John L. Taylor @johnnylogic@qoto.org

The first is [a reflection](https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/11/seduced-by-story-peter-brooks-book-review/672135/) on _Seduced by Story: the Use and Abuse of Narrative_ by Peter Brooks. Brooks argues, in short:

"[W]e’ve relied too heavily on storytelling conventions to understand the world around us, which has resulted in a “narrative takeover of reality” that affects nearly every form of communication—including the way doctors interact with patients, how financial reports are written, and the branding that corporations use to present themselves to consumers. Meanwhile, other modes of expression, interpretation, and comprehension, such as analysis and argument, have fallen to the wayside."

The second, [Don’t Treat Your Life as a Project](https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/11/seduced-by-story-peter-brooks-book-review/672135/), challenges the value of compressing your life (and self-concept) into a story:

"Projects fail and people fail in them. But we have come to speak as if a person can be a failure—as though failure were an identity, not an event. When you define your life by way of a single enterprise, a narrative arc, its outcome will come to define you.... What makes the narrator’s life worth living is not some grand narrative, running from conception or birth to inevitable death; it is the countless little thoughts and deeds and gentle, joking interactions that occupy day after day after day. If you pay attention... there’s enough in a single lunch hour to fill a book."

#Books, #Criticism, #Internet. #Narrative, #Philosophy, #Self, #Story

This is a video of a blanket octopus filmed in the ocean depths next to Romblon Island in the Philippines. What a beautiful iridescent creature!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJS2oYvi9CI

#Diving, #Nature. #Octopus, #Video

Here are my #7Books to get to know me, post-college nonfiction edition:

* _The Search for the Perfect Language_ by Umberto Eco
* _The Devil in the White City_ by Erik Larson
* _Machine Learning and Data Mining_ by Igor Kononenko and Matjaz Kukar
* _The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage_ by Clifford Stoll
* _The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation_ by Thich Nhat Hanh
* _The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being_ by Daniel M. Haybron
* _Between the World and Me_ by Ta-Nehisi Coates

#Books, #Bookstodon, #NonFiction

Here are my #7Books to get to know me, post-college fiction edition:

* _Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology_ by James Patrick Kelly (Editor) and John Kessel (Editor)
* _The Discworld Series_ by Terry Pratchett (I know, this is cheating)
* _The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao_ by Junot Díaz
* _Wizard of the Crow_ by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
* _Exhalation_ by Ted Chiang
* _The Overstory_ by Richard Powers
* _When We Cease to Understand the World_ by Benjamín Labatut (This is borderline non-fiction)

#Books, #Bookstodon, #fiction

Here are my #7Books to get to know me, college nonfiction edition:

* _Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman_ by James Gleick
* _The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation_ by Gary William Flake
* _Men of Mathematics_ by Eric Temple Bell
* _The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul_ by Daniel C. Dennett and Douglas R. Hofstadter
* _Engines of Logic: Mathematicians & the Origin of the Computer_ by Martin D. Davis
* _Philosophical Investigations_ by Ludwig Wittgenstein
* _The Logic of Reliable Inquiry_ by Kevin T. Kelly

#Books, #Bookstodon, #Nonfiction

Here are my #7Books to get to know me, college fiction edition:

* _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_ by Tom Stoppard
* _Cryptonomicon_ by Neal Stephenson
* _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay_ by Michael Chabon
* _The Complete Stories_ by Flannery O'Connor
* _Hyperion_ by Dan Simmons
* _Collected Fictions_ by Jorge Luis Borges
* _The Name of the Rose_ by Umberto Eco

#Books, #Bookstodon, #Fiction

Here are my #7Books to get to know me, elementary to high school nonfiction edition:

* _Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings_ by Paul Reps (Editor), Nyogen Senzaki (Editor)
* _The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark_ by Carl Sagan
* _Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business_ by Neal Postman
* _The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy_ by E.D. Hirsch Jr., Joseph F. Kett, James S. Trefil
* _If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him: The Pilgrimage Of Psychotherapy Patients_ by Sheldon B. Kopp
* _Letter from the Birmingham Jail_ by Martin Luther King Jr.
* _Dictionary of Theories_ by Jennifer Bothamley

Boy, I was a weird kid.

#Books, #Bookstodon, #Nonfiction

Here are #7Books to get to know me, elementary to high school fiction edition:

1. _A Wrinkle in Time_ by Madeleine L'Engle
2. _The Complete Stories and Poems_ by Edgar Allan Poe
3. _The Lord of the Rings_ by J. R. R. Tolkien
4. _All Quiet on the Western Front_ by Erich Maria Remarque
5. _Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited_ by Aldous Huxley
6. _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ by Mark Twain
7. _Cannery Row_ by John Steinbeck

#Books, #Bookstodon, #Fiction

"In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."

-- Herbert Simon, ‘[Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World](https://knowen-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/file/2005/DESIGNING%2BORGANIZATIONS%2Bfor%2BInformation-Rich%2Bworld%2B--%2BSImon.pdf)’ in Martin Greenberger (ed.) Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest (1971)

#AttentionEconomy, #Economics, #Information, #Quote, #Quotes

Two more things to keep in mind in addition to the above:
* **Brandolini's Law**: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it." Also known as the **bullshit asymmetry principle**.
* **The Gish Gallop**: A rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments.

#Denialism, #Fallacy, #Science, #Skepticism

I ran across the FLICC model of science denial a while ago while reading _How to Talk to a Science Denier_ by Lee McIntyre. I can say that throughout the years of engaging flat-earthers, stop-the-stealers, creationists, Covid deniers, vaccine skeptics, QAnon believers, and the like, I have faced every one of the techniques outlined. ([Image Source](https://skepticalscience.com/history-FLICC-5-techniques-science-denial.html))

#Denialism, #Fallacy, #Science, #Skepticism

Her website, [Web3 is Going Just Great](https://web3isgoinggreat.com/), is worth following if you are interested in stories related to Web3 and have a healthy skepticism of it.

Molly White bravely presented her talk, [Is Web3 bullshit?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGsllEF7w_g), at Web Summit 2022 in front of a crowd with what are likely many people deeply invested in Web3. She calls out the ubiquity of vaporware, the numerous grifts, and the entrenchment power behind the rhetoric while acknowledging the importance of the lofty goals which should inspire technologists.

#Skepticism, #Technology, #Video, #Web3

Political scientist and philosopher, Eric Schliesser offers [further critique](https://crookedtimber.org/2022/11/24/on-macaskills-what-we-owe-the-future-part-1/) of MacAskill's longtermism:

"I offer two (kinds of) criticisms of What We Owe the Future. First, I discuss its cavalier attitude toward injustice. This criticism will be extrinsic to MacAskill’s own project. Second, I argue it treats a whole number of existential risks as uncorrelated which are, almost certainly correlated. (This I consider an intrinsic problem.) And this exhibits two kinds of lacunae at the heart of his approach: (a) his lack of theoretical interest in political institutions and the nature of international political coordination; (b) the absence of a disciplining social theory (or models) that can help evaluate the empirical data and integrate them."

Part two is forthcoming.

#EffectiveAltruism, #Ethics, #Longtermism, #Philosophy, #PoliticalScience