Left to my own devices

Tonight I learned that Kevin Drum has died. He passed away on Friday, March 7th, from Multiple Myeloma (the same illness that took my uncle Paul several years ago). Drum's diagnosis came in 2014, and he talked about it openly on his blog , up to and including just a few days before his death. I knew of Kevin Drum through his blogging. During the early aughts, when I started to become more politically aware and involved, I began reading certain online musings by folks -- Andrew Sullivan and, on a local level, IlliniPundit, to name a couple. Drum's blog at that time was Calpundit . Eventually, he began blogging at Mother Jones . When they parted ways, he started what would be his final online venture. So, yeah, I've been reading Kevin's musings for over twenty years.

     Blogger Kevin Drum  took a crack at free will  awhile back, specifically, as to whether or not it exists. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder has made a video about her lack of belief in the concept of free will that makes for an interesting (if sometimes difficult to follow) watch. I find this to be a fascinating topic of discussion, and have had in-person conversations about it every so often. While I don't pretend to be some sort of scientific expert, I wanted to share my thoughts about it here. Particularly, how the idea can be (unscientifically) compared and contrasted with various societal, cultural and religious touchstones.      First, let's center on what free will is. Merriam Webster defines it as follows: 1 : voluntary choice or decision 2 : freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention      I think we'd probably all nod our heads in agreement with the first definitio...

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...