Why I reimagined “LOTR” from Mordor’s perspective First, a few words about myself. I’m not a writer either in form (no literary memberships; royalties are a negligible share of my income) or in substance (writing fiction is not my only or even main occupation). I’m a senior researcher at the Paleontological Institute of the Academy of Sciences – the very place where [Russian paleontologist and science fiction author] Yefremov used to work; professionally I’m known as the author of almost a hundred works on the classification of Chelicerata and historical biogeography. In the last few years I have found it more interesting to deal with living children than with extinct arthropods – I teach electives in high school, summer and winter supplemental courses, etc. I wrote a couple of textbooks, got involved in creating a new natural history school curriculum; if I had to state a preference, it is precisely those activities that I consider my most important. There are two ways of dealing with the foundation world. Do you like this option?
Purity Why Intelligent People Do Foolish Things Society is replete with examples of intelligent people doing foolish things. This seems puzzling considering that intelligent people (as indicated by intelligence tests and their proxies — SAT scores, etc.) are generally thought of as rational, smart people. So it may come as a surprise to find out that intelligent people are not necessarily rational people. And in some instances, intelligence shows zero correlation with rational thinking skills. An example of the dissociation of intelligence and rationality is seen with myside bias. In a series of experiments Stanovich and West (2008) examined the association between cognitive ability and two cardinal critical thinking skills- avoidance of myside bias and avoidance of one-side bias. In Experiment 1 natural myside bias was investigated in 15 different propositions. In Experiment 1, the researchers concluded, there was “no evidence at a ll that myside bias effects are smaller for students of higher cognitive ability” (p. 140). References
Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences) Thus begins the ancient parable: If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? One says, "Yes it does, for it makes vibrations in the air." Another says, "No it does not, for there is no auditory processing in any brain." Suppose that, after the tree falls, the two walk into the forest together. Will one expect to see the tree fallen to the right, and the other expect to see the tree fallen to the left? It's tempting to try to eliminate this mistake class by insisting that the only legitimate kind of belief is an anticipation of sensory experience. You stand on top of a tall building, next to a grandfather clock with an hour, minute, and ticking second hand. To answer precisely, you must use beliefs like Earth's gravity is 9.8 meters per second per second, and This building is around 120 meters tall. It is a great strength of Homo sapiens that we can, better than any other species in the world, learn to model the unseen. Next post: "Belief in Belief"
The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark The core argument on the paradox of wealth here was first introduced in a paper by both authors, entitled “Marx’s Ecology in the Twenty-First Century,” presented by Clark at the International Symposium on Ecological Civilization, Sanya, Hainan, China, June 23, 2009. Subsequent versions were delivered by Foster at the Marxism 2009 conference, University of London, July 4, 2009, and the Political Economy of the World-System Miniconference, University of San Francisco, August 7, 2009. Today orthodox economics is reputedly being harnessed to an entirely new end: saving the planet from the ecological destruction wrought by capitalist expansion. It promises to accomplish this through the further expansion of capitalism itself, cleared of its excesses and excrescences. Behind this tragedy-cum-farce is a distorted accounting deeply rooted in the workings of the system that sees wealth entirely in terms of value generated through exchange.
Science fiction author begins war of the books worlds Sue Perkins on The Books We Really Read. Photograph: BBC Stephen Hunt saw his first novel, For the Crown and the Dragon, published when he won the WH Smith New Talent writing competition in 1994. He's since had five novels in his Jackelian sequence published by the HarperCollins imprint Voyager, and is the man behind the hugely successful SF Crowsnest site, established in 1991. Science fiction and fantasy is big business for Stephen Hunt. Unfortunately, he says, not everyone feels the same way. Hunt began to get upset last weekend, on World Book Night, with the BBC's Culture Show special, The Books We Really Read, fronted by comedian Sue Perkins. Hunt and thousands like him could have been forgiven for thinking that these selections might have had some SF, fantasy or horror titles among them, especially, as Hunt says in a blazingly angry blog posted the same night, given that these genres "together account for between 20%/30% of the fiction market." But can Hunt be right?
The Ignorance of Voters | Wired Science What a sad day for American political discourse. It’s more than a little pathetic that the President of the United States had to release his own long form birth certificate just to prove what every serious person already knew. Once a rumor starts, it’s really hard to stop, especially when a quick Google search can rummage up evidence for nearly any belief. And yet, it’s not entirely fair to blame Trump, Drudge or the information age for our persistent idiocy. Rather, the fault is really our own: The human mind is simply terrible at politics. Although we think we make political decisions based upon the facts, the reality is much more sordid. Consider a recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California. That was a mistake. Like most voters, I assume that such ignorance only applies to other citizens, those people who don’t read The New York Times on their iPad while sipping single-origin coffee. Why does more education lead to less accurate beliefs?
The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand INTRODUCTION. Manorialism, commonly, is recognized to have been founded by robbery and usurpation; a ruling class established itself by force, and then compelled the peasantry to work for the profit of their lords. But no system of exploitation,including capitalism, has ever been created by the action of a free market. Capitalism was founded on an act of robbery as massive as feudalism. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege, without which its survival is unimaginable. The current structure of capital ownership and organization of production in our so-called "market" economy, reflects coercive state intervention prior to and extraneous to the market. Most such intervention is tacitly assumed by mainstream right-libertarians as part of a "market" system. But genuine markets have a value for the libertarian left, and we shouldn't concede the term to our enemies. THE SUBSIDY OF HISTORY. J.
Confirmation Bias Part of America's 'Just Do It!' Culture New research finds people primed to think in terms of action are more certain of their opinions and less likely to seek out dissenting views. We humans have a stubborn tendency to focus on information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs. The 21st-century media facilitates this presumptuous proclivity: It’s easy to avoid discomforting contradictory claims when there are websites and cable news networks tailored to fit your particular prejudice. Newly published research points to another factor that feeds this ingrained confirmation bias: Our “Just do it!” “The growing need for activity in the United States may contribute to a loss of objectivity in the way citizens gather information,” University of Alabama psychologist William Hart and University of Illinois psychologist Dolores Albarracin write in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. The researchers found evidence for this thesis in three experiments. A follow-up experiment again produced this effect.
Three Pound Brain Picture of the World As a Quantum Monadistic System | Nakagomi | NeuroQuantology The PDF file you selected should load here if your Web browser has a PDF reader plug-in installed (for example, a recent version of Adobe Acrobat Reader). If you would like more information about how to print, save, and work with PDFs, Highwire Press provides a helpful Frequently Asked Questions about PDFs. Alternatively, you can download the PDF file directly to your computer, from where it can be opened using a PDF reader. To download the PDF, click the Download link above. Fullscreen Fullscreen Off Supporting Agencies
KARL JASPERS FORUM TA31 (van Fraassen / Feyerabend) Commentary 2 PAUL FEYERABNEDS' LETTER TO THE READER of "Conquest of Abundance" sent by Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend 6 November 2000, posted 7 November 2000 Dear Dr Muller please find enclosed Paul's "letter to the reader", which I mentioned to you, and which was published together with I. Kind regards, Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend Dear reader, in a few pages you will find a story written in a style you may be familiar with. Now they stand before you with their familiar gestures and it seems that nothing interesting is ever going to happen - when suddenly, because of a trick used by the writer, the ‘reality’ you perceived turns out to be a chimaera.
Oscar Pistorius South African sprinter and murderer (born 1986) After becoming a Paralympic champion, Pistorius attempted to enter non-disabled international competitions, over persistent objections by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and arguments that his artificial limbs gave an unfair advantage. Pistorius prevailed in this legal dispute. At the 2011 World Championships in Athletics, Pistorius was the first amputee to win a non-disabled world track medal. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, Pistorius was the first double-leg amputee participant. On 14 February 2013, Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend, paralegal and model Reeva Steenkamp, in his Pretoria home. Early life[edit] Pistorius was born with fibular hemimelia (congenital absence of the fibula) in both legs. Sporting career[edit] Pistorius taking part in the Landsmót ungmennafélags Íslands in Kópavogur, Iceland, in July 2007 Dispute over prostheses[edit] Attempts to qualify for 2008 Summer Olympic Games[edit] Notes[edit]