Well I’m going to keep straying away from politics for a while. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to the serious stuff soon but I just couldn’t pass up posting this video. The filmmakers (Concord Music Group) recorded one street musician’s interpretation of the Ben E. King classic “Stand by Me” and then took that recording to other countries, allowing street musicians from around the world to record their own accompaniments. Then they mixed it all together. The result is both musically pleasing (its a really creative arrangement) and surprisingly touching. Street musicians from New Orleans to the Congo riffing together on a song whose message they understand all too well. Anyway, hope you enjoy it! Don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the comments.
I doubt I will ever write many articles that fit better into the theme and mission of this blog than this one. And despite the fact that the piece it’s based on is over 3 years old, it couldn’t be more topical. There was an article in the New Yorker in December of 2005 entitled “Everybody’s An Expert” that discusses a book by UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Philip Tetlock called “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?”. The article is a fascinating read and I’d encourage you to go through it if you’ve got a few minutes. But it is long so I’ve tried to draw out the more important and politically relevant points and I’ve added them below, along with a little of my own commentary. Continue reading
In 2006, the NEF (New Economics Foundation) released the results of a comprehensive study they’d done on happiness in various countries in the form of the Happy Planet Index. The goal was to find a way to measure the success of a society other than things like GDP or HDI. Its a little simplistic to call the index a measure of happiness since its really intended to be a measure of a society’s capability to sustain and produce a happy populace. Which is more different than you might think. For those that are interested the Wikipedia page on the HPI discusses it pretty thoroughly.
Anyway, Vanuatu came out on top all things considered. In fact the top ten are nearly all third-world countries. But this isn’t too surprising to those who have spent time in a third-world country, since it doesn’t take long to realize that financial success ≠ societal happiness. I bring this up now because Mental_Floss posted a great article the other day about one author’s travels to Vanuatu in an attempt to find out how they made it to the top of the list. His observations are pretty interesting I think, and they remind me a lot of Ghana. Here’s a link to the article:
I’m not going to launch into any kind of analysis of why these people are happier, but feel free to leave your thoughts about the issue in the comments. Also, if you’d like to see the rank that the US ended up with on the “Happiness Index” out of 178 countries examined, just click “continue reading”… Continue reading
Well its long been my position that the largest bias of the media is their bias towards the exciting, tantalizing, scandalous, lurid, and enraging. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way that the media treats the actions of murderers who commit mass shootings. I was reading an interesting article in MindHacks (an excellent psychology/neuroscience blog) the other day about this subject and with the immigration center shooting that happened in New York today, I thought this was an appropriate time to post something about it.
A very interesting video clip on this subject and a brief commentary can be found after the jump (which means after you click “continue reading” for my readers who are new to the blog culture) Continue reading
The internet was full of jokes today in celebration of April 1st. I thought one of the best was Yahoo’s new “Ideological search”, both because of its astute social commentary and its near-believability. Their info page on the subject has this to say:
Tired of being inundated with the contradictory and offensive beliefs of others? Today, the scientists at Yahoo! are releasing a groundbreaking new search filter that keeps controversy out of your search experience. I’m extremely pleased to announce Continue reading
I’m finally catching up on articles I’ve been meaning to write for a long time and this one comes from a New York Times Op-Ed piece which was written last June but which I discovered more recently. It can be found here. It describes a phenomenon known as “source amnesia”, which serves as yet another example of how none of us are nearly as smart, objective, or discerning as we think we are.
Most basically, source amnesia is just the idea that its much easier to remember a particular nugget of information, than it is to remember the context or source of that information, especially if its information we use, think about, or hear often. For example Continue reading
Just a quick post here. This is a documentary we watched in class a few weeks back during one of our “culture in medicine” discussion sessions. It was filmed by Kiri Davis while she was still an undergrad and has won a few film festival awards. Its short, a little over seven minutes, and is definitely worth watching.
It addresses our lingering associations with dark v light skin, through two methods. The first is a discussion of beauty with African-American girls with various shades of skin. They talk about how even in their community, light skin is the ideal and darker individuals are derided and encouraged to try to look less “African”. This is a phenomenon that many caucasians may not be aware of, but among many minority populations this association between european-looking people and all things good has led many to use dangerous Continue reading
Well its been a while since the last post, but I assure you its not because my blogging enthusiasm is waning. Our son Jonah was born last Saturday, and that combined with an unusually packed school schedule has left me with less free time than usual. Not that I’m complaining though. Jonah is happy, healthy, incredibly cute, and just about the most amiable baby anyone could ask for. You can see videos and pictures of him at our family blog GayLynnAndRyan.Blogspot.Com. Now I said when I started this blog that it wouldn’t be one of those “online diary” kind of blogs and I’m still committed to that idea. But I can’t let something as life-changing as the birth of our first child go by without some kind of acknowledgement on this website. And I thought a good way to approach this would be to provide a little bit of insight into our choice of the name “Jonah” for our son, since we’ve had a few questions about it.
Of course there’s a lot that goes into choosing a name for a child. Its got to sound nice when paired with the last name, its got to be something that isn’t too easy for kids to make fun of, it needs to be a name that won’t be considered a “grandpa name” or something like that when he’s still in high school, and of course there’s also the meaning of the name to consider. The sound of a name is a subjective judgement and we personally think its got a nice ring to it, and we liked it because its unique while not being unpronounceable or difficult to spell. The meaning of the name initially gave us pause but after much contemplation its become one of my favorite aspects of his name. Let me explain… Continue reading
I’ve been reading a blog called Mind Hacks recently, and they’ve been featuring several stories on the emerging field of “experimental philosophy”. Essentially this is a new attempt by researchers to apply the scientific method, or parts of it anyway, to the normally very “soft” science of philosophy. The results so far have been pretty fascinating, and I think one of the most striking, and universally accessible, studies to come out of this early movement is the one featured in the YouTube video above, and described in this Mind Hacks Article. Now the video is great but honestly I almost think the scenario it presents works better when read so I’ve included my paraphrasing of the situation below:
In our first scenario imagine that a vice president goes up to his CEO and tells him, “We’ve got a great plan for a new project. It will create huge profits for the company, but it will harm the environment. What do you want to do?” The CEO responds saying,… Continue reading
Well after years of talk I’ve decided to finally start a blog. Not the public diary kind mind you (we have one of those here) but the kind where I can discuss politics, philosophy, religion and other of life’s more weighty matters. Even those who know me well are probably unaware of the enormous percentage of my daily free time that’s devoted to researching these subjects. It’s far more than I’d care to admit frankly. But I’ve long been without a significant outlet for the information and ideas that are constantly swirling around in my head and I’m hoping that this blog will rectify that situation. But more than just an online sounding board, I’m hoping that this blog can become a place for similarly-interested individuals to discuss these complex issues with dispassionate rationality and constructive debate. Which brings me to my next topic.
So why the stupid name? After much thought I’ve decided to name my blog for one of the principles that I hold most dear: Intellectual Humility. This is a perspective, born of knowledge and honest self-reflection, that recognizes that what we know about the world and life pales in comparison to what we still have yet to understand. Its a principle that Einstein talked about frequently, and Lao Tzu touched on, but which Socrates said most succinctly when he said, “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance”.
Interestingly, this kind of intellectual humility tends to grow with increasing knowledge. This principle has been clearly demonstrated to me since starting medical school, as I’ve already learned far more about many subjects than I knew there was to learn. The subject of immunology is an instructive example… Continue reading
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Quotes
"We do not need to judge nearly so much as we think we do. This is the age of snap judgments. … [We need] the courage to say, ‘I don’t know. I am waiting further evidence. I must hear both sides of the question.’ It is this suspended judgment that is the supreme form of charity. Someone has said that you cannot slice cheese so fine that it doesn’t have two sides."
-Dallin H. Oaks
"It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle a question without debating it...The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert
"The more you know, the more you realise how much you don’t know — the less you know, the more you think you know."
-David Freeman
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
