Book review: What We Owe the Future, 2022, by William MacAskill
While I am no longer the philosophy blogger I once was, I do occasionally read philosophy that's got something to do with science. I saw some references to this book…
Book review: Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy by Richard Hanania
The ever-funny Richard Hanania has published his first book: Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy: How Generals, Weapons Manufacturers, and Foreign Governments Shape American Foreign Policy. You…
The indoctrination effect of universities: overstated
Dictionaries define indoctrination as: the act of indoctrinating, or teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view (dictionary.com) the process of repeating…
2021 in books
Goodreads is a near-essential tool for keeping track of what you are reading and what you want to read next. Also useful for sharing your opinion about books in case…
Woke behavioral geneticists
Book review of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Paige Harden. Most people know about the top woke biologists of the past. I am of…
Book review: The Fight for our National Intelligence (Raymond Cattell)
Raymond Cattell was one of the early 1900s eminent psychologists. Like Meehl, he had a philosophical bent with some odd ideas in ethics. That ended up getting him into trouble…
Book review: Science Wars: Politics, Gender, and Race (Anthony Walsh)
This is a short book summarizing human biodiversity stuff. Since it's from 2013, it doesn't cover the latest tranny-mania, but otherwise it covers a lot of ground. Acknowledgements sets the…
Book reviews: Apocalypse Never (Michael Shellenberger) and Unsettled (Steven E. Koonin)
So I've gone back to my old habit of binge reading on mostly unrelated topics to my main work in the genetics-social science cluster. Climate science is a long running…
Book review: Why Trust Science? (Naomi Oreskes)
So why trust science? I would say I am a proud supporter of scientism, crude versions aside. Naomi Oreskes is a prominent science historian who mostly writes history books attacking…
Book review: Kevin Mitchell’s Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are (2018)
This is a pretty good book. It covers a lot of basics, and gets almost everything right. Twins, adoptees, genomics are given ample attention. Mitchell is very interesting in developmental…