Does democracy require universal suffrage? Yes, I think so. So does the Supreme Court. Economist Bryan Caplan isn’t so sure. A few years ago Caplan identified several pernicious biases individuals […]
Search Results
You searched for: how rational are you
Before reading please click ‘View Entire Story’. My apologies for the length. Over at the New Statesman, Mehdi Hasan wrote an article against abortion. It’s not entirely clear whether Hasan […]
On Friday afternoon, I got a call on my cell phone from an 800 number I didn’t recognize. I let it go to voicemail, and I’m glad I did, because […]
So says an outstanding young conservative public intellectual—Helen Rittelmeyer. It’s true enough that conservatives still do accuse the Democrats—or, more precisely, the liberals—of being moral relativists. Rittelmeyer quotes Paul Ryan […]
‘Normality’ or ‘normalcy’, as a concept, is long due for the crematorium of bad ideas, alongside racism and homophobia. Indeed, it is precisely these kinds of ideas the defence of normalcy encourages and gave birth to: it is both kingmaker and mother.
Last week, after the shooting in their lobby that wounded a security guard, the right-wing Family Research Council immediately blamed their listing by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a […]
If you took the three-question quiz I posted last week, chances are you answered some items incorrectly. Like some of my smart, accomplished friends and family members who took the […]
William Souder’s 2004 biography of John James Audobon, Under a Wild Sky, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His newest book, On a Farther Shore, chronicles the life and […]
What’s the Big Idea? The Internet has a terrible habit of misquoting Einstein on energy and creativity until he sounds like he’s the author of The Secret, not the theory […]
US Rep. Todd Akin is a Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri, USA. Akin thinks the US should not support the “morning after pill” (you’ll see why I’ve put that […]
Happiness is not an unalloyed good, Kant says. Without the correct character and orientation, without a sense of duty, happiness is just an animalistic state of mind.
A huge research project about DNA (ENCODE) has provoked more scientific controversy over just what proportion of that huge molecule plays an active role in making us us. When […]
An Internet connection has only now materialized in my new Houston pad, so perhaps you’ll forgive me if I kvetch about last week’s David Brooks column. In the wake of the […]
In ‘On Liberty’, one of John Stuart Mill’s concerns was the best way to conduct ourselves, since conduct in expression was central to his moral claims about individual liberty. Mill […]
For centuries, great thinkers from philosopher John Locke to scientist Stephen Pinker have debated whether or not humans are born with innate traits like morality and empathy. Some go with […]
by Nika Sabasteanski (guest blogger) Immanuel Kant proposes a one-ingredient recipe for enlightenment: freedom. Provide individuals with the freedom to use public rationality, give them the tools to escape their […]
The horrifying midnight movie shooting spree in Colorado on Friday has re-ignited the national debate over gun control that raged following the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres in 1999 and […]
If you’re not already, you should be reading Surly Amy‘s ongoing post series asking men who are leaders in the atheist movement to speak out against the sexist hate and […]
In Part I, I introduced the idea that we should employ the principle of charity when engaging with ideas (particularly online) – especially from new and unknown interlocutors. Many problems […]
“Mommy” has become an adjective. This is both perplexing and troubling. I’m so sick of hearing everything get modified with mommy. Shades of Gray is “mommy porn.” Slow-track, less-stressful jobs […]
If you ask anyone who knows me, I like to think they’d tell you that I’m a generally optimistic and cheerful person. But these past few weeks, I’ve felt like […]
Struggling with a foreign language is practically the definition of mental strain: what is the word for “screwdriver” again? did I produce that “ĥ” sound correctly? are they laughing with […]
In this Q&A with Dr. Meg Jay, the clinical psychologist explains why the twenties matter, and how to make the most of them.
In response to a lot of feedback on yesterday’s post, the loudest and nastiest of which came from people who deny climate change, I have revised the essay to […]
Jonah Lehrer’s post at The New Yorker details some worrying research on cognition and thinking through biases, indicating that “intelligence seems to make [such] things worse.” This is because, as […]
For a long time people thought that the self was unified and eternal. It’s easy to see why.
[Author’s Note: I’m reposting some old favorites while I’m away on vacation this week. This post was originally from April 2011.] I’m an atheist, in part, because I’m a moral […]
This is part 2 of my review of Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature”. Read Part 1 here. The most famous human being of prehistoric times is probably […]
Note: Before you comment to say “This is not going to change the mind of someone who would issue a death threat”, please don’t. That’s not my point. Ask yourself […]
Noah Millman intervenes sensibly in the great Douthat–Sanchez debate about morality and religion: Okay, so humanists don’t have strong reasons for their faith in human rights. Do Christians have strong […]