Bøger af Ray Scott Percival

Henry Wiggins' old valve-radio set crackled in the night. "Researchers find that ravens have a theory of other minds," the radio host announced.""What on Earth does that mean, Henry?" Martha, Henry's wife, asked. "You and your silly science channel."Hard science fiction short stories with a hint of science fantasy, for your commute or lazy Sunday morning coffee. The tales are a mixture of apocalyptic alien invasion, romance, laughter, sexual enticement and sinister retribution. The stories explore cultural issues and the future of humanity-the global alarmism of Greta Thunberg, the scarcity of resources, the Enlightenment-from a philosophical angle. They feature thinkers such as Sir Karl Popper and David Deutsch FRS.Read one with your fresh morning coffee-or tea-and you'll have enough to enliven your thoughts and conversation with friends that week with the state-of-the-art ideas and enigmas.

In 2022 the Belgian clinical psychologist Mattias Desmet went viral when he identified official government policies on the Covid Pandemic as a kind of collective insanity he calls Mass Formation. Desmet points out that official policies were not modified to conform with scientific findings, instead the findings were ignored and seriously harmful policies were fanatically promoted regardless of the evidence. Many thousands have died because of the lockdowns and the adverse effects of the vaccines. Meanwhile critics and dissenters were demonized and persecuted by methods normally associated with the Salem witch trials or Stalin's purges. Desmet's bold new theory was greeted by Covid skeptics like Robert Malone, Bret Weinstein, and Tucker Carlson with enthusiastic agreement.  Desmet's numerous social media videos racked up millions of viewers, even before his book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, became an instant best-seller in all major world languages. Desmet's theory of mass formation (sometimes called mass formation psychosis, a label he disavows) explains the official ideology of the lockdowns and vaccines along the same lines as historical pogroms and totalitarian regimes, drawing upon the insights of thinkers such as Gustave Le Bon, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault. In 1951, Hannah Arendt predicted that the totalitarianism of Stalin and Hitler would be succeeded by the totalitarianism of faceless bureaucratic 'experts'. This prediction, Desmet claims, is now fulfilled by the fear-mongering and deliberate encouragement of popular ignorance and mass hysteria associated with the Covid lockdowns and vaccines. Ultimately, argues Desmet, we are vulnerable to the craziness of mass formation because we place too much reliance on a mechanistic view of the world and the cosmos and too much trust in the judgment of politically appointed authorities. In Mattias Desmet: Critical Responses, an interdisciplinary group of distinguished writers give us searching criticisms of Desmet's theory and world-view, from a variety of political and scientific perspectives. In different ways they call into question many of Desmet's methods, assumptions, and conclusions. Sandra Woien is Senior Lecturer in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. She edited the highly-acclaimed anthologies, Jordan Peterson: Critical Responses (2022) and Sam Harris: Critical Responses (2023).

“It’s like talking to a brick wall” and “We’ll have to agree to disagree” are popular sayings referring to the frustrating experience of discussing issues with people who seem to be beyond the reach of argument. It’s often claimed that some people—fundamentalists or fanatics—are indeed sealed off from rational criticism. And every month new pop psychology books appear, describing the dumb ways ordinary people make decisions, as revealed by psychological experiments. The conclusion is that all or most people are fundamentally irrational. Ray Scott Percival sets out to demolish the whole notion of the closed mind and of human irrationality. There is a difference between making mistakes and being irrational. Though humans are prone to mistakes, they remain rational. In fact, making mistakes is a sign of rationality: a totally non-rational entity could not make a mistake. Rationality does not mean absence of error; it means the possibility of correcting error in the light of criticism. In this sense, all human beliefs are rational: they are all vulnerable to being abandoned when shown to be faulty. Percival agrees that people cling stubbornly to their beliefs, but he maintains, first, that not being too ready to abandon one’s beliefs is rational.