Progress-focused

I have previously written about how irrational beliefs can be harmful  and also how they can be difficult to change due to some systemic and psychological obstacles . But beliefs can change and believing they cannot change can cause us to stop talking honestly about our beliefs, creating polarization and making progress more difficult. With that in mind, here I am sharing my top 6 harmful beliefs plus a brief explanation of why they are so dangerous in my eyes. Hopefully, these thoughts will provoke further reflection.

Is morality hereditary or mainly dependent on upbringing? What is your answer to this question? And to what extent do you think your answer to the question affects your moral self-image? In other words, what is the influence of your morality mindset? Read more.

Igor Grossmann was born in the Soviet Union, grew up in Ukraine and Germany, and studied in Germany and the USA. Currently, he is the director of the Wisdom and Culture Lab at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is one of the leading researchers in the field of wisdom research (view his Google Scholar profile ). His work focuses on demystifying wisdom and modeling of cultural change. He also co-hosts the On Wisdom Podcas t and initiated worldaftercovid.info . In this interview we will talk about topics like what wisdom is, why there now appears to be an ever-greater call for wisdom, how individuals may reason and act more wisely, and how wisdom may be taught. 

In a new book chapter, researchers Jayawickreme, Prentice & Fleeson (2020) describe preliminary evidence for morality as a basic psychological need . Below I will discuss some parts of this chapter. 

I learned about Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist at Caltech, through various interesting YouTube videos on topics such as the non-existence of an afterlife , theism versus naturalism , the arrow of time , the relation between the laws of nature and the meaning of life . Elaborating on that latter theme, Sean Carroll has written an extremely ambitious new book called The Big Picture, On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and The Universe itself in which he, as the title suggests, presents a view on everything trying to integrate what scientists have discovered about cosmology and particle science with a view on meaning of life and morality.

Writing down the title of this post feels awkward and even a bit scary. Who am I to disagree with Steven Weinberg ? He is a paragon of rationality and intellectual accomplishment. He's won a Nobel prize in physics, he coined the phrase 'standard model' and he recently wrote a wonderful book on the history of science ( read more ). So he has lots of authority on matters of science whereas I have little if any. Yet, in determining truth, authority alone is not a valid argument. So I will point out where I think he is wrong.