Benjamin David Steele
2
5
Benjamin David Steele has not written any posts yet.
Benjamin David Steele has not written any posts yet.
@Yanima - A few reviewers have noted the various unstated and uninterrogated assumptions and biases in Haidt's book. It's what make it difficult to review.
If one is to state and interrogate all of those assumptions and biases, in order to clarify and critique, then one ends writing a very long book review. An example is Dennis Junk's "THE ENLIGHTENED HYPOCRISY OF JONATHAN HAIDT'S RIGHTEOUS MIND."
But that isn't to say there isn't much of interest as well, if he oversteps the evidence provided on too many occasions, and even as he fumbles some of his interpretations.
@MSRayne - You wrote that, "Personally, I believe and have believed for a long time now that the only thing that could save the world is a rationalist religion." You wouldn't be alone in that aspiration. Many Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers have shared similar hopes.
During the early modern revolutionary period, Universalism and Deism became popular among liberal and radical thinkers, including in the working class (Matthew Stewart, Nature's God). Thomas Jefferson optimistically predicted that Americans would quickly convert to Universalism.
Sadly, it never happened. But Universalism is still around. Besides independent Universalist churches, there is the Unitarian-Universalist organization with its origins as a an organized religion, although increasingly secularized, allowing believers and non-believers... (read more)
@JenniferRM - "However, when researchers tried the same thing on other cultures to see if this was a human universal, it turned out that the other four (Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) were relatively universal but in some cultures (if I remember correctly it was things like agrarian peasant societies?) basically everyone is pretty low in Openness relative to measurement norms derived from Japan or the US or whatever."
I would note that the very framework of personality traits can be questioned as WEIRD bias. But personally, I'm fond of explanations of personality like trait theory. There is an attractive elegance to such models and the research is immense. On the other hand, defenses still can be made for trait theory, even for openness. One would predict that agrarian peasant societies, with above average rates of pathogens and parasites, would measure as below average specifically on openness. That precisely fits the point made in the above piece.
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2022/02/06/weird-personality-traits-as-stable-egoic-structure/
No, paleo dieters don't bundle all non-paleo foods. Almost all foods that can be bought in a store or farmers market has been altered in one way or another since the neolithic began. And most paleo dieters acknowledge this. The purpose is not to perfectly replicate the diet of a paleolithic human, in the fashion of a civil war reenactor, but to most closely mimic the profile of the diet humans evolved to eat.
Some factors in this are nutrient density, lower simple carbs, intermittent fasting, and ketosis. These have been shown in research to be beneficial. But of course, there is a lot of research that shows a diversity of results.... (read more)
@EnestScribbler - You wrote that, "I think he caught the Moral Foundations and their ubiquitous presence well, but then made the error of thinking liberals don't use them (when in fact they use them a lot, certainly in today's climate, just with different in-groups, sanctified objects, etc.)."
Others noted that same problem. If the moral foundations truly are inherent in all of human nature, then presumably all humans use them, if not in the same way. But he also doesn't deal with the dark side of the moral foundations. Some of the so-called binding moral values are, in fact, key facets of what social scientists study in right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.... (read more)