snek_boi

I see your concern for truth in any scenario, and I agree validity should be a constant consideration! However, bias and astroturfing are different. Bias is the lens that we use to look at reality. Astroturfing is forcing lenses onto many others without them knowing. It is a deliberate campaign.

I like the novelty/predictability ratio idea. There is also the idea of “create expectations and satisfy them”, which leads to a sense of stability. Our cultures and genres create expectations. Rhymes tied to a certain metric can become part of these expectations. Of course, you can also create expectations and frustrate them, which leads to a sense of instability. Searching for “fakeout rhyme” videos makes this evident. Pat Pattison, an expert in songwriting, could be a good source on this ☺️

There’s also some thinkers who say that thinking only ever happens through language, so talking could be more of a mapping of “thinking words” onto “communication words”.

Yes! Rhetoric, the study of the available means of persuasion! Lots of professions still do that today: speech writers, advertisement creators, academic rhetoricians, some linguists, some anthropologists or sociologists, some historians…

How does adding dairy to coffee increase sinus congestion?

The best habit perhaps is meditating daily and I developed it following Tiny Habits.

GTD is up there too!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CGQwqWqzkNA

I agree with you: the FSF can seem unwavering in their stance, even in the face of practicality. I'm really sorry for this incredibly nit-picky detail, but I think practicality is ideological too. For better or for worse, we can't escape ideas or be free from them, so we have to choose which we value. For example, while I tend to choose software freedom over practicality, I also have, at times, chosen practicality over freedom.

It depends on the author! Authors create symbolic universes and they get to choose the rules of those universes. You can read Robert McKee’s work for more on this.

I agree wholeheartedly. If you know how to build habits, habits can be fun and they can be tied to living a meaningful life! Tiny Habits, the book and framework, changed my life for the better.

I do see how the narrative in the headline could be a call to action, but the article doesn’t propose a solution behind which the audience can rally. At most, the article describes how Americans can interpret the inevitable defeat. Of course, this text doesn’t exist in isolation; other texts would have to do the heavy lifting so that Americans rally behind a war effort.

I appreciate your passion for scientific literacy - it's crucial for combating misinformation. However, I'd like to share some perspectives that might broaden our understanding of scientific knowledge and how it develops.

First, it's worth noting that the distinction between "theory" and "hypothesis" isn't as clear-cut as we might think. In "The Scientific Attitude," Stephen McIntyre argues that what truly defines science isn't a rigid set of rules, but rather an ethos of critical inquiry and evidence-based reasoning. This ties into the "demarcation problem" in philosophy of science - the challenge of clearly defining what is and isn't science. Despite this ongoing debate, science continues to be a powerful tool for understanding our world.

Your stance seems to align with positivism, which views scientific knowledge as objective and verifiable. However, other epistemological approaches exist. Joseph A. Maxwell's work on critical realism offers a nuanced view that acknowledges both the existence of an objective reality and the role of human interpretation in understanding it.

Maxwell defines validity in research not just as statistical significance, but as the absence of plausible alternative explanations. This approach encourages us to constantly question and refine our understanding, rather than treating any explanation as final.

Gerard Delanty's "Philosophies of Social Science" provides a historical perspective on how our conception of science has evolved. Modern views often see science as a reflexive process, acknowledging the role of the researcher and societal context in shaping scientific knowledge.

Larry McEnery's work further emphasizes this point, describing how knowledge emerges from ongoing conversations within communities of researchers. What we consider "knowledge" at any given time is the result of these dynamic processes, not a static, unchanging truth.

Understanding these perspectives doesn't diminish the power or importance of science. Instead, it can make us more aware of the complexities involved in scientific inquiry and more resistant to overly simplistic arguments from science deniers.

By embracing some psychological flexibility around terms like "theory" and "hypothesis," we're not opening the door to pseudoscience. Rather, we're acknowledging the nuanced nature of scientific knowledge and the ongoing process of inquiry that characterizes good science.

What do you think about these ideas? I'd be interested to hear your perspective and continue this conversation.