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The relationship between emotion and reason is commonly thought to be a problematic one. But the latest thinking challenges that assumption..

Damasio’s theory goes something like this: we are often faced with rational decisions that involve a great many conflicting and confusing alternatives. We usually decide on which course to take by weighing up the options, and deciding which one is most beneficial to our well-being. But when it is unclear which one this may be, our powers of reason are insufficient in formulating an answer. In situations like these, our emotions take over.

reason belongs in the mind, and emotion in our body, where is resides alongside instinct and other non-cognitive responses. But of course, there are few dualists left; our understanding of mental processes is much more physically-based, so we need a more satisfactory answer.

print dictionaries have embodied certain ideas about democracy and capitalism that seem especially American—specifically, the notion that “good” English can be packaged and sold, becoming accessible to anyone willing to work hard enough to learn it.

Massive social changes in the 1960s accompanied the appearance Webster’s Third, and a new era arose for dictionaries: one in which describing how people use language became more important than showing them how to do so properly. But that era might finally be coming to an end, thanks to the internet, the decline of print dictionaries, and the political consequences of an anything-goes approach to language.

The standard way of describing these two approaches in lexicography is to call them “descriptivist” and “prescriptivist.” Descriptivist lexicographers, steeped in linguistic theory, eschew value judgements about so-called correct English and instead describe how people are using the language. Prescriptivists, by contrast, inform readers which usage is “right” and which is “wrong.”

economics needs rethinking in the wake of a disastrous crisis, a crisis that was neither predicted nor prevented.

it’s important to realize that the enormous intellectual failure of recent years took place at several levels. Clearly, economics as a discipline went badly astray in the years — actually decades — leading up to the crisis. But the failings of economics were greatly aggravated by the sins of economists, who far too often let partisanship or personal self-aggrandizement trump their professionalism. Last but not least, economic policy makers systematically chose to hear only what they wanted to hear. And it is this multilevel failure — not the inadequacy of economics alone — that accounts for the terrible performance of Western economies since 2008.

Hardly anyone predicted the 2008 crisis, but that in itself is arguably excusable in a complicated world.

Nussbaum’s case: That television could be great, and not because it was “novelistic” or “cinematic” but because it was, simply, television, “episodic, collaborative, writer-driven, and formulaic” by design.

According to Nussbaum, a TV show achieved greatness not despite these facts (which assumes they are limitations) but because of them (which sees them as an infrastructure that provokes creativity and beauty — “the sort that govern sonnets,”

Nussbaum’s once-iconoclastic views have become mainstream.

researchers re-examined evidence from 107 other graves in the Americas from roughly the same period. They were startled to discover that out of 26 graves with hunter tools, 10 belonged to women

the findings indicate that “women have always been able to hunt and have in fact hunted.” The new data calls into question an influential dogma in the field of archaeology. Nicknamed “man the hunter,” this is the notion that men and women in ancient societies had strictly defined roles: Men hunted, and women gathered. Now, this theory may be crumbling.

scientists re-examined the remains of a 10th-century Viking warrior excavated in Sweden at the end of the 19th century by Hjalmar Stolpe, an archaeologist. The skeleton had been regally buried at the top of a hill, with a sword, two shields, arrows and two horses.

They become the center of every room they enter, with all the attendant narcissism. They also have inside information, and often leap to the conclusion that people who don’t have this information are simply not worth listening to.

They become the center of every room they enter, with all the attendant narcissism. They also have inside information, and often leap to the conclusion that people who don’t have this information are simply not worth listening to.

“First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you.

While modern science is built on the primacy of empirical data — appealing to the objectivity of facts — actual progress requires determined partisans to move it along.

Why wasn’t it the ancient Babylonians putting zero-gravity observatories into orbit around the earth,” Strevens asks, “the ancient Greeks engineering flu vaccines and transplanting hearts?”

transforming ordinary thinking humans into modern scientists entails “a morally and intellectually violent process.”

Peale was exceptional for cutting the flock some spiritual slack, encouraging them to look for the sunny side and conquer their inferiority complexes. In his world, you can have the economic gains minus the guilt, which seems perfectly suited to the American sensibility.

The book sold millions of copies and was eventually translated into more than 40 languages, and Peale, from his pulpit at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, became central to the spiritual life of the family of Fred Trump Sr., his wife, Mary, and the four Trump children, including the future president.

it was also well suited to justifying and exacerbating the pathologies of the Trump family and businesses

The messages, constantly repeated on a wide array of radio stations and television channels, were designed to reinforce tribal loyalties and convince Law and Justice voters that they are “real” Poles, not impostors or traitors like their political opponents.

Some voters live in a so-called populist bubble, where they hear nationalist and xenophobic messages, learn to distrust fact-based media and evidence-based science, and become receptive to conspiracy theories and suspicious of democratic institutions. Others read and hear completely different media, respect different authorities, and search for a different sort of news.

This is a question about how to get people to listen at all. Just shouting about “facts” will get you nowhere with those who no longer trust the sources that produce them.

The purpose of peddling deliberate political fabrication is not necessarily to persuade people to vote for a specific candidate or party, but rather to destabilise an electoral process or even a country by discrediting political movements, candidates, ideas and structures.

it does not matter if the conspiracy theories peddled online are credible. Quantity here matters far more than quality, and the more such fake stories appear, the more people may be tempted to conclude that those who rule them are not merely unfit to do so, but are irretrievably biased.

there is a natural reaction among voters to assume that there is “no smoke without fire,” that if an allegation is repeated frequently enough, there must some truth to it.

Positive thinking plays an important role in positive psychology, a subfield devoted to the study of what makes people happy and fulfilled.

Research has found that positive thinking can aid in stress management and even plays an important role in your overall health and well-being.

Positive thinking does not necessarily mean avoiding or ignoring the bad things; instead, it involves making the most of the potentially bad situations, trying to see the best in other people, and viewing yourself and your abilities in a positive light.

The great point is to bring them the real facts."

People aren't interested in facts; they like theories about the world that fit into their pre-existing ideas about how it is.

the impact of fact-checking is usually very limited to some media commentators and those actively looking to get informed. The audience is limited to a few websites or perhaps a newspaper like the Guardian.

A “well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people,” Bickert said, prompted the long-overdue change.

A “well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people,” Bickert said, prompted the long-overdue change.

Politicians have enjoyed lax enforcement of Facebook’s community standards, thanks to a loophole the social media company created that protects their posts as “newsworthy content.”

“To my knowledge, this is the first time in its 40 year history that CNN had been threatened with legal action because an American politician or campaign did not like CNN’s polling results,” he wrote. “To the extent that we have received legal threats from political leaders in the past, they have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media.”

The idea, recycled by Republicans in every election cycle since at least 2012, is that Republicans are being under-sampled in the polls, artificially inflating the results in favor of the Democratic candidate.

The movement’s founding father, Dean Chambers, trumpeted the theory during the 2012 campaign, when former President Barack Obama was consistently leading Mitt Romney. Chambers decided that polls should be weighted by party identification — disregarding arguments that it’s a fungible metric, and that many voters change their identification from one election to the next — so he “unskewed” some national polls. And all of a sudden, Romney started winning.

For the most part, however, we think of critical thinking as the process of analyzing facts in order to form a judgment. Basically, it’s thinking about thinking.  

Critical thinking is a domain-general thinking skill. What does this mean? It means that no matter what path or profession you pursue, these skills will always be relevant and will always be beneficial to your success. They are not specific to any field.

solve problems as quickly and as effectively as possible.  

Hearing ghost voices relies on pseudoscience and fallibility of human perception

Nontrivial numbers of Americans believe in the paranormal.

Part of the attraction of the audio recorder for paranormal researchers is its apparent objectivity. How could a skeptic refute the authenticity of a spirit captured by an unbiased technical instrument? To the believers, EVP seem like incontrovertible evidence of communications from beyond.

A fallacy is a kind of error in reasoning. The list of fallacies  below contains 229 names of the most common fallacies, and it provides brief explanations and examples of each of them. Fallacious arguments should not be persuasive, but they too often are. Fallacies may be created unintentionally, or they may be created intentionally in order to deceive other people

The vast majority of the commonly identified fallacies involve arguments, although some involve only explanations, or definitions, or other products of reasoning. Sometimes the term “fallacy” is used even more broadly to indicate any false belief or cause of a false belief. The list below includes some fallacies of these sorts, but most are fallacies that involve kinds of errors made while arguing informally in natural language.

The first known systematic study of fallacies was due to Aristotle in his De Sophisticis Elenchis (Sophistical Refutations), an appendix to the Topics. He listed thirteen types. After the Dark Ages, fallacies were again studied systematically in Medieval Europe. This is why so many fallacies have Latin names. The third major period of study of the fallacies began in the later twentieth century due to renewed interest from the disciplines of philosophy, logic, communication studies, rhetoric, psychology, and artificial intelligence.

Does Democracy Need Truth?: A Conversation with the Historian Sophia Rosenfeld | The New Yorker

Ever since Donald Trump announced his Presidential candidacy, in June of 2015, there has been considerable concern about whether his allergy to truth is endangering American democracy

the relationship between truth and democracy was fraught for centuries before the time of Twitter and Trump.

Why you may not be able to trust your own memories | The Independent

Take storytelling for example. When we describe our memories to other people, we use artistic licence to tell the story differently depending on who’s listening.

we’re often guilty of changing the facts and adding false details to our memories without even realising.