Just a bit over a year ago, I posted an incredible TEDTalk presentation by Brené Brown on the important relationship between wholeheartedness and vulnerability. That entry was, and still is, particularly important to me personally because of certain events and circumstances in my own life that I'm still struggling to resolve.
One of the things I find especially inspiring about Brown is the way her research contrasts and conflicts with her own innate temperament: she's not a cheery, free or open person by nature, and yet when confronted with the findings of her research (and she is forced to either attempt to reconcile her natural proclivities with the findings from her work, or stick to her intuitive guns and remain safe in her solipsistic bubble), hard as it might be, she bursts that bubble open and takes the plunge that will either liberate her or destroy her... or both.
Well, here she is again with that striking wisdom and insight that forces us to confront our own demons and test whether we can become the kind of persons we aspire to be, and possibly maybe even harvest the incredible fruits that such personal and existential risks offer... if we're not destroyed in the process...
So the Kony campaign about which I reported recently has been making the news everywhere, first because of its viral popularity, and then because of questions of sincerity, possible embezzlement on the part of its executives, questions of a hoax, impracticality, sweeping generalizations of a more complex problem, the evangelical Christian fundamentalism of its spokesman, Jason Russell, and most recently a psychotic episode involving nudity and public disorder.
And because even HIV wishes it could have gone as viral as the Kony campaign, those, like me, who posted the video, liked it on facebook, tweeted about it, etc. are now experiencing an uncomfortable dose of cognitive dissonance and are turning into the predictable cynicism and the hindsight bias we tend to feel whenever we feel we've fallen for a scam.
So, I thought I'd take this opportunity to post the funny video below (because it really is worth posting), but also to offer my two cents about what this lesson might be able to teach us about the way human minds are wired and the likely and predictable mistakes we are likely to fall into. But first the video:
Are all the things being reported about Russell true? Let's assume they are. Are the non-profit Invisible Children and its executives profiting from this campaign? Let's assume yes. The mistake many people seem to be reaching given these two possible facts is a logical fallacy known as tu quoque: assuming that because this dude and his organization are possibly engaging in shady and less than forthcoming tactics from which they might be benefiting, that therefore we should stop caring about what really matters: Kony!
Tu quoque is a distraction for which we fall all the time: the realization of hypocrisy makes us focus on the hypocrite instead of his message, but two wrongs don't make a right, and even a hypocrite can have something worth listening to. The fact that this Russell may be a douchebag is a completely independent issue from whether Kony is forcibly recruiting child soldiers and engaging in crimes against humanity, or from the question of whether he should be stopped. In case you're still not sure, the answers is yes to both.
So, while we may have our problems with Russell (and really more with ourselves for letting ourselves get 'duped', whatever that means), we should nevertheless exert whatever pressure we can on our political leaders so that Kony can be brought to justice, and so that the people he has so ruthlessly terrorized can finally start getting a good and peaceful night's sleep...
So, if you don't want to feel duped (as if this were all about you...), maybe don't buy the kit (and contribute to this questionable organization), but you can still download it for free and spread the word about the real issue at hand: Kony!
Whenever new technologies arise, such as the ability to genetically engineer biological organisms, one of the classic luddite objections is that such novelty represents human hubris as we attempt to "play God" and do something "unnatural." I've never quite understood such objections, since we run the risk of "creating life" whenever we have a few too many at the local pub and we happen to find an equally hammered partner with whom to engage in all kinds of unnatural acts. True story :)
Still, there is something to be said for the risk of unintended consequences, especially as 21st century advances in science and technology, not to mention their democratization and cheap and easy access, have the potential to produce dangers against which evolution has never had to fight. Some of these innovations are probably inevitable, so while we might not always be able to stop them, we might want to become acquainted with them so we can then start to think about how to manage and regulate them. And to introduce some of these advances, here is Adam Rutherford as he explores some of the truly state-of-the-art advances that synthetic biology is producing, starting with the spider-goat:
Unless by "playing God" people mean that he's the only one allowed to wipe most of life out of the face of the Earth...
There was an interesting interview in The Atlantic recently with philosopher Nick Bostrom on the question of whether we are underestimating the risk of human extinction. He thinks we are, and bases his calculations on what looks to me like an analogy of the Drake equation, so I'm not fully convinced (since the values we assign to such probabilities seem somewhat arbitrary), but the arguments are interesting nevertheless.
We live in an alien planet, or at least a planet we don't know too well. Most of what we know about Earth comprises only a percentage of the 30% we find on the dry and solid surface, but as David Gallo demonstrates in this short TEDTalk, the deepest, darkest and virtually unexplored parts of the ocean are teeming with ecosystems that contain more life diversity than the rain forest. Oh, and a bunch of microbes are making a feast out of the Titanic...
What does it mean to be you? How is it that the physical matter making up the many neurons in your brain somehow produce your subjective, conscious experience? Are your neurons themselves conscious? While we're at it, what exactly is consciousness? Where does your sense of self come from? Do you actually have a self? Can you be made to experience your self from outside your body? Can your consciousness be transferred to an inanimate object, or to someone else's body? If you are your consciousness somehow, do you get to consciously make your own choices, or are these determined by factors over which you have no conscious awareness and control?
Those are just some of the fascinating questions that Marcus du Sautoy explores in the following mind-bending documentary that gets right to the intersection of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience:
When your poster calendar reaches December 31st, do you freak out about the end of the world because your calendar doesn't mark any future days? That's ridiculous, you say? Well, that's exactly what's happening as we reach the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar, and people are freaking out!
If the Mayans had at least gotten the shape of the planet right (or actually thought the world, and not just their calendar, would come to an end), maybe we might have reason to be concerned, but still, a critical thinker should be thinking of lots of questions to scrutinize this pronouncement, first among which ought to be the most basic of all: how could the Mayans (or anyone else, really) possibly be justified in making such a prediction about the future in the first place?
As you may expect, this is one of those situations in which some vague and broad pronouncement by some mysterious source only gets its details filled in by those who subsequently believe it. In other words, massive cognitive biases. Being a believer is easy, but the line between belief and gullibility is thin. If you want to think critically, the way to do it is not to simply accept confirmatory evidence, however vague and dubious, but to look for some way to falsify the pronouncement, and then see what pans out.
This blog, this little one-man operation, is motivated by the desire to educate those curious minds who want to be exposed to awesome, fascinating ideas and learn from them, and by the belief that a single individual can make some sort of positive difference in the world, no matter how small. I think of this blog as my small contribution to a world I love and want to help improve. Today's entry is particularly apropos of that theme because your individual involvement could help create a revolution such that the world has never seen.
As you may nor may not know, poor, destitute families in the regions in and around Uganda and Sudan, have been terrorized for decades by the unimaginable brutality of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a fundamentalist Christian group so violent and corrupt that only loudmouths such as Rush Limbaugh would defend it (I kid you not). The psychopathic leader of the LRA, Joseph Kony, resorts to kidnapping, torturing and exploiting children who are consequently forced to kill their own parents, mutilate other children and commit all kinds of unimaginable atrocities against others, including their own families.
Unfortunately, because this geographical area doesn't represent any practical military or economic interests for us, our government has long ignored these violations of human rights and turned a blind eye to the suffering of the disenfranchised victims of this violence. But our representatives depend on us for votes and offices, and if we put enough pressure on them, then at least out of self-interest, they might finally decide to do the right thing. So let's make Kony so famous that he can no longer be ignored, and we can finally bring the bastard to justice and let some light shine on this dark corner of the world.
I want to live in a world in which this is an everyday occurrence:
Get involved and do your part to create a better world.
In this blog we have featured previously a basic intro to logic and argumentation, a primer on the importance of critical thinking, a fun intro to informal logical fallacies, and many more relevant entries. And yet the main point cannot be emphasized enough: critical thinking is a crucial form of mental self-defense against possible manipulation and exploitation by others, and it is also the conceptual basis upon which we can figure out how to become citizens of the world and create a more promising future.
You can spend a lot of time and energy learning the vast landscape that is critical thinking, and you definitely should, but in the meantime you might find it helpful to learn a few simple heuristics from Michael Shermer that will help you tell the difference between possibly interesting and productive claims that might be worth your time investigating and exploring, and absolute bullshit pseudo-scientific woo-woo...
I seriously can't understand any legitimate reason why issues concerning women's reproductive health are tearing this country apart (unless this is just a red herring to distract us from other issues). Are we really so insecure that the notion that women should have control over their own bodies frighten us to the point of lunacy?
But it's not just the misogyny, it's also the double standards: while no men complain that Viagra (which is used exclusively for boning) is covered under most insurance plans, we get our panties in a bunch the moment someone even suggests that women should get access to contraceptives (which have multiple legitimate medical reasons besides pure birth control).
As you may have heard, Mr. Potato Head Rush Limbaugh went out of his way to characterize Sandra Fluke, a law student who testified before Congress on the need for women's access to contraceptives, as a giant slut. Jon Stewart has a few things to say about that:
