Left to my own devices

I'm often intrigued by the FiveThirtyEight podcasts on their YouTube channel, but was really enthralled with one of their recent videos , where the topic was Why Misinformation Spreads So Quickly on Social Media . Host Galen Druke interviewed guest Max Fisher for nearly an hour. Fisher has written a book called The Chaos Machine , and listening to them talk about the subject of social media's psychological effects on people was, at least to me, quite fascinating.

35 years ago today saw the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation , or TNG , as we fans often refer to it. For a few years preceding its launch, I'd watched reruns of "the original series" on our CBS affiliate, Sunday evenings after the local news. It was, of course, the standard bearer - Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, etc. But, TNG is my favorite. It was the Star Trek of my generation (no pun intended), and I was a devout viewer during its seven year run.

Recently I was part of a conversation about novels written by straight people that were about gay relationships. I kind of bristled at the idea. There's a well-reviewed book that I cited - Days Without End , by Sebastian Barry - about two men who fall in love during the American Civil War. Barry is straight. That's great - most people are. And, the writing of his novel came from a good place - he was moved by his son  coming out . Awesome. Based upon that, and the high praise the novel has received, I went to a local bookstore and purchased it. That was about five years ago. And it's sat on my shelf ever since.

Early last week, Kevin Drum wrote a blog post about debate. Specifically, Drum proffered the the view that most people aren't swayed by truths, or a logical laying-out of facts, but instead by feelings and sentiment. This resonated with me as 1) I agree with it, and 2) most folks agree with it, as well, but would deny that they do. Let's first look at a salient quote from Drum's piece: "Sadly, people are not persuaded by facts. They are persuaded by emotions. They are persuaded only when they're listening to someone who shares their worldview. They are persuaded by "arguments" that are beneficial to them - perhaps monetarily, perhaps in conferring status, perhaps in vilifying people they already didn't like. This is how you win in real life." I'm not sure it's always been this way. It feels like (there I go with feelings) people are more hardened in their beliefs now than they used to be, though that could just be a trick of memory. R...