![]() When the treasonous letters leaking secrets to the Germans resumed, Dreyfus’s prosecutors reasoned that a new traitor had appeared who happened to have similar handwriting. Dreyfus was publicly shamed, stripped of his rank, and sent to a penal colony on the aptly named Devil’s Island for a life of solitary confinement. When a second expert contradicted the first, investigators found that the second had connections to Jewish bankers and decided he could not be trusted. Witnesses came forward to report that they had heard Dreyfus praise the German Empire, that they’d seen him gambling, that he kept mistresses despite being married and a handwriting expert matched Dreyfus’s scrawl to a damning piece of evidence. As the only high-ranking Jewish officer in the French military during the early 1890s, a particularly antisemitic period in France’s history, suspicion immediately fell on him when it was learned that a traitor had been leaking military secrets to the Germans. Some prior conviction concealed a blind spot and kept him from asking pertinent questions.Īlfred Dreyfus lost five years of his life to such a mistake. It’s a tale as old as time: A man thinks he’s being evenhanded in assessing something, only to later learn that bias had disfigured his evaluation. It’s easier than you think to fall into motivated reasoning Here are five more from Galef’s latest, The Scout Mindset.ġ. Among them are Stephen Hicks and Helen Pluckrose, for mucking around in the sewers of postmodernism and cataloging the causes of our predicament Virginia Postrel, Johan Norberg, Matt Ridley, and Steven Pinker, for reminding us of the importance of dynamism, the open society, progress, and enlightenment and more recently, social scientists and practitioners such as Adam Grant and Julia Galef for their tips and techniques on cultivating and preserving objectivity.Ī few months back, I shared six important lessons from Grant’s latest book, Think Again. Those few who are working to diagnose and cure our culture deserve our attention and appreciation. After decades of decay in our academic training grounds, radical identitarianism and other irrationalities are spreading with accelerating speed, and we are woefully short of thinkers capable of fighting them. ![]() Increasingly, the barbarians are not merely at the gates, but running the show in a vast swathe of humanities departments. University professors resign in frustration from what were once our bastions of rationality. Email for hosting access.Respect for reason has waxed and waned throughout history. start or join group discussions, read along on books and articles on any topic (film, poetry, tech, news, etc). share recommended books, articles, takeaways, fan fiction, summaries, etc For the last six years, Julia has hosted the Rationally Speaking podcast.ĭiscuss ideas from digital literature like books, news, articles, and research papers together at ![]() Julia’s background is originally in statistics, and she did social science research at Columbia and Harvard Business Schools for several years before becoming a writer for venues such as Slate, Science, Scientific American, and more. Julia Galef co-founded the Center for Applied Rationality, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping people improve their reasoning and decision-making, particularly with the aim of addressing global problems. When your steadfast opinions are tested, Galef asks: "What do you most yearn for? Do you yearn to defend your own beliefs or do you yearn to see the world as clearly as you possibly can?" Are you a soldier, prone to defending your viewpoint at all costs - or a scout, spurred by curiosity? Julia Galef examines the motivations behind these two mindsets and how they shape the way we interpret information, interweaved with a compelling history lesson from 19th-century France. ![]() Perspective is everything, especially when it comes to examining your beliefs. This is followed by an intellectual discussion on 3 points from the video. Join the video call link by clicking on ‘Request to Join’:Įvery Thursday at 9 PM, we will be screening some very interesting TED talks under the TED Circles initiative. We will be screening a TED Talk - Why you think you're right, even if you're wrong by Julia Galef TED Circle about 'Irrationality' hosted by ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |