctrines and sects of philosophers, or from perverse rules of demonstration. But the innate are inherent in the very nature of the intellect, which is far more prone to error than the...
Disorientations: Mom on Facebook Edition
Political theorists are fond of opining about various malaises associated with modernity. I typically don’t go in for that kind of talk, but every once in awhile I encounter something that truly makes me feel like a man adrift, tossed hither and thither in destructive waters that invert all order. I had one of those encounters today, when I logged onto Facebook and read the following.
Mom*...
Pure Assertion Trumps Argumentation
Kuklinski & Quirk, “Reconsidering the Rational Public: Cognition, Heuristics, and Mass Opinion” (2000):
Hard arguments use reasoning or evidence to support claims about the consequences of a proposal. They take some mental work to understand and likely evoke little emotional response. Easy arguments, in contrast, are simply and symbolic, making strong assertions without providing...
“If there is one misapprehension about Americans that annoys me more than any...”
– Stephen Fry 