Psychology

If you catch anyone at the right moment, after having experienced something extraordinarily wonderful, joyful, or blissful, and if you ask them if that was a magical moment, they will agree that it was. Take the birth of a baby - few things compare, and any parent would say that a birthday for them was a magical moment in time. The same goes for falling in love, winning the lottery, just knowing something is true without knowing how you know, and so on and so forth. At the same time, nothing flopped in the age of modern media like the traditional magician’s act on stage. Today, performing…

Suddenly, since the beginning of the Trump administration, there has been a shift, a perceptible shift in the leaking of top secret government intelligence. From the outing of General Flynn, to the publication of President Trump telling the PM of Australia their talk was the worst phone call he had had with a world leader all day - we were not supposed to learn about any of that. Those were examples of the monitoring of international figures as they communicate with American leaders, it is part of what intelligence does on a daily basis - but it is called intelligence because it is secret…

An unbelievable story, breaks your heart, blows your mind, tells the unexpected truth about all of us, and does not need to be relayed by a storyteller, so much as it needs for the storyteller to get out of the way, just to let the story tell itself, and let the people who wove it, speak for themselves. Comes the story of an Iraqi immigrant, who claimed his mom had died over the last weekend of January 2017, because of the travel ban that weekend – and then it was discovered to be a great big lie. Amid the tsunami of fake news that greets us every day, this story stands out amid the rest. It…

Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder use 400 percent more emergency room services than peers without it, which puts more strain on an over-burdened health care system and may mean that they need better access to primary care. The  Penn State College of Medicine scholars looked at private insurance claims from 2005 to 2013 in 12- to 21-year-olds. Adolescents with autism included in the study received at least two separate diagnoses of ASD over the timeframe. Two diagnoses reduce the chance of including misdiagnoses. Although there was no significant increase in autism rates among…

Many cannot accept that IQ is largely determined by our genes. They do not trust the research. Pointing to such research is an argument from authority. Moreover, the research does not explain the mechanisms in the social realm well, and so the research can anyway only be supporting evidence, but it is alone not convincing and we do have to ask: Can we trust the science? But it comes worse! When arguing that genes determine IQ, one is quickly drawn into arguing that education has little effect. This automatically focuses on negative scenarios: You educate, but it has no effect. We easily think…

There is no correct moral theory. All morality is politics. People do not act on the basis of morality. Everybody does everything they do for the most meaningful reason at the time. If an act may be judged as moral, so much the better. But, if an act cannot be judged as moral, and if it is meaningful enough to a person to do it, and if it seems like a good idea at the time, then it will be done. Morality is just political correctness masquerading as the right thing to do – at the time. However, the social psychology of the individual will always weigh the political correctness of an act…

I never meant for it to happen. I had absolutely no idea when I took down my own professional websites nearly a year ago, and when I erased all of my LinkedIn profile, and changed the name on it to Al Smith, 6 months ago, that I was, in fact, executing the conditions for a controlled experiment, which would reveal that LinkedIn sends out fake messages from corporate to its members, in order to manipulate and deceive people into thinking they have been contacted by professional people interested in networking with them. Furthermore, I had no idea LinkedIn was basically a front for gathering…

They say two people can’t see the same mirage. I wonder who the hell started saying that?  Last fall, in the article, Polls Are Not Rigged, But They Also Aren't 'Scientific', prolific science writer, Alex Berezow, argued that political polling is more like an art or craft that has been honed over the years. That is why they often work so well, but they are not really scientific. This set off an amazing firestorm among the readers.  The responses were divided into two categories of people. One category thought polling was indeed scientific and they were adamant about their reasoning…

Expectant and new parents are under a great deal of pressure; every action is scrutinized by those around them, and food marketers and activist groups exploit their fear by telling them one food process will lead to higher grades in school while another food process will lead to obesity, cancer, endocrine disruption and anything else environmental fundraisers can dream up. It takes no time to make such claims and exploit people for money but far longer to do studies to show if the claims are real.  Baby monitors, an electronic sensor attached to a baby's sock that monitors vital signs…

There are several reasons I could never be a political pundit. Much less one of the ilk of Charles Krauthammer, who has earned the respect of everyone, even those who do not like him very much. To be a political pundit of that grade, cast in the mold of Krauthammer, one must be an intellectual product of the eastern establishment, have a lust for analyzing baseball, and be able to take a strong ideological stance in an argument about politics, which goes beyond any normal person’s ability to win or even finish the argument because it requires real knowledge of the philosophy and history of…