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Wednesday, November 15th, 2017
| Time | Event |
| 9:00a | Research Finds That Intellectual Humility Can Make Us Better Thinkers & People; Good Thing There’s a Free Course on Intellectual Humility
We may have grown used to hearing about the importance of critical thinking, and stowed away knowledge of logical fallacies and cognitive biases in our argumentative toolkit. But were we to return to the philosophical sources of informal logic, we would find that we only grasped at some of the principles of reason. The others involve questions of what we might call virtue or character—what for the Greeks fell into the categories of ethos and pathos. The principle of charity, for example, in which we give our opponents a fair hearing and respond to the best version of their arguments as we understand them. And the principle, exemplified by Plato’s Socrates, of intellectual humility. Or as one punk band put it in their Socratic tribute. “All I know is that I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t know nothing.” Intellectual humility is not, contrary to most popular appearances, reflexively according equal weight to “both sides” of every argument or assuming that everyone’s opinion is equally valid. These are forms of mental laziness and ethical abdication. It is, however, believing in our own fallibility and opening ourselves up to hearing arguments without immediately forming a judgment about them or the people who make them. We do not abandon our reason and values, we strengthen them, argues Mark Leary, by “not being afraid of being wrong.” Leary, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, is the lead author of a new study on intellectual humility that found “essentially no difference between liberals and conservatives or between religious and nonreligious people” when it comes to intellectual humility. The study challenges many ideas that can prevent dialogue. “There are stereotypes about conservatives and religiously conservative people being less intellectually humble about their beliefs," says Leary. But he and his colleagues “didn’t find a shred of evidence to support that.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that such people have high degrees of intellectual humility, only that all of us, perhaps equally, possess fairly low levels of the trait. I’ll be the first to admit that it is not an easy one to develop, especially when we’re on the defensive for some seemingly good reasons—and when we live in a culture that encourages us to make decisions and take actions on the strength of an image, some minimal text, and a few buttons that lead us right to our bank accounts. (To quote Operation Ivy again, “We get told to decide. Just like as if I’m not gonna change my mind.”) But in the Duke study, reports Alison Jones at Duke Today, “those who displayed intellectual humility did a better job of evaluating the quality of evidence.” They took their time to make careful considerations. And they were generally more charitable and “less likely to judge a writer’s character based on his or her views.” By contrast, “intellectually arrogant” people gave writers with whom they disagreed “low scores in morality, honesty, competence, and warmth.” As a former teacher of rhetoric, I wonder whether the researchers accounted for the quality and persuasiveness of the writing itself. Nonetheless, this observation underscores the problem of conflating an author’s work with his or her character. Moral judgment can inhibit intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness. Intellectually arrogant people often resort to insults and personal attacks over thoughtful analysis. The enormous number of assumptions we bring to almost every conversation with people who differ from us can blind us to our own faults and to other people’s strengths. But intellectual humility is not genetically determined—it is a skill that can be learned, Leary believes. Big Think recommends a free MOOC from the University of Edinburgh on intellectual humility (see an introduction to the concept at the top and a series of lectures here). “Faced with difficult questions,” explains course lecturer Dr. Ian Church, “people often tend to dismiss and marginalize dissent…. The world needs more people who are sensitive to reasons both for and against their beliefs, and are willing to consider the possibility that their political, religious and moral beliefs might be mistaken.” The course offers three different levels of engagement, from casual to quite involved, and three separate class sections at Coursera: Theory, Practice, and Science. It’s likely that many of us need some serious preparation before we’re willing to listen to those who hold certain views. And perhaps certain views don't actually deserve a hearing. But in most cases, if we can let our guard down, set aside feelings of hostility, and become willing to learn something even from those with whom we disagree, we might be able to do what so many psychologists continue to recommend. As Cindy Lamothe writes at New York Magazine’s Science of Us blog, “we have to be willing to expose ourselves to opposing perspectives in the first place—which means that, as daunting as it may seem, listening to friends and family with radically different views can be beneficial to our long-term intellectual progress.” The holidays are soon upon us. Let the healing—or at least the charitable tolerance if you can manage it—begin. Related Content: Stephen Fry Identifies the Cognitive Biases That Make Trump Tick 32 Animated Videos by Wireless Philosophy Teach You the Essentials of Critical Thinking Why We Need to Teach Kids Philosophy & Safeguard Society from Authoritarian Control Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Research Finds That Intellectual Humility Can Make Us Better Thinkers & People; Good Thing There’s a Free Course on Intellectual Humility is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.  |
| 12:00p | How a Korean Potter Found a “Beautiful Life” Through His Art: A Short, Life-Affirming Documentary
I like to think I appreciate all aspects of the culture of South Korea, where I live, but different attractions bring different foreigners here. Some come for the food, some come for the music (pop, traditional, or somewhere in between), some come for the medical tourism. Others, like British ceramicist Roger Law, come for the pottery. The half-hour documentary above will give you an idea of what makes Korean pottery, and the Korean potters who craft it, so distinctive, taking viewers into the workshop of Lee Kang-hyo, who has become famous by there bringing together the distinct traditions of onggi glazed earthenware pottery and buncheong white slip decoration. "As a high school student, I asked myself some fundamental questions," says Lee in voiceover as we watch him beat the clay of what looks more and more like a large jar into shape. "What would be good to do for a living? What is my best talent? How can I enjoy a life of peace? It was then I decided to become an artist." As he creates, he tells us about the long history of pottery in Korea and his experience practicing and mastering the traditions in which he works. Looked at onggi, he says, "I never thought they were simply big jars. I thought they were great sculpture." “My documentary tells the story of Lee Kang-hyo’s search for a beautiful life, through his work with clay and the love of his family," says director Alex Wright, a story that "gives an insight into the spiritual journey that plays a vital part in his artistic practice." For Lee, this had to do as much with the heart and mind as with the hand, loosening up and lightening up even as he grew more skilled, a realization that first occurred when he became friendly with Japanese master potter Koie Ryoji. "Kang-hyo, why don't you try to change your thinking?'" Lee remembers Koie asking after he presented him with his latest piece. "And he lifted it up and crushed it. He said: 'Form doesn't always have to be straight. It can be beautiful.'" That lesson holds in other cultural spheres as well. "Ceramic culture is very closely connected to dietary life and food culture," Lee observes. "Korea has developed a fermented food culture. A lot of foods are fermented and stored, such as sauces and kimchi," which might stay in their ceramic jars for years before consumption. And so "Korea has developed the skills to make big jars, more than any other country" with the "quickest and most perfect forms." This might sound like the makings of a rustic, utilitarian pottery — and indeed cuisine — but in fact the work of Lee and other Korean masters increasingly aligns with the growing global taste for things outwardly simple but inwardly refined. In that particular sensibility, whether expressed as pottery or food or music or anything else, Korea might well lead the world. Lee Kang-hyo 'Onggi Master will be added to our collection of Free Documentaries, a subset of our collection, 1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc.. Related content: Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. How a Korean Potter Found a “Beautiful Life” Through His Art: A Short, Life-Affirming Documentary is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 3:00p | Mona Lisa Selfie: A Montage of Social Media Photos Taken at the Louvre and Put on Instagram
"Over 6 million people visit the Mona Lisa at the Louvre each year. Many share their visit on social media." Created by Daniel McKee, this dizzying video gathers together hundreds of the photos that get taken at the museum and then wind up on Instagram. Only a minute long, it's a nice succinct commentary on our time... Related Content: Leonardo da Vinci’s Visionary Notebooks Now Online: Browse 570 Digitized Pages Leonardo Da Vinci’s To Do List (Circa 1490) Is Much Cooler Than Yours Did Leonardo da Vinci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before The Mona Lisa? Original Portrait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Layers of da Vinci’s Masterpiece Mona Lisa Selfie: A Montage of Social Media Photos Taken at the Louvre and Put on Instagram is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 4:00p | Meet the 35-Year-Old British Man Who Lives Entirely in the Year 1946
Ben Sansum is something of a young fogey. He's only 35 years old, but he lives in the year 1946. Entirely. The pictures on his wall in his Cambridgeshire home, the supplies in his cupboard, the music played on his turntable, the clothes he wears--everything comes from 1946 and the post WWII era. His motivation is partly aesthetic. He likes living in a period home, he tells us. But it also goes deeper than that. As he notes, our modern world moves so quickly, it sometimes pays to hang onto old world charms. Follow Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. If you'd like to support Open Culture and our mission, please consider making a donation to our site. It's hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us provide the best free cultural and educational materials. Meet the 35-Year-Old British Man Who Lives Entirely in the Year 1946 is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 6:00p | Two Million Wondrous Nature Illustrations Put Online by The Biodiversity Heritage Library
Are we truly in the midst of a human-caused sixth mass extinction, an era of “biological annihilation”? Many scientists and popular science writers say yes, using terms like “Holocene” or “Anthropocene” to describe what follows the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous periods. Peter Brannen, author of extinction history The Ends of the Earth has found at least one scientist who thinks the concept is “junk.” But Brannen quotes some alarming statistics. Chilling, even. “Until very recently,” he writes, “all vertebrate life on the planet was wildlife. But astoundingly, today wildlife accounts for only 3 percent of earth’s land animals; human beings, our livestock, and our pets take up the remaining 97 percent of the biomass… almost half of the earth’s land has been converted into farmland.”
This state of affairs does not bode well for the millions of remaining species getting edged out of their environments by agribusiness and climate change. We learn from extinctions past that the planet rebounds after unimaginable catastrophe. Life really does go on, though it may take millions of years to recover. But the current forms of life may disappear before their time. If we want to understand what is at stake besides our own fragile fossil-fuel based civilizations, we need to connect to life emotionally as well as intellectually. Short of globe-hopping physical immersion in the earth’s biodiversity, we could hardly do better than immersing ourselves in the tradition of naturalist writing, art, and photography that brings the world to us.
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), an “open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives,” has for many years been making it easy for people to connect to nature through nature writing and illustration. In 2012, they announced the “success story” of their Flickr streams, both containing thousands of illustrations and photographs uploaded by the BHL staff and readers from their huge collections of books. The first stream, currently at 122,281 images, has been carefully curated, and includes searchable galleries and albums divided by book title or subject, such as “Exotic botany illustrated,” “The Birds of Australia v.1,” and “Bats!” The second stream, consisting of over 2 million images, is a massive grab-bag of photos, illlustrations from nature, advertisements, and imaginative renderings.
Though far less useful for the scholar—or the very purposeful user—this second photostream offers more potential for chance discovery, through the aimless wandering that often leads to serendipitously sublime experiences. The formal BHL stream does not disappoint, though it may offer fewer surprises. Both of these image archives offer expansive views of humanity's encounter with the natural world, not only through statistics and academic jargon, but through the artistic recording of wonder, scientific curiosity, and deep appreciation.
Related Content: The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix Download for Free 2.6 Million Images from Books Published Over Last 500 Years on Flickr Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Two Million Wondrous Nature Illustrations Put Online by The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
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