Loserthink

The subtitle is How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America and the author is Scott Adams (2019).

This is the second book by the author that I have digested.  Loserthink represents the mental traps that we fall into, whether it be cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, or believing that we can read other people’s minds, which can lead to confidence in bad ideas.  Adams is focused on achieving clarity of thought and self-awareness and avoiding the mental mistakes that can hinder both.  He just seems to get it.  Recommended.

Quote of the Day

In the Douglas Murray book that I just read, this quote gets to the heart of the matter:

"But most often the question 'Compared to what?' will elicit only the fact that the utopia with which our society is being compared has not yet come about.  If this is the case, and the monstrous claims about our societies are being made in comparison to a society which has not yet been created, then a certain amount of humility and a great deal of further questioning might be needed.  Those who claim that our society is typified by bigotry but believe that they know how to fix any and all societal ills better make sure that their route maps are well plotted.  If they are not then there is reason for everyone else to be suspicious about a project whose earliest stages are being presented as rigorous science when they more closely resemble an advocacy of magic."

The Madness of Crowds

The subtitle is Gender, Race and Identity and the author is Douglas Murray (2019).

“After slaying the dragon the brave warrior finds himself stalking the land looking for still more glorious fights.  He needs his dragons.  Eventually, after tiring himself out in the pursuit of ever-smaller dragons he may eventually even be found swinging his sword at thin air, imagining it to contain dragons.”

Regardless of your politics, I think the author does a remarkable job of making sense of where we are.  The identity politics of today are not about equality, as MLK fought for in his time, but about a redistribution of power.  And when you recognize that, you realize just how disingenuous the loudest voices are.

To summarize it, I relate a dictum of Daniel Patrick Moynihan – claims of human rights violations happen in exactly inverse proportion to the numbers of human rights violations in a country.  If this country really is as fascist, racist, homophobic and sexist as those waiving their fingers allege, the luxury of being so foolish so often and so loud would not exist.