Don't Know the Half of It

Despite its collective efforts, the scientific community knows a lot less about how the world works than I usually give it credit for.

Curious, Thorough, and Open

I should spend more time in Critical Thinking class on cultivating an intellectually honest mindset, specifically the virtues of curiosity and thoroughness, not just open-mindedness. (chapter 2 - Mindset - of Reason Better by David Manley)

Counting Cancels

Based on the testimony of a relevant expert (FIRE's Greg Lukianoff) who documented a noticeable uptick in campus-related incidents related to free speech starting roughly 5 years ago, arguments that "cancel culture doesn't exist" are probably less plausible than I thought.

Bayes As Odds

 An intuitive way to understand Bayesian updating is via odds instead of probabilities or percentages. (chapter 8 - Updating - of Reason Better by David Manley)

Polarized By Ambiguity

Group polarization may be less puzzling than I often treat it, since it's usually a natural result of topics in which we mostly only have ambiguous evidence.

Map Ain't Territory Reminder

Scientific models like causal DAGs are probably much cruder instruments for understanding real-life complex phenomena than I have been hoping recently.

Science is 'Kaleidoscopic'

Science is collaborative in a variety of ways: many individuals working on the same or related problems, and those individuals employing several distinct methodologies to attack those problem clusters.

Scaffolding

One way to address my worry that philosophy classes inadvertently teach students that reasoning skills are useless is to better scaffold courses, beginning with puzzles that are clearly solvable using reasoning.

Keeping Students in College

I've learned a lot about things that help retain college students this past year as a first-year advisor.

Paucity of Evidence for Causal Closure

The widely-held assumption of causal closure of the physical world may not have much evidence supporting it.