Thoughts from John Karahalis
“If a person had delivered up your body to some passer-by, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivering up your own mind to any reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?”
—The Enchiridion of Epictetus
Even this English translation is difficult to parse. I read it like this: if we wouldn't want others to physically control us, why do we allow others to control our minds by getting under our skin?
Mick West's skeptical analysis of recent UFO videos blew my mind. It's so clear that there are reasonable, natural explanations for these sightings, yet even some in government seem convinced that something else is going on. It's a nice reminder that the government is made up of people, and people don't always think critically. We believe what we want and we ignore contrary opinions. We insist on getting a second opinion before scheduling car repairs, but we accept that grainy, black and white videos might prove the existence of extraterrestrial visitors.
As Professor David Kipping reminds his viewers toward the end of the video, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the evidence in these videos isn't even mildly significant. Call me when we have a video of an alien pilot turning knobs in the cockpit.
“We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric… It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave.”
—Chamath Palihapitiya, former VP of Growth, Mobile, and International at Facebook, in a conversation at Stanford
I'm a paying YouTube Premium customer, but YouTube is getting worse every day. I especially dislike the over-the-top thumbnails that some creators use, often showing their surprised faces reacting to something incredible that never occurs in the video. The many “news reaction” videos are almost as bad, wherein creators pad 10 seconds of a real news clip with 3 minutes of blabbering; the thumbnail shows the real news clip.
The race to the bottom of the brain stem, as Tristan Harris puts it, continues.
For those who feel similarly, I recommend the Clickbait Remover add-on (get it for Firefox, get it for Chrome), which replaces custom thumbnails with real video frames.
Not everything that is natural is good. Not everything that is unnatural is bad.
Stop helping people who don’t want to help themselves.
“Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan… who comes ambling along.”
—Carl Sagan
I think of social media like the cigarettes of our time. Of course, cigarettes still exist, but most people today understand their harms and abstain from them. Not so with social media.
One consequence of thinking this way is that I’m particularly horrified when I see very young children using social media. They’re inhaling digital tar and forming habits that will be difficult to unlearn, but the cartoon characters and DIY slime videos make it seem okay.
Should we eat healthy foods because it’s good for our minds and bodies or because it’s the right thing to do? The latter is simpler and more poignant, but it’s meaningless without the former. Maybe we need both, rational justifications to inspire change followed by simple rules that motivate more immediately gratifying habits. This order may be important, too; some find it difficult to follow rules without reason.
Never underestimate the power of the human mind to believe what it wants.