Here’s an “Unbelievable” show in which Boghossian (“A Manual For Creating Atheists”) talks to Tim McGrew, who’s reasonably well known for his arguments in favour of belief in miracles. I’ve linked to a set of comments from “MrShamuto” where he undertakes more or less the process Boghossian describes in the books, of Socratic dialogue with “AdeToz”, a Christian. It is long and occasionally interrupted by other people who are bonkers, but it’s interesting to see Boghossian’s stuff in action. (tags: street-epistemologyepistemologypeter-boghossiantim-mcgrewphilosophyevidenceunbelievablepremier christian radiosocratic)
amymea, writing in the ex-Mormon Reddit, takes to task someone who argues that the “testimony of the spirit” is good evidence that Mormonism is true, by listing a bunch of other people who had strong feelings upon reading their own religious texts. (tags: mormonismredditfeelingsfaithreligionevidence)
Mallory Ortberg is fun. “100% of women want to have sex with a man who embodies the fox version of Robin Hood from the cartoon Robin Hood, but most do not actually want to have sex with a fox or a man dressed as one.” (tags: mallory-ortbergfunnyreadingsexdesirebooks)
Liv discusses Naomi Alderman’s piece on being a fat person who made a fitness app (“Zombies, Run!”). School PE lessons get a mention again as something which ends up discouraging exercise. I mentioned the discussion of Alex Gabriel’s piece on school PE here previously, as well as my own experiences. (tags: fitnessrunningzombiesPEphysical-educationschool)
Interesting stuff. There’s some more on the Adria Richards/donglegate thing: she gave an interview to Ronson where she describes having a physical reaction to the joke and feeling “unsafe”, which, given that she was in no danger at that point, sounds like a sort of anxiety/panic attack. May explain the disproportionate reaction on her part. There’s also the bit where she says she did know what she was doing by tweeting the photograph and doesn’t feel bad about it. Such goodwill diplomats are not really suited for a career in PR, I’d’ve thought, although SendGrid clearly just fired her to get Anonymous off their back. (tags: shamingtwitterinternetdongleadria-richardsdonglegate)
Reddit “Ask Me Anything” with Muhammed the Atheist. Leftist critique of Islam should be lead by ex-Muslims, ISTM. (tags: ex-muslimislamreligionapostasyamareddit)
“Standard approaches to the arrow of time typically require a rare statistical fluctuation, or, often, the smuggling in of assumptions about initial conditions. Their work offers evidence that ordinary gravitational dynamics may itself be enough to produce the simple “initial” point that can give time a direction.” (tags: entropytimephysicsgravity)
“My best definition is that its a social convention for how we hold our bodies so our partner knows where we are in space.” I like 619shepard’s comment because it’s less about modelling people as springs and more about how there are conventions which are taught (some of which will involve behaving like a mass on a spring some of the time, to be sure). (tags: framedancinglindylindyhopredditswing)
The man who plays God on Facebook. I’ve already Liked the page: it’s funny to see him responding to religious people who get offended, usually with much more grace than they show him. (tags: godfacebookfunnycomedy)