I just finished re-watching the entirety of The Sopranos, HBO’s classic Mafia drama. I saw it season-by-season when it originally aired (1999-2007), and I still hew to the allegedly philistine view that the ending was not only bad, but insulting. Overall, though the show’s reputation is well-deserved. Here are the top social science insights I take away.
Tag: politics
Worse Than Sexual Predators
It seems that every day there’s yet another sexual predator exposed. Good. They need to be exposed and stopped. The problem is, there’s an even worse kind of predator; a type which doesn’t have to be exposed because so few people recognize what they do as predation that it isn’t hidden. It is carried out in the open, and many people even admire them for it.
Robin Grille: Natural Born Bullies (15m)
This episode features an audio essay written by psychologist Robin Grille in 2007, which comprises Chapter 24 of Everything Voluntary: From Politics to Parenting, edited by Skyler J. Collins and published in 2012. He explores the origins of bullying.
What the College Admissions Scandal Reveals
The signaling theory of education is correct. Except a degree is not a signal of employability. It’s a signal of adherence to the dominant social status religion of the day.
The Peace of Mind in Probabilistic Thinking
It’s very stressful to be confronted with questions and claims about culture, physics, politics, psychology, health, economics, history, ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy and feel the need to have a clear answer. Especially when answers immediately get interpreted as sides and you’ll get lumped in with some tribal collective blob and be associated with whatever bundle of biases they may have, real or imagined. It’s like behind every possibility lurks a mob shouting, “Are you with us or against us?!”
Klein on Groupthink
I don’t regard left-wing domination of the humanities and social sciences as the world’s most-pressing problem, or even the world’s tenth most-pressing problem. As I explained in The Case Against Education, educators simply aren’t very persuasive, so they do far less intellectual damage than you’d think. Indeed, despite their teachers’ biases, well-educated Americans tend to be social liberal but economically conservative. How is this possible?
Wish List Politics: Green No Deal
The resolution calls, fuzzily, for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal,” but it doesn’t advertise that as a cost. It calls such a “mobilization” an “opportunity” and claims that its named predecessors “created the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen.”
When Will the Media Admit …
Some wishful thinker the other day, on Facebook, wondered in a post “When will the media admit … [blah blah blah]?” The answer is … NEVER. “The media” is not a sentient being. In fact, the media can be relied upon to go for the lowest common denominator.
Carl Watner: Fundamentals of Voluntaryism (10m)
This episode features an audio essay written by historian Carl Watner in 2006, co-founder of The Voluntaryist, and which comprises Chapter 3 of Everything Voluntary: From Politics to Parenting, edited by Skyler J. Collins and published in 2012.
Meditating in the Middle of Chaos
Chaos is all around us, and it can stress us out. It causes anxiety, depression, frustration, anger, procrastination, constant distraction, and the seeking of comforts like social media, food, shopping, games and more. But what if we didn’t need to run to comfort or fear the chaos?