Why Are We So Credulous?
Jesse Singal's new book, The Quick Fix, explores that question.
Scroll down for a list of what’s coming up on Clubhouse and some exciting new offerings for paid subscribers.
Imagine that your friend insists playing in the NBA causes people to grow taller than average. You obviously find that claim ridiculous. But why is it so hard for us to make the same distinction between empirical claims and preposterous ones in other arenas?
My latest article for Psychology Today reviews the fascinating new book, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills by Jesse Singal. In it, he explores some of the pop-psychology fads that have left us unable to distinguish between science and nonsense.
From the article ~
Years ago, I came across a “scientific” claim in the realm of physics that I thought sounded far-fetched. But without a background in physics, I didn’t have the ability to apply my skepticism with scientific rigor. So I asked physicist Lawrence Krauss for his thoughts. “The law of attraction says like attracts like,” I told him a popular book asserted. “Thoughts are magnetic. Thoughts have a frequency. As you think thoughts, they are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency.”
“That is definitely complete nonsense,” Krauss replied.
For the full article, click here.
Paid Subscribers:
A fuller version of my interview with cosmologist Lawrence Krauss will be available soon for paid subscribers.
“Free Mind Clubscribers” is your new clubhouse club! Exclusively for Habits of a Free Mind paid subscribers, this is where we will hold clubhouse conversations just for you! To join Free Mind Clubscribers, please send me an email (Paresky@Substack.com). Use the subject line “Clubscribers” and include 1) the email from substack that confirms your paid subscription and 2) your clubhouse handle. Then make sure you follow me on clubhouse. (My clubhouse handle is @Paresky. Clubhouse only allows club creators to invite people who follow them.)
If you can’t find your confirmation email, just send me an email with your clubhouse handle and the email address you used to subscribe and I’ll look it up.
To Be Scheduled Soon for Founding Members only: Nadine Strossen, author of HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship will join us for a Zoom Q&A. Other authors (TBA) will join us for Zoom conversations, too. And as a thank you, every founding member who has joined by May 1 will receive a book by one of my first three Q&A speakers. (Details to come.)
To upgrade your subscription, click below.
Coming Up on Clubhouse for everyone…
Wednesday, April 7 at 5:30pm Eastern: Let’s Talk About Cults, a conversation with Sarah Edmondson and Anthony (“Nippy”) Ames, former NXIVM members.
Also Wednesday, April 7 at 8:00pm Eastern: Free Speech and Coddling the Mind: Are Education Schools a Menace? a conversation with Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Professor Lyell Asher, who wrote an unsettling essay about schools of education in The Chronicle of Higher Education (a version of which is available at Quillette), and if we’re lucky, social scientist Jonathan Haidt will join us, too. (Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt are the co-authors of The Coddling of the American Mind.)
Wednesday, April 14 at 8:30pm Eastern (note –– this is later than usual): Vivek Ramaswamy will talk about what he calls “woke capitalism.” (For a preview, read his article in Newsweek: “Save America's Workers from the Church of Wokeness.”)
Wednesday, April 28 at 8:00pm Eastern: Ralston College President Stephen Blackwood will talk about what constitutes a good education and Ralston College’s new model of higher education.
That’s all for now!
Warmly,
Pamela