Suggested Readings

A few recommendations by Figs in Winter for your reading pleasure

Image from Skeptical Inquirer.

The 37% rule: How many people should you date before settling down? It’s time for Macy to move home. She’s scored a promotion and she’s tired of hearing the man in the apartment above play his French horn. So, she books a few viewings with her real estate agent and starts looking at houses. After looking at three places, she falls in love: It’s a house with a huge backyard and a nice open-plan kitchen. What’s more, the school down the road has a great reputation. She’s all set to put in an offer. But that night a question pops into her head: What if the next house is better? She can’t shake the thought. What if the next house has a bigger backyard, or maybe a double garage? What if it’s cheaper?! We’ve all found ourselves in this situation, whether we’re considering job offers, buying a new car, or dating new people. When it comes to love, how many people should you date before settling down? It’s a problem that bridges mathematics and psychology, and it’s got a name: the optimal stopping problem. … (Big Think)

Self-promotion: how much is too much? A thought-provoking piece, The Art and Science of Academic Self-Promotion, by the equally provocatively self-titled Lesboprof in the Chronicle of Higher Education raised but did not resolve a question, one particularly intended for academics (but by extension, others as well): to what degree ought one engage in self-promotion? How much, and how precisely, ought one to bring to or even impress upon the attention of others one’s own accomplishments, successes, projects, qualities? … (That Philosophy Guy)

Is ‘extraordinary evidence’ unreasonable? The statement that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is a familiar one to skeptics. But it is one that can be counterproductive. Is it time to rethink both the phrase and our knee-jerk repetition of it? Here I’ll delve into the history and criticism of it as well as my own practical experience examining UFOs and remote viewing. We associate “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” with Carl Sagan. But what is sometimes referred to as “the Sagan Standard” has a long history, going back nearly 300 years before Sagan. The earliest recognizable form comes from an English priest named Benjamin Bayley. He was writing about a timeless subject: predictions of the end of the world. Then, as now, people often claimed to have received revelations as to the date of the apocalypse directly from God. Bayley wrote in 1708 that “these Matters being very extraordinary, will require a very extraordinary Proof.” … (Skeptical Inquirer)

Become indistractable. Distractions are everywhere. A deluge of content on social media, notifications from your phone, coworkers talking loudly in your open office; the list is endless. But author Nir Eyal says these types of external triggers aren’t the root cause of your lack of focus. He suggests the true distraction triggers are internal: a fear of loneliness or aversion to boredom. In this video lesson, Eyal reveals how distraction actually occurs when trying to escape uncomfortable emotional states. To truly become “indistractable,” he argues that you have to address your internal triggers first. And that means acknowledging that time management is pain management. … (Big Think)

Fighting chemtrails: your tax dollars’ next big project. If it’s not the scourge of transgender people attacking children in public bathrooms… If not the scourge of education being design to turn your children gay… If not the epidemic of Critical Race Theory being taught… If not the pizza parlors with child-rape basements on every street corner, or the gangs of murderous terrorists burning Portland to the ground…it’s CHEMTRAILS. The latest nonexistent bogeyman that the US government has vowed to fight is one that Wormbrained Moron-in-Chief of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy, Jr. has been harping on for a long time. It’s “chemtrails”, trails of chemicals left in the sky behind high-flying jets. They’re what the rest of us call contrails, because that’s what they are: condensation of water vapor into a cloudlike line, which unavoidably forms behind a plane burning hydrocarbon fuel whenever the air is close to or below its dew point. … (Brian Dunning’s Bullshit-Free Zone)