Conspiracy theories, secret designs, nefarious activities, mystery stories as old as humanity where the decorations change but the plot remains. They fascinate us and pull us in, offend and enrage us, it takes an effort to ignore them, nobody is entirely immune to their potency, these arch-antagonists of a calm mind. Why? What is the …
Continue reading Spreading the Word: Why Do We Believe In Conspiracy Theories
"Gapminder is an independent educational non-profit fighting global misconceptions."gapminder website This Friday, I share with you a website of an independent non-profit dedicated to reducing global misconceptions - Gapminder. They offer fact-checked educational material delivered in an interesting, engaging, and interactive way. I found out about them not too long ago and thought their initiative …
This is the final part of the 3-part series on the art of thinking and pratice of persuasion as gathered from Plato's dialogue Phaedrus (a version of its translation available here). So far I have concluded that Socrates had the following goal in this dialogue: to demonstrate that no practice deserves to be called art if its practitioner does …
Continue reading Socrates and Phaedrus: Art of Thinking and Practice of Persuasion (Part 3 of 3)
Last week I published the first part of this 3-part series. This is the second part of the article where I continue by exploring in more detail the ideas that can be gathered from Plato's dialogue Phaedrus (a version of its translation available here). Of course, there are many insights that can be gleaned. The one I …
Continue reading Socrates and Phaedrus: Art of Thinking and Practice of Persuasion (Part 2 of 3)
"How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!" Homer, some 3.000 years ago "The Thinker" by Auguste Rodin, in the Legion's courtyard, San Francisco* How reliable is our common sense? It gets us by on a day-to-day basis mostly without big blunders. So we can agree that common sense is reliable as an adaptability …
humanfactor 