Reddit mentions: The best applied psychology books

Yeah, I was atheist for ~ 4-5 years during college. I'm 23 now and consider myself a nonaffiliated theist.

I grew up vaguely Christian. My father and mother had, respectively, been raised in Protestant and Catholic churches and had had issues with their practices. My brother and I were never raised in any church, but were told that God exists.

I also had a number of "spooky" experiences growing up. Ghosts. A dead great-aunt maybe visiting me before family deaths. These mainly occurred during my high school years. They make me strongly believe in some sort of afterlife. I describe them here.

In college, I grew skeptical of God -- Problem of Evil, the incompatibility of free will and "a divine plan", and whatnot. I adopted a materialistic worldview, and my spooky past experiences were essentially ignored because they couldn't be reconciled. But they humbled me and made me a bit skeptical of my own worldview.

I graduated this year in March with a BA in philosophy. I needed some sort of direction/purpose, but, after reading Change of Heart and Predictably Irrational I grew skeptical of human reasoning. And of course our senses and memories are flawed. Of all the animals in the world, from worms to cows, with all their limited perceptions of the world, why do we humans assume that we have a correct perception of the world?

I concluded that we can't have a firm, certain grasp on anything. And so my endeavor to live the best life was impossible. And my reliance on science and reasoning were shattered because humans and their reasoning are flawed.

• Note that science is built upon theories/principles of knowledge founded in empiricism, a school of metaphysics. Science uses metaphysical and epistemological principles and applies them to the world. But science isn't capable of looking at its foundational principles. That's a job for philosophers.
  
  
• And science makes only objective observations, not normative ones. Science can't make moral claims. It can inform morality, but it can't arrive at moral conclusions alone.
  
  
• On top of that, we have no fucking clue what consciousness is or how it arises. The Problem of Other Minds reminds us that we can't be sure of who or what is also conscious. We just do our best to make sense of how something acts and how much its anatomy resembles ours (because I know that at least I'm conscious.)
  
  On top of that, as a graduate, I no longer had college professors telling me what to do. I had no clear goals in life to work towards. And so now, post-college, all the responsibility was on my shoulders to choose what to do and pursue with my life. That's a big responsibility. But how do I make decisions if I have no certain grasp on anything? I spiraled into depression.
  
  So I sought wisdom.
  
  I talked to friends and family about wisdom. I looked at the Greek philosophers who spoke of wisdom and virtue.
  
  I looked at all the major religions to see what wisdom they might hold. I looked for patterns between them in hopes of finding something universal that they all described.
  
  I also became increasingly focused on immediate sensory and intuitive knowledge as opposed to the theory and abstract nature of science and philosophy. I started reading from NDERF's archives of self-reported near-death experiences to look for patterns.
  
  -----
  
  ....
  
  Anywho, I've arrived at the conclusion that everyone does their best to make sense of the world. I try not to judge others. Even if they're Mormons or Scientologists or Wiccans. I have my spooky history. I've come to believe that an afterlife exists. I see what others think about the supernatural, and I see if it appeals to me. I think Sikhism is pretty reasonable and beautiful, and I think my attachment to the afterlife belief almost obligates me to believe in a higher power. Sikhs seek to create and maintain chardi kala, a happiness in life by being content and thankful, which greatly appeals to me. But Sikhism does have a fair bit of ritual (albeit with legitimate purpose) and some guru praise which, given my history, seems a bit too much of a commitment.
  
  What I can say with some certainty is that it's good to live a life of virtue. It is good and feels good to help others. It's good to enjoy life and not take it for granted. Everyday, I consciously make an effort to be virtuous and to be thankful for my blessings. Veganism and activism are obvious applications of virtue and helping others. If God exists, I thank It everyday for all the good I experience. I thank it for the beauty in the world. As flawed as the world is, it's certainly more wonderful than horrible.

• Writing the Romantic Comedy
  by Billy Mernit
  
  
• Not on Kindle, which is my main gripe. Very useful structure.
  
• Supposedly the ebook is a coming. I'm ready.
  
  
• Writing the Comedy Blockbuster: The Inappropriate Goal
  by Keith Giglio
  
  
• Save the Cat but focused specifically on writing comedies. Really focuses on making sure you derive maximum conflict from your protagonist meeting your premise.
  
  
• Elephant Bucks: An Insider's Guide to Writing for TV Sitcoms
  by Sheldon Bull
  
  
• A decades long professional writer and showrunner tells you how to write a sitcom. You're dumb if you wanna write sitcoms and haven't cracked this open yet.
  
  
• How to Write Funny: Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing
  by Scott Dikkers
  
  
• Again, a professional explains how he works. Dikkers was head writer on The Onion for years and years.
  
  
  
• Writing the Pilot
  by William Rabkin
  
• Again, a veteran showrunner explains what he knows.
  
  
• Screenwriting is Rewriting: The Art and Craft of Professional Revision 1st Edition
  by Jack Epps Jr
  
• Fucking gold. I'd read it even before you start a first draft.
  
  
• William Martell Blue Books
  
• Three Hundred Pages on Act Two and how to craft it. Three Hundred and Ten pages on the first ten pages of your screenplay! Three hundred and ninety! Pages! On! Action lines!
  
• Essential if you want to really dig deep on a specific skill of screenwriting.
  
  
  
• Writing for emotional impact : advanced dramatic techniques to attract, engage, and fascinate the reader from beginning to end by Karl Iglesias
  
• A very useful lens to think about screenwriting through. I'd consider this the intro to the kind of specificity that the Blue Books will break down into.
  
  
• Writing Movies for Fun and Profit by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon
  
• Four quadrant movies are probably the hardest movies to do well. And these guys did them, very well. Plus the book will make you laugh as you read it.
  
  
• Writing the Other by by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward
  
  • Which is a practical guide to writing about experiences that are not your own, with a focus on race, gender, and sexual orientation.
    
• It'll definitely inform my take the next time reddit implodes on who can write what character.
  
  
  ----------
  
  The only non Screenwriter on the list are Scott Dikkers, Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.
  
  -----
  
  
  I'm Currently going through:
  
  
• Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It by James Geary
  
  • I am always trying to be smarter and funnier. And funny smart people get hired.
    
    
    
• Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence by Lisa Cron
  
• The science behind why we enjoy narrative and how that can guide writers to write well.
  
  And want to read:
  
  
• The Hero Succeeds: The Character-Driven Guide to Writing Your TV Pilot by Kam Miller
  
• Working Writer. 500 pages on characters in a pilot. Real world examples. Of course I want to read this.
  
• I think I heard about it from Paperteam, or a blog post on the WGA Foundation page.

In case you haven't read it yet, Scorecasting speaks to this problem, as well as a number of others. I.e. applying economic theory and statistical analysis to a lot of common-sense notions in sports.

MLS is in a bit of an odd position -- partly because of its rigid economics, partly because of its age, and partly because of its still small footprint in the US sports landscape.

In particular, there is little correlation between salary and on-field success, although this is a lot harder to quantify than the linked analysis implies.

One question Scorecasting tries to address is the importance of the 'star' player -- think of it as a proxy for a DP. The conclusion is that in a game with a lot of players (e.g. NFL), a single star is rarely enough to make a team.

Obviously there are exceptions -- the Colts without Peyton Manning are terrible, for example. On the other hand, Joe Gibbs' Redskins won three Super Bowls with three different QBs, none of whom are hall-of-famers.

In contrast, an NBA team more or less needs a star player to even attempt to be competitive. One player has a much bigger impact among five starters than among 22 (plus special teams).

I think one can quantify what a DP means to a team, but one has to do it in a different way. For example: what's the difference in goal differential one can expect per game from a top-flight DP?

Or to put it another way, what is the plot of expected goal differential per game vs salary for a DP?

I don't know how realistic a calculation this would be, but I bet you could arrive at some numbers -- e.g. Beckham is worth +0.5, Henry is worth +0.3, Marquez is worth -0.2 (a DP with a minus rating is terrible).

All the same, there's this fact: a correlation between salary spending and consistent on-field results is only strong in unconstrained leagues. And always with caveats, exceptions, and outliers.

The Yankees are a consistently competitive team, and are consistently the highest spenders. On the other hand, the Orioles are consistently among the highest spenders and have been a terrible team for over a decade.

Man U are consistently among the highest spenders in the EPL, and are the most consistently successful team; Liverpool are also regularly near the top of the spend table and, let's face it, have seen a lot better days.

All the same, these are unconstrained leagues. If you look at the NFL (in a CBA year), there is not much of a relationship between spending and success. The Cowboys are consistently at the top of the spend scale, but when have they last won a Super Bowl? When have they last been in one?

The salary cap in MLS is even more extreme. And one could argue that weakness at one position is not balanced out by strength at another -- e.g. if your right center back is terrible, you'll give up more goals than your DP attacking mid will create for you.

Or in other words: Do DPs matter? Yes. Are they important? Yes. How important are they? I don't know.

But I do think it's possible to quantify what a DP should be worth at a given salary in terms of extra goals per game, and therefore possible to quantify whether that DP is living up to expectations.

But as for drawing up the specific equations, I'll leave that to someone else.

tl;dr: If you like thinking about this kind of questions, read Scorecasting. And throw Soccernomics on your list as well. And as a side-note: I love this forum for having discussions like this one. Keep it up.

It helps to tell others that you were one like them, so you understand their lifestyle, however, having become aware of the ethical problems with eating meat and animal products you made a shift to more plant based way of living.

This helps to promote a more understanding approach and less of a "us against them."

Don't be afraid to give them resources where they can look for themselves. You need to make people feel like they came to conlusions on their own (based on psychology studies) and to do that, you sometimes have to simply offer the info and walk away to let them think about it. I hand out vegan outreach pamphlets, and I think it's a great way to advocate without being so confrontational and argumentative with people. Undoubtedly you can still get into arguments with people, but the key is to make THEM think about their actions, not simply tell that that they're wrong.

A famous method used by Socartes was to get people to realize that they already believe what he does, they just aren't acting on it. Most people already don't want to harm animals (or at least they don't want to be seen as a person that would, but their actions support that, and connecting them to that fact is vital)

A book you might like is "Why We love Dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows." by Melanie Joy it explains why we view different animals the way we do and how hard it can be to change people's perceptions.

A good follow up to this book is "change of heart: The psychology of spreading social change." where you can then apply psychological study implications to real world situations. The writer focuses on animal rights concerns a lot and how to get the most people engaged in this more ethical way of living. A good tip from this book is to realize that people make up rationalizations to justify their actions, rather than as we would normally think that many people make u a rational reason for doing something and then do it. If we can simply encourage more people to take the first step into eating more veg meals and it becomes more natural for them, they'd take to the reasons more heartedly.

It takes time. At one point I was like you, down, frustrated, and irritable. But when you seek for knowledge on how to become a better advocate for animals, you may get some happiness once more and more people come to you telling you they eat more veg meals or have gone vegetarian. When leafletting at my college, one girl told us that she had gotten a pamphlet last semester and then went vegan. Some people DO get it, but you have to be the connecting thread between people and the animals.

Tips for animal advocacy from Animal rights conference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c6886_GXyg

This Melanie Joy lecture should be essential viewing for all activists.

There are a lot of different philosophies to vegan activism. read up on them from Animal Liberation Front to open rescues to Gary Francione's pacifism and his loathing of single issue campaigns to Nick Cooney's psychology-informed approach. There's a lot more, and don't feel like you have to be a professor in it or 'pick a side' before you do anything, but you'll find a lot of food for thought.

Also, of course, keep learning the facts about how animals are used, the philosophies of animal rights, how the environment is affected, etc. so you can speak with confidence and answer people's questions.

Podcasts are a great way to get insights to what other activists are doing and why they are doing it. I'm currently following The Bearded Vegans, Which Side, Vegan Warrior Princesses Attack, Not Your Milk, and Our Hen House.

The best thing to do is keep looking for others, facebook is a good resource. If there's not a group started, see if you can find other vegans to start one with.

There are small things you can do, like order business cards with positive messages and links to resources to stick under the sleeves of meat packaging or in egg cartons in supermarkets.

If you can't find others around you, it's possible that if you take a strong, uncompromising stance people will come and join you. See how Anita Kranjc started the Toronto Pig Save, she would persist often standing alone or with just a couple of others, and now there are hundreds that attend. However, you must be aware of how emotionally draining (but also rewarding!) being an activist can be, even when you are surrounded by a support network. So if you go down that road, be kind and look after yourself and remember that even if you do not have support where you are, around the world there are lots of us who admire you just for taking the steps you have taken so far.

>How do I get people to care about my story in the first place?

Therein lies the ultimate question. :) If you're looking on how to make your readers care and how to hook them, I would absolutlely seriously recommend this book. It completely changed how I approached my characters and story, and it's a joy to read!

To help you out a little, and give you a clue what the book's like, here are some notes I made from it after giving it another read today (I fleshed out my novel for NaNoWriMo):

>What does your protagonist have to confront in order to solve the problem set up for him or her?
>
>A story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how he or she changes as a result.
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>All is not what it seems. Something to grab us, make us care. Balls in play. Trouble brewing, preferably longstanding, raising questions about how the protagonist is going to win. What are you talking about and why should I care? Curiosity.

>What is this story about?
>Whose story is it?
>What’s happening here?
>What’s at stake?
>
>Conflict that is specific to the character’s quest. First page - sometimes even first line.
>
>Every single thing in the story must have a clear impact on: will the protagonist achieve her goal; what will it cost her in the process; how will it change her in the end.
>
>Everything in a story must be there on a need-to-know basis. What question does the story ask? How does it answer it?
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>A story needs focus: protagonist’s issue, the theme, and the plot. The story question translates to the protagonist’s goal. The story is about what she has to overcome internally to reach her goal.
>
>Theme: what your story says about human nature. What does the story tell us about what it means to be human; what does it say about how humans react to circumstances beyond their control.
>
>Plot: events that relentlessly force the protagonist to deal with her issue as she pursues her goal.
>
>We love to figure things out and we don’t like being confused.
>
>Even if the protagonist does not appear on the first page, everything that happens before he shows up must occur with a clear eye toward how it will affect him.

TLDR; In order to make your reader care, you have to understand and care about it too!

>Read what your wrote, out loud, three times: "Cars moving in traffic are literally—not metaphorically—a fluid." If you haven't smacked your self in the head and said, "OMG, I'm an idiot," by #3 then go find someone you really trust, ask your science teacher.

I'm afraid my science teacher will agree with me, not you. Shall we consult the dictionary?

>A substance (such as a liquid or gas) tending to flow or conform to the outline of its container

Liquids and gases are examples of fluid, but they are not the only ones. Any collection of similar particles moving independently is, by dictionary and scientific definition, a fluid. There are many other examples; here's a fascinating video of sheep being herded (seriously watch it, it's super cool). Organizers study fluid dynamics to plan for the behavior of crowds during the Hajj. And so on.

I feel like you think I'm talking out of my ass when I'm quoting VERY well understood research. If you'd like to learn about it, I recommend "Traffic" by Tom Vanderbilt as a good starting point.

>cars slow down due to free will of their drivers

You are 100% correct. We completely agree. As a whole, however, the collection of cars behaves as a fluid. The fact that the individual cars are operating independently doesn't affect this.

>If cars were computer controlled, they could accelerate through bends - that's not defying science or physics.

If cars were computer controlled, then we could represent them as coffee beans, no? With each bean representing the car and the space around it? In that case, I highly recommend pouring a can of beans down a bent tube. The beans will slow down. Because there's not enough room for them.

> If Ensnaring Tigers and Swatting Flies even partially cleans up the beaurocracy, then his five years was worth it. China will not move forward with corrupt institutions.

How many SOEs has the corruption campaign gone after? How many princelings has the recent corruption campaign specifically targeted? The answers to these two questions will tell you all you need to know about the intent of this campaign and its effect on China's economic future. In short, the CCP is the corrupt institution.

The CCP has used the campaign to enforce party discipline throughout its ranks as well as target powerful individuals in the private sector and outside of the party. Granted, these powerful individuals in the private sector also serve party interests and their targeting can also act as a tool for factional struggles within the CCP (as was noted in this apt comment from /u/piscator111 regarding the recent arrest of Xiao Jianhua). Corruption cases also occasionally target people high up in the CCP, as was the case with Bo Xilai and his security chief, Zhou Yongkang. But these high profile cases are never existential threats to the CCP and their purpose is not to root out corruption at the highest levels. They serve either to advance the interests of a particular faction or cow powerful individuals in the private sector (Zhou Chengjian and Guo Guangchang).

The iron triangle of the CCP itself, its control of the state banks, and its controlling interests in the SOEs will continue to stymie meaningful economic reform. This is readily apparent when observing the recent actions targeted at the shadow banking sector (which under normal circumstances would be a good thing), an industry which sprang up precisely because of the state banks' preference to issue credit to SOEs over private entities (third bullet point on first page). Instead of addressing the central problem, the SOEs disproportionate role in the Chinese economy, the CCP will either implement stop-gap measures or address the consequences of this persistent problem with measures that do not meaningfully threaten its economic power base.

The CCP is not primarily interested in China's overall economic health or the well-being of the Chinese people. These are secondary to its overarching interest: maintaining control. If the long-term economic health of the country requires the CCP to loosen its control over the economy (and thus loosen its overall control), it will opt not to do so while implementing other measures to mitigate the potential risks of long-term economic stagnation. This includes but is not limited to information control, ethnic nationalism, and economic interference.

This all leads to one realistic conclusion: China's long-term success cannot be attained while the CCP remains in power. I have no idea how the CCP would be "removed" and I'm not saying that its removal would be all peaches and cream, but I cannot imagine China realizing its full potential (or even a good portion of it) without taking the CCP out of the picture. Of course, Chinese people would look at this statement and accuse me of trying to weaken China, and I really can't blame them. I would do the same if I were in their position. The removal of the CCP would be akin to removing a brain tumor and China would be greatly weakened afterward. No doubt that China's geopolitical competitors (namely the U.S. and Russia) would try to take advantage of this situation. However, letting the CCP maintain its grip on China will continue to handicap China's ultimate potential.

To use a quote from your other comment:

> If you make it to the top of all the government testing, not only are you politically savvy, you are fiercely intelligent.

There is one more crucial aspect to take into consideration, here: individuals who make it to the top of the CCP have also had absolute loyalty to the party ingrained into their consciousness to the extent that it is utterly internalized and pervades their entire decision-making process. They are as much victims of their own control as are the people of China. There is a book on this psychology, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism that explores this thought process, although it is very out-of-date and focuses on a period where the CCP's control mechanisms were far more barbaric and heavy-handed.

This is all obvious when you look at the CCP not as a government institution but rather as a Marxist-Leninist organization with unchallenged control over the China. And no, I'm not talking about "communism"; I'm talking about the driving political philosophy behind the CCP.

To expand on the book mention, I am of the opinion that while the techniques and policies that took place back in mid-20th century China have fallen out of practice, they have been replaced by more advanced, subtle alternatives that still achieve the same effect: loyalty (in the case of party members) or obedience (in the case of non-party members) to the CCP. The Anaconda in the Chandelier is a great essay on modern manifestations of this concept.

What on Earth are you talking about? This isn't about being stoned (which I don't do anyway). It's about being well educated about evolutionary biology and pointing out that your assertion that humans will be like this forever is inaccurate.

What is so difficult to grasp about that simple point?

Further, as I've also pointed out multiple times, understanding the neurobiological reality of the human mind right now has important implications for how we treat our fellow human beings right now in relation to society, the justice system, etc.

That is very real and very much right now.

I'm not sure how to make myself any more clear.

If you're not smart enough and/or educated enough to grasp modern neurobiology and neuropsychology, on top of my explanations that should be explaining clearly enough the ramifications of those modern day objective realities... that's your shortcoming my friend, not mine.

I can suggest a couple books to help you get a better grasp on this subject... two very approachable and enlightening books I can recommend are "The Moral Landscape - How Science can determine human values" by Sam Harris (a doctorate of cognitive neuroscience) and "Braintrust - What neuroscience tells us about morality" by Patricia Churchland

Is there some other way I can get you to grasp that these are contemporary issues of objective scientific understanding of our own minds right now and how they function right now and how that relates to what we believe, how we relate to each other, how our societies function etc right now?

I understand that you feel the chronospecies issue doesn't have any real bearing on issues right now. I've agreed with you on that in every comment I've written. But that doesn't change the validity of everything else I've said, and for some reason you just seem postively obtuse on that point.

I'm seriously not trying to fight with you, so I'm not sure what has you so upset and so stubbornly resistant to grasping the simple objective realities I'm pointing out, which include some that are very much relevant to right now in our modern society.

There is an academic who has been gaining in popularity somewhat recently for his foray into non-pc topics such as his book published for general audiences called How to Judge People by What they Look Like.
While watching a few of his videos, I was struck by an issue that he brought up in his critique of Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now. I have timestamp the video, and the transcription is below. The issue is the direct opposition between the necessities for robust evolutionary selection and the "objectively good things" that individuals desire in their lives.

>He(Pinker) ultimately ends his book by saying” life is better than death, health is better than sickness, abundance is better than want, freedom is better than coercion, happiness is better than suffering, knowledge is better than superstition.”

>Yes that is the case at the individual level. But what he evidently fails to understand, what he willfully doesn’t want to understand, is the importance of group selection. The fact that we know that we can pass on our genes directly by having children, at the kin level by looking after our kin, and at the ethnic level by looking after our group which is an extended genotype. We know from computer models that, all else being equal, it is the more positively and negatively ethnocentric group that will triumph. And therefore if you want to preserve civilization, the only way to do that is to balance enlightenment values with these ethnocentric values which allow the more intelligent society to defend itself against the potentially more ethnocentric enemy at the gate. You have to have that balance right, or you are in serious trouble.

>At the level of group selection, life is not necessarily better than death: It is good to have an optimum number of people willing to lay down their lives for society. Health is not necessarily better than sickness: If you are under conditions of harsh Darwinian selection, and the sick are selected against, then you will become healthier including more mentally healthy and thus more likely to win the battle of group selection. Abundance is not better than want because when groups have abundance the intense Darwinian selection pressures are reduced, and they become less adaptive, less intelligent, and less able to survive in certain conditions. Freedom is not necessarily better than coercion: If everybody is free and nobody is coerced into doing anything then nobody will fight for the good of the society. Happiness is certainly not necessarily better than suffering at the group level because those who are happy can become decadent and can therefore just let things wash over them whereas to those who suffer, it can act as a motivator to great things; it can act as a motivator to genius and great art, and it can make the group less decadent and more warlike and more likely to survive the battle of group selection. Knowledge is not necessarily better than superstition if that superstition holds the group together, elevates its ethnocentrism, and makes it more likely to win the battle of group selection for that reason. And it is not better if that superstition is the thing that motivates people towards Truth.

>He ends by saying (paraphrasing) “the story of knowledge is the story of every tribe, every part of humanity.” Clearly that is not true. Clearly there are some groups who have contributed disproportionally to human endeavor, and they have done so because of the optimum combination of high intelligence, of a sort of pro-social cooperative personality that has managed to produce a society where people have impulse control and can look to the future and can plan and can discover things because it has an optimum level of genius that’s adaptive.

>It’s nonsense. This book is not a defense of science. It’s a defense of a sort of ideology, of a Christian theology without belief in God which has developed out of science. And there is a degree to which it is the enemy of science, and it is the enemy of the kind of society that would be able to sustain civilization and sustain science.


So what would the standards of such a society be? In other videos he admits that increased group intelligence inevitably leads to less superstition and less group selection which nearly always leads to social collapse and then to being overtaken by a less intelligent, more-group-selected tribe. I have not heard him give a definitive answer to this problem, but I agree with him that Pinker is mostly wrong in the above assertions.

Is there some steady state of society in which science and group selection are promoted or did the scientific revolution bring about an inherently unstable state? Is it just the nature of a civilizations to be cyclic in this way?

I think what you are planning to say is pretty good. Be aware that you aren't going to be able to use a one size fits all answer for every situation you encounter (but there are probably less than a dozen answers that will fit 90% of your encounters with omnivores).

I want to correct your use of the term "door-in-the-face". The Door-in-the-face technique is a tactic for getting someone to agree to a moderate request by first asking them for something significantly larger that they are unlikely to agree to. An example of this would be asking someone to go entirely vegan right away and then when they reject that request asking if they'd at least be willing to eat no meat on Mondays. Using this strategy is often much more effective for getting people to avoid meat on Mondays than simply asking them if they'd be willing to do that.

Your use of the foot-in-the-door technique is also a bit off. This is a strategy for getting someone to agree to a large request by first asking them for something small that they would be much more likely to agree to. For example you could ask people to put up a small sticker in their window that says "I support animal rights" then return a month later and ask them to give up meat. They'd be much more likely to give up meat using this strategy than had you asked them upfront.

The book Change of Heart by Nick Cooney (the founder of the Humane League) discusses many more strategies like this for being an effective activist. Another excellent book that I read on the subject of compliance tactics is Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion although this one isn't specifically about animal rights activism.

The two books i've read are The Political Mind and Don't Think of an Elephant. He is a congitive linguist who wrote a lot about metaphor and framing, and how the Right has effectively framed every major issue in their own terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

His ideas aren't radical or world changing, but the Dems really shun him (i think over some personal spats... like, he disagreed with Rahm Emmanuel once (a plus in my book) and also with Steven Pinker (more plus), so they don't like him). Not that if they listened to him they'd win all elections, but maybe they'd do a little better?

I'm interested in him because, so far as i've read, his explanation for why Republicans voters vote for Republicans is the only one that makes sense. "Why do they vote against their interests" leaves out that they are voting for their values, even when those values are against their interests.

But, i dunno, maybe he's way off base and that's why no one listens to him. Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts.

I've read "Wired for Story", the article author's book. She lists plenty of studies.

To answer your question, I place that book in my top list of characterization advice. She also does an excellent job of reminding authors not to make beginner mistakes, mistakes she used to endure when when was an editor.

My other top pick is "Writing for Emotional Impact". Wow. That one was brilliant too. It's about screenplay writing, but gets straight to the heart of why readers are engaged with some writing more than others. And it has over a hundred examples from movies. (more or less)

Sorry it's so expensive, especially since it has a few typos. You may be able to find it free online or do an inter-library loan.

Good question that needs several books to answer. As /u/Soycrates points out in a different comment, there is an important distinction between activism and advocacy. I have only ever tried activism once and it went really poorly. I now advocate on reddit and that's the extent to which I do anything. I do not believe that I can be an effective activist until I am able to give a better answer to your question.

I can share two things that have helped me to advocate, though. They are PETA's guide to effective advocacy and this quote:

>A long time environmentalist was speaking to an enthusiastic group of young environmentalists at a rally. He warned of the precarious situation the environment was in, the toll that corporate greed had taken on forests, and the dire consequences that lay ahead if serious changes were not made.

>He then shouted out to the crowd, “Are you ready to get out there and fight for the environment?”

>To which they answered an enthusiastic, “Yeah!”

>“Are you ready to get arrested and go to jail for the environment?”

>“Yeah!!”

>“Are you ready to give your life for the environment?”

>“Yeah!!!”

>“Are you willing to cut your hair and put on a suit for the environment?”

>The crowd fell silent.

>Whether this is a true story or a colorful fable, the lesson is one we should all take to heart.

> Pretty much have.

No.

>2 million people with an IQ above the 100 IQ average.

100 isn't that high, and the average is what is more important. The outliers should be trying to create an environment with incentives that drive up the average.

>Ah yes because all the great minds in the world see it as black and white. See you're actually a great example of why my faith in huwhite nationalism is so low.

Not an argument.

>Simple demographics.

You simply don't understand the left, like at all. Try reading this book. Enough with the rabbit horde nonsense.

>Exactly your adherence to arbitrary racial groups has an economic cost.

You are not smart enough to realize that there are two sides to this issue. Your desired inclusion has it's own externalities.

>Alternately, that could also be explained by saying the happy person will be happy, no matter what they get, and the unpleaseant person will always be unhappy, no matter what they get.

Actually this is not the alternative explanation, it is the main one. You have a perfectly fine and material cause for the phenomenon right there? Why also put forward another explanation that needs a supernatural force like karma to answer it. You might give the book quirkology a read, it has a chapter covering how people who consider themselves lucky are more likely to be looking for opportunities that make them feel lucky. While people who label themselves as unlucky will pass over opportunities. It's just a big feedback loop.

You may also want to read The History of God and Why We Believe What We Believe.

I have found some of my best reading by checking the bibliography of books with ideas that I really enjoyed and then reading the books that were referenced there.

The hardest thing for many people is replacing a feeling of certainty with a feeling of uncertainty. You may want to read Steven Hawking's Brief History of Time.

Some basic introductions to philosophy would not go amiss either. People have been tackling the "big questions" in much the same way, throughout all of history. There are not as many new ideas as there are old ideas, rehashed. Learn something about the history of human thought, it is pretty fascinating and will help you figure out what you think.

Sounds like you might find these four books useful:

Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change
by Nick Cooney

How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach by Tobias Leenaert


Beyond Beliefs: A Guide to Improving Relationships and Communication for Vegans, Vegetarians, and Meat Eaters
by Melanie Joy PhD

Motivational Methods for Vegan Advocacy: A Clinical Psychology Perspective
by Casey T. Taft

>The scientific endeavor often relies on intuition and other non-scientific sources of information for it's grounding, to an extent.

If science is partially grounded on intuition, and if this grounding can bear the weight of the edifice of the institution (i.e., if science is more or less valid and reliable), then there must be some justice in intuition after all.

>However, that does not make intuition scientific.

No, it’s much worse than that. The rot is so deep that we must trust intuitions as a prescientific foundation for the activity of science.

>In no case is "I have an intuition" to be taken as scientific evidence.

Depends on the intuition and who is having it. A child having the intuition that the moon really does walk with him when he walks at night (a gut inference derived from visual evidence) is incorrect. That stated, we still owe the child an account of why this appears to be the case (and indeed we have such accounts available). On the other hand, when a brilliant and highly experienced physicist has an intuition, say that a given experimental set-up would be dangerous or that another set-up would work better, that intuition serves as part of a scientific process. The intuition can reasonably set a presumption in favor of or against conducting an experiment.

>Science only entails what can be proven through empirical observation and experimentation. Full stop.

Not all science involves direct experiment. Some claims of science do not admit to direct experimentation (e.g., cosmology, evolution), so we must make allowances for observational science and not just laboratory experiment science. And a lot science is indirect. No one, for example, needed to have an actual photograph of an atom to begin doing atomic science. Very often, what allows for indirect observations are the assumptions of a current theory or model (i.e., scientists don’t just test theories by facts, but facts by theories). What matters is not so much how you got there, but that what you arrived at works.

Let’s circle back a moment to empirical observation. Human science necessarily involves empirical observations (because we cannot stuff the universe directly into our minds). Empirical observations, even reading a dial in a laboratory, requires making use of the five senses. But why do we trust our senses? How do we know what we are seeing is not a mirage? We have, after all, been fooled by mirages before. Our intuition gives us the ultimate stamp of certainty that allows us to (finally!) stop second guessing ourselves and get on to the actual results of experiments. And the intuitions of experienced experimenters are more finely honed than those of neophytes. Intuition is always in the picture, giving a seal of ultimate approval, allowing us to trust what we see with our senses.

So here is your problem. Even in your purified domain of observation and experiment (full stop) we still find the thread of intuition in the picture.

>Ah, so you're saying there's no empirical evidence of humans being cruel or showing disregard for the well-being of others. None.

I don’t need to provide such evidence. After all, if people were perfect angels we would need neither laws nor morality. I merely need offer evidence that all cultures are concerned with the well-being of other conscious creatures, not that they do so for all conscious creatures all the time.

>But here's the thing, even if I accept that, you would still need to give me some evidence that the concern expressed across "all human cultures" is identical and moral, that it is entirely driven by your posited need that all people have for others to be happy, well, and without suffering.

The only thing that need be done is establish that we share the same biology (we do, my condolences to the racists of the world) and that there are universal biological traits (there are) which get expressed and inflected at the level of culture. This evidence is growing more every day.

>There are quite a few arguments that could be had about that. But you're saying it's empirical, so present me with your empirical evidence.

What matters for me to be free of the No-True-Scotsman charge is that is indeed empirically verifiable. I have established that it is, so let’s get that squared away first thing. We’re now moving on to a different objection (i.e., prove it!).

The problem, of course, it what would count as proof. For a purifier such as yourself, who is willing to exclude most of the practice of medicine as non-scientific to protect an uptight definition, I imagine that you could spend the rest of your life raising the bar for evidence.

Karl Popper argues that science is not a verification game, but a falsification game. The reason why is that the problem of induction prevents us from ever knowing if an empirical generalization is ever justified (there’s always the “N^th” case just around the corner). Theories are never confirmed, there is just an ever diminishing pile of theories which have not yet been disconfirmed. If so, we can hardly expect that I should have to offer absolute evidence verifying my claim. At most, I should simply point to evidence which is already available. I might suggest [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Braintrust-Neuroscience-Tells-about-Morality/dp/0691156344/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459462910&sr=8-1&keywords=braintrust+churchland) , for example, but there is plenty of evidence available.

>And there's the "no true scotsman". Your argument: "Humans all universally hold the same concern, except when they don't, in which case they're monsters and not humans."

No, that’s just your failure to understand the argument. The claim is not that all people (i.e., individuals) are concerned with the well-being of other humans, but that all peoples (i.e., societies and cultures) show such a concern. Within these communities there are always oddballs, but they are the exception not the rule. The mere fact that there are some people who hate music does not disprove the claim that human cultures universally show an interest in this form of art.

>But ok, let's at least entertain your argument as you intend it

Wow, reading the argument as I intended it. What a glorious principle of charity you follow as a reader!

>Do I even need to give counter-examples? I shouldn't need to.

Yes, actually you do. Find me a society and culture that is not minimally concerned with the well-being of members of its own in-group.

You are someone who would really appreciate the information in the book Scorecasting
. I'll be perfectly honest and say that I'm not a huge reader, I have mild dyslexia and it's a bit of a chore. That said, I couldn't put this book down. They do talk, in depth, about the defense wins championships cliche.

True - it's not a single peer-reviewed scientific study, but as an attempt to summarise and digest all the peer reviewed scientific studies into one digest that contains the psychological scientific consensus on expertise, it's still a pretty substantial one (description section ;-).

However, now I'm just nit-picking. ;-)

> We're totally on the same page then.

Definitely. I fully support people learning as much as they can about as many subjects as they can - I just think it's important also to not fall prey to being a "jack of all trades and master of none".

Basically, the only reason I emphasised this side of the issue so strongly was because I was responding to the statement:

> Not with that attitude you won't. You're not an ant. You don't have to specialize in one thing.

;-)

> That is, explain love, free-will, morality (if you believe such things exist) - as being nothing more than a shared genetic pre-disposition. How can we make moral judgments without an ultimate morality?

What if "morality, love, free-will" are the result of our genes? DNA is very complex. Our brains are very complex and wondrous things by themselves.

I put math as something very close to love and other more romantic concepts; they are purely abstractions, created by humans and the consequence of our own brain. Some people understand math very well, others understand love by using poetry, music, for example. It turns out that math helps us describe the world; love, morality, free-will may well help us understand human interaction.

There have been some interesting developments in this area from a purely scientific perspective.

We shouldn't forget that humans once believed the earth was the center of the universe. Same thing here: we don't understand enough of how the brain works to make statements right now, but that doesn't mean we should answer "God".

I have always found Malcolm Gladwell's books to be immensely entertaining. He can be a bit repetitive in pounding his major theses home and I wouldn't advocate for treating any of his theories as the gospel but he is a gifted storyteller and many of his stories regard psychological research.

The Psychopath Test Fascinating look at psychopaths by one of my favorite journalists. Well researched as has some scientific depth but is certainly geared towards the layman.

The Invisible Gorilla Very readable tour through some of our cognitive flaws and blind spots by two psychologists.

Thinking, Fast and Slow Very comprehensive account of how people make decisions by the father of behavioral economics.

No.

An interesting passage in the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (review) explains that traffic accidents/fatalities were an interesting measure of the corruption of a country. Corruption being a measure of how much the members of the public respect and honor the law in their own country.

Are Americans honest? Drive on the highway and stick to the speed limit. Measure how many cars pass you and compare it to the number you pass: that will give you a measure of how little the average American respects the law.

Yes, this actually makes plenty of sense. Moral arguments don't really matter if someone genuinely believes that it is necessary to eat animal products to be healthy.

Not always leading with ethics, but rather tailoring each message to the specific audience for maximum impact is the strategy Tobias Leenaert recommends in the book, "How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach." Leenaert is an ethical vegan, but understands that to move the general population toward ethical veganism (which is the goal), a variety of approaches are necessary.

It's his free agent year again. A pretty good read: http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Baseball-Inside-Mental-League/dp/1592402755

TL;DR: Players have statistically better seasons the year before, and two years after free agency.

Wow. He deserved a DUI big time. There is a fantastic book called Traffic which is all about driving. A lot of it focuses on the sociological effects of autos, the highway system, etc. Some of the most interesting stuff is about the psychological aspects of driving. I read it many years ago, so I am having a hard time explaining it. Suffice it to say it is a hundred times more interesting than you would think.

EDIT: HERE is a pic of the inside cover with a summation.

ALSO: The AMAZON page has a good Q and A about the book .

Look up "exposure therapy," which has been around for 40 years, at least and IS a "legitimate" form of psychotherapeutic processing.

BUT... what's described in the article is more like what R. J. Lifton wrote about (in exhaustive detail) in the 1961 classic, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism about the "re-education" process in Red China in the early 1950s.

(Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai & #2 man to Mao Zedong for almost 50 years was himself subjected to "the process" on several occasions from the 1920s in Paris to the 1970s in Beijing. And now, it looks like current ChiCom Party Chairman Xi Jinping is bringing it back.)

Does it appear that L. Ron Hubbard might have been hip to what was going on there at that time or perhaps even in the 1920s and 1930s in Leninist "rehabilitation" programs in the Soviet Union? And that later gurus like Werner Erhard and Keith Raniere have "borrowed" it from Hubbard?

To me, anyway, the answer to both questions is, "Yes, indeed." It's what the "true-believing" cult member runs into when he moves into the fifth to eighth levels of A 10-Level Pyramid Model & Psychodynamics of Cult Organization.

A couple of good books that look at this:

The Moral Animal
by Robert Wright

The Origins of Virtue
by Matt Ridley

Braintrust
by Patricia Churchland

Ridley looks specifically at the evolution of cooperation. Wright considers a broader range of questions - for instance he looks at sexual mores and customs - ie. polygyny and monogamy, why men care much more about sexual fidelity than women do, etc. If I had my copy here I could probably find some more to point out and provide some of his ideas.... It's a great book (I also highly recommend his book Nonzero). Churchland specifically gets into the neuroscience of morality.

> Insults, shame, aggressiveness are excellent tools for moving people closer to 100.

How I wish that were true! Nick Cooney, an esteemed animal rights advocate, wrote a whole book about what actually does work. It's called Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change.

Animal rights advocate and psychologist Melanie Joy has several YouTube videos about effective advocacy as well. This is a well-researched area. If we were planting seeds by being angry, insulting and shaming people, it would be a lot easier.

I'd still welcome them and shake their hand with a smile. People that are "health vegans" or "vegan for the environment" are in a sort of transition state where they might eventually see the moral reasoning and adopt it as their reason that anchors them into veganism. I know I went ethical vegan through this route.

I'm reading Tobias Leenhaert's How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach, and this point comes up often.

First, read the wiki on Glossollaia that TheRedTeam posted. Then, if you're still interested, check out one or both of these books: Why We Believe What We Believe and Why God Won't Go Away. Both are written by a neurologist and deal with the neurology of religious belief. They don't go far enough in debunking woo and pseudoscience, but they do give a pretty detailed explanation of what is physically happening in the brain when people experience what they report as 'spiritual experience'. Both are definitely worth a read.

The question is what you prioritise:

1. Is it more important for you to be able to speak the truth in any manner you wish at anyone?
   
2. Is it more important to get other people to share your views?
   
   If there's one thing I've learned from many years of vegan activism it's that it does not matter how correct or scientific your statements of fact are - if someone has adopted behaviours or beliefs that go counter to those facts as part of their personal identity, they will find ways to reject those notions. And that is not just Muslims, and not just religious people. That's even scientists.
   
   From behavioural economics to psychology - anyone who studied the human mind in a behavioural context (as opposed to a primarily atomic/physical neurological context) will attest to you that people, all people!, are utterly irrational creatures.
   
   Good and effective activism acknowledges this irrationality and elegantly works around it. A recommended read here is
   Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change
   
   I wish everyone would read and adhere to the short essay Keep Your Identity Small by Paul Graham. But as long as people are attached to X or Y as part of their identity, they will remain highly biased and irrational about those things.

>You can't No True Scotsman what represents the political Left Wing in this country, just because it doesn't fit your ideal of what "left" actually is or means.

This isn't No True Scotsman, this is the Overton Window. The political left wing has no representation in this country worth speaking of, as should have been made resoundingly obvious by DWS and the rest of the DNC having their thumb on the scale for Clinton during the primary. As long as the Democrats remain a center-right party that would rather lose an election than nominate a Democratic Socialist, describing them as "The Left" in any context other than their relative orientation to the far-Right Republicans will remain misleading.

>It's known as the left wing.

"Americans" know it as the left wing, but even Americans know that their "left wing" isn't even left-of-center.

>That's like someone else saying that The Right™ isn't really The Right™, since it's not full-blown national socialism

Have you not been watching the Trump election coverage lately? =3

>But, to add, it's not that I disagree with you, and it's really the reason I added the ™ to the end - to illustrate that it is more of a slogan or a brand-name than an actual representation of an ideology.

I get that, and I really appreciate the attempt to try and take back the nomenclature. Guess Poe's Law makes a fool out of me this time.

>They have enough in common, and certainly where it counts: intense, focused hatred of America, both as a concept and as a thing that exists, and hatred of what is currently the majority population of America, as if we're to blame for all the ills of the world.

See, it's comments like these that make me think that perhaps you really were sincere when you chose to describe The Other as "The Left™".

"They just hate America" is one of those thought-terminating clichés straight out of Robert Jay Lifton's 1961 text on the psychology of Chinese propaganda and brainwashing techniques:

>>The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.

You're using the same language to describe Progressives, Liberals, Communists, and Anarchists as the American State used to describe the "Terrorists" from Saudi Arabia who gave us the excuse we needed invade Afghanistan and Iraq back in 2001. Not because it was true, but because anyone trying to actually understand their motivation runs the risk of developing empathy for those who have been declared "the enemy".

After all, wouldn't you consider violent retribution towards a distant foreign power who persistently meddled in your affairs (including overthrowing your democratically-elected government to install a puppet dictatorship) in order to foster a more favorable business environment for themselves to be justified?

>Not that I don't agree with your sentiment, but I think the last thing that's needed is another label to slap on a group of people

"Neoliberal" is not a new label, the term has been used to describe "Third-way Democrats" like the Clintons since the 1980's.

>>Marxist Libertarian

> Pick one.

I did.

>I don't see any valid way to reconcile those two ideologies without compromising and completely undermining both.

Marxist Libertarianism is a branch of Left-Communism that emphasizes the anti-authoritarian aspects of Classical Marxism. To be fair, though, I wouldn't expect that people from post-McCarthyism America would understand the difference between Marx's philosophy and those who abused it to justify a centralized command economy.

There have been studies done (not certain on sources, pretty sure I read it in Richard Wiseman's Psychology book, Quirkology) that show that people are more likely to say "we" when referring to their team in a neutral situation or after a win. People are more likely to say "they" or "the Bills" when referring to their favorite team following a loss. Pay attention to how your friends/others talk about their favorite teams following wins and losses - it's obviously not 100%, but I've noticed the tendency in both myself and my friends and family.

I'll prepare for the downvotes, but if you check out the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) it explains why late merging is good and is actually what traffic engineers plan for. I know it's not a popular opinion, but I found it a fascinating read (the whole book, not just the merging part) and highly recommend it.

This may come as a shock, but in reality, there really are differences between races and yes, you really can judge people (in many/most cases) by how they look. Having said that, as a society, we've decided not to go that route, for better or worse. We, as a society (well, actually largely in the West and not really in most parts of the world) have decided to exercise cognitive dissonance with regard to many aspects of humans. For instance, we know for a fact that genetics/bloodlines can breed better dogs/cows/pigeons/plants but in humans we teach our young that genes "hardly matter".

Somehow, humans are exempt from nature's laws in this regard. Yet, on the quiet, sperm banks have all sorts of requirements for donors. So what I'm trying to tell you is, it's not that your work is inherently flawed or "the science is wrong". It's just that scientists today are "prohibited" from looking too deeply into issues that might cause social unrest. Again, for better or worse. If you hope to keep your job and career prospects, stay away from topics like these.

I think that if she can learn to critically examine her own thinking and beliefs, and understand how and why people come to believe what they believe, that this will definitely be more effective than addressing just the factual problems.

Here are some book recommendations that I think can accomplish this, if she's willing to read them:

Why We Believe What We Believe - Newburg and Waldman
Mistakes Were Made - But Not By Me - Tavris and Aronson
The Outsider Test for Faith - John Loftus

I have a section on this in a PDF I recently wrote: Examining Church Claims

But take your time; pushing things will only create more resistance.

Good luck!

Super late to the party, but this is very interesting. If you're still checking this, could you talk about the book Traffic? It's the most interesting book I've read in recent memory.

The key to success with the always going on fourth is to let it influence 1st-3rd down calls. The Arkansas HS coach they referenced in the article almost always runs on third and long, defenses are still caught off guard by it and it sets him up with much more manageable fourth down conversions.

The best breakdown of his system is in the book Scorcasting, which I honestly can't recommend highly enough.

Agreed. Scorecasting is a great book. Wertheim breaks down going for it in three bullets

• Inside the opponent's 45 yard line facing anything less than fourth and eight
  
• Inside the opponent's 33 yard line, they are better of going for it on anything less than fourth and 11
  
• Regardless of field position, on anything less than fourth and five, teams are always better off going for it

Green is the new Red Is a great book about animal rights activism.

Change of Heart Is a great book about the psychology of spreading social change.

Edit: I'd also recommend watching Cowspiracy and Specisism: The Movie.

This may or may not help your current arguments, but understanding the psychology behind why liberal progressives and conservatives have completely different realities is very valuable to know.
The best way to do this is read:
"The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics: How Conservatism and Liberalism Evolved Within Humans"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0982947933/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_OcREub1XRVQYC

This is very true and a good summary. To underpin much of what you have written I suggest a book entitled "The Political Mind", written by George Lakoff.

https://www.amazon.com/Political-Mind-Cognitive-Scientists-Politics/dp/0143115685/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+political+mind&qid=1555641683&s=gateway&sr=8-1

This book supports what you have written about from the perspective of cognitive science research.

Also check out Nick's other book, Veganomics. It is also very informative. Change of Heart is a bit broader in its focus on how activists with various causes can use psychology to better influence people, whereas Veganomics was written with the intention of giving animal advocates insight into what kind of people go vegan/vegetarian, why some people give up, etc., all with the larger goal of helping to formulate better messages and guides to help people cut back/cut out animal product consumption and maintain this for life.

>I think the division is a natural consequence of biology and upbringing.

This book may prove interesting for you then, if you want to learn about it. Judging from the reviews it seems like the author did a (relatively) good job.

Check out Wired for Story and Techniques of the Selling Writer. The latter is dated - as in the guy wrote it from a white, male perspective in the 60s - but the advice on craft is solid. Good luck.

ETA: This is a decent podcast series so far.

>I go to the range, hit good drives and pure irons.

Driving on the range is simple, it's wide open, no hazards to carry/avoid, no fairway to miss, all fairways are straight.

There are no consequences for shots on the range that are 5 yards to the left/right, long/short of target.

Hit a shot on the course 5 yards to the left/right of the fairway and you are in (usually) a less then ideal location to attack the green.

Hit a shot 5 yards short/long into a green and the consequences can be brutal, resulting in penalty strokes, hazards and other locations which increase the odds of recording a high score.

On the range, golfers can look and feel like low handicappers. On the range, every shot is a perfect lie.

Take these same golfers and give them a shot into the green from an uphill/downhill lie, ball above/below the feet and they have no idea how to adjust to these conditions.
Only way to learn this: lessons and playing as much as you possibly can on a course, and accepting the results.
(No boiling of the blood)

> how can I get my range play to translate to the course.

Need to have exact targets on the range. Picture a hole in your mind. Imagine a lake, waste area, bunker 10 yards to either side of your intended target. That perfect contact drive you just hit on the range now ends up in a hazard, instead of the golfer going "wow, I hit that perfect" they now realize that they missed their landing area by 5 yards.

Take that 9I on the range and instead of trying to hit it 140 yards, and being happy when that happens. Take that 9I on the range and only be happy when the ball stops within 20 feet of where you wanted it to stop.

>Bad shots make my blood boil.

This is probably the bigger issue and my only suggestion there is to purchase Bob Rotella

This book, the source of all my information, is full of high quality peer-reviewed scientific studies: https://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Psychology-Behind-Politics-Conservatism/dp/0982947933

In addition, you can get the book for free several times a year on Kindle just by signing up for it on the author's website. The blog is another good source of free information: https://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/home-page/

I feel your passion for making change, since you directly asked for help, I would suggest channeling the passion and anger into making change. It it's slow and hard to make change but all we need to reach is the tipping point.

I suggest reading 'Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change' for scientifically researched ways of achieving social change.

Here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159056233X?ie=UTF8&tag=vegancom&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=159056233X

I'm not so sure about freely unfortunately, thanks to the, in my opinion, terrible pay-for model for many academic journals. To get an overview of some of the consensus on this topic, I'd recommend Lakoff's "The Political Mind". It has its partisan detractors (as literally all political works do), but is very well written and easy to follow.

I'm not well read on the subject, but I really enjoyed How to Create a Vegan World.


https://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Vegan-World-Pragmatic/dp/1590565703

I would check out The Invisible Gorilla. It's written by some Harvard Psychologists on everyday misconceptions. It has a section which talks about memory and how we trust it more than we should.

Not saying your story is false, but your comment reminded me of it. They have one story of this Psychology class where the day after the challenger explosion, they wrote down what happened. One kid wrote down that his friend in Switzerland called him and told him to turn on the TV around 1pm. 3 years later, they recalled the event and he wrote that he got back from class around 11am to find a commotion in his dorm, where he saw the news.

So I don't know if it's impossible that you don't remember anything younger than 2-3 years old, but it seems likely that it could be a false memory or something invented based on other real world experiences

If you find this interesting you might wanna check out a great book on this subject. The book is called Traffic and it provides some very interesting insight into the way that people drive.

The refs.

Researchers looking into the phenomenon have been able to largely rule out the "usual suspects" for home field advantage (check out the book Scorecasting - that's not an affiliate link, just to be clear), with the exception of some scheduling bias.

But a paper by Thomas Dohmen using the Bundesliga for data showed the refs tend to favor the home team. And specifically, they favor the home team more the closer they are to the crowd: so a pitch surrounded by a wide warning track gave less home field advantage than a pitch where the stands come right up to the field.

Though I don't have data to support it, this intuitively explains why the effect is more pronounced in soccer than major American sports: soccer calls are quite often judgement calls by the ref rather than strict adherence to detailed rules. No call vs foul, just a foul vs worthy of a booking, yellow card vs red card, largely comes down to how "cynical" the ref thinks the contact was (I obviously don't mean there aren't rules about what constitutes each, but whether it was a hold or just impeding the progress of a player can be a judgement call, and changes an indirect kick to a direct kick. To be clear, I think relying on the judgement of refs is a net benefit to soccer - you never end up with a decades-long argument about how to define a "catch").

And if the game leans a bit harder on the judgement of the referee, it makes sense that a factor which influences that judgement will have a proportionally larger effect on the sport.

This book Traffic by Vanderbilt is the best non fiction book I read last year. Just if you are interested in the how and why traffic works the way it does.

I'm not sure where would be the best place to hang out if you want to avoid those kinds of people. I'm currently reading Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change and it's really crazy and unsettling to see what the psychological and neurological research shows about our ability and likelihood to take in and rationally examine information that goes against our held beliefs.

do you move in between lanes trying to get in the good lane? do you let people merge into your lane without trying to block them? do you only go in the left lane while passing, allowing traffic to move?

do you even know the ways to make a road efficient? read up on the science/math of traffic. you'll be amazed. i was guilty of a lot of bad road ideas until i read this: http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307264785

adding another lane does little to improving traffic flow. more people just decide to use the freeways instead of other methods. you know why they can drive so fast on the autobahn? you need a license, and you get it taken away if you do something inefficient.

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won. I can't give you a quote since I rented it from the library but the Amazon link mentions Home Field Advantage in the description:

>Drawing from Moskowitz's original research, as well as studies from fellow economists such as bestselling author Richard Thaler, the authors look at: the influence home-field advantage has on the outcomes of games in all sports and why it exists...

ETA: FWIW, this guy disagrees with the findings although I have no idea where he's going with some of it. "If that's the case, then you'd expect home and visiting teams to have similar numbers at equal strength." Ummmm...no you wouldn't.

The Evolutionary Psychology of Politics by Anonymous Conservative:
https://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Psychology-Behind-Politics-Conservatism/dp/0982947933/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486499121&sr=1-1&keywords=the+evolutionary+psychology+behind+politics

It is a great introduction to some of the science behind why conservatives and liberals are so completely different in the head from one another. It addresses both nature and nurture, evolution and culture. It is very insightful as to how and why liberals and conservatives tick.

I'm reading a book called Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do right now that I think you may find fascinating. It's incredible so far and really touches on some interesting ideas.

>According to a recent study released by NAVTEQ, the average U.S. driver that uses a GPS system with real-time traffic updates is able to cut nearly 4 days off of their annual commute as well as decrease their carbon footprint by over 21%.

Navteq is shilling their products and the blog author parrots their marketing press release. Nice research and value-add. Submission downmodded.

Now for the real issue.

The "study" conveniently ignores what happens when everybody starts using the service.

Their findings depend on the edge that drivers using a GPS with real time traffic updates get over the regular drivers. Once the percentage of GPS users, it is obvious that the current data is meaningless as that edge decreases in size.

Will it be better if everybody used them? Depends...

If GPS systems give everybody the same advice, they are obviously worthless.

Attempting to design GPS systems that are smart enough to try to balance the load by giving different people different advice has its own challenges. How do you decide who do you send where? How do you adjust when people ignore the advice they got and drive somewhere else? How real-time is the "real-time" data? (Hint - absolutely not real time, and a few minutes make a huge difference in traffic).

Look, we could go on and on, but let me point out two things:

A) The blog entry submitted is worthless.

B) If you want to understand traffic, please read this book. It will not answer all those questions, but it will help you appreciate the complexity of the problem.

Buy it here

I think any/every activist should read this book. It's basically a how-to guide for activism, all backed by scientific studies/research.

I read the book this past year, and I went back and created the outline to summarize and share the content with fellow activists.

Give it a gander, and, if you like it, please buy the book. There's a lot of content that I've left out of the outline.

My main field is neuroscience, so I want to recommend you everything by Patricia Churchland, but here's a nice starting place: Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality

might be in that book though the pdf i found online cuts out shortly after what i copied. Quirkology. I highly suggest it if you're interested in interesting factoids and weird psychological studies.

The dude also has a youtube channel where he shows off some of the neat findings: https://www.youtube.com/user/Quirkology

At 15, you have plenty of time to mature. I admire you for asking for help. I think learning to cope with the game-day jitters are a part of any sport, especially golf where the mental aspect is such a large part of the game. You might learn some mental tricks to help you get through it, but the only real way is to just get out there and work through it.

And you might consider reading a little Bob Rotella

I like the term "BS" for belief system XDD

If you're interested in understanding that stuff, there is a book you need to read.

I recommend this book for those interested in the subject.

For advanced study, I recommend narrative theory and depth psychology. Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence by Lisa Cron is a good start, but modern psychology tends to neglect the unconscious mind which is why I recommend some depth psychology for the significance of myth and symbols.

If you're curious about psychological factors contributing to why we drive the way we do I highly recommend reading "Traffic" by Tom Vanderbuilt:

http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/B002N2XHGW

Wired for Story is absolutely amazing. I think every writer should read this, regardless of the type of writing they are doing.

I am all for them. Also from various things i have read they are safer also. Since they force the drivers to actually pay attention and not just stop at the red light, shut off brain and wait for the green until they gas it.

As long as they dont implement something like this Magic Roundabout

Heres a couple other links you may find interesting

• Roundabouts: Reducing Traffic Frustration
  
• Why we drive the way we do

Except that playing at home being an advantage because of fans is a big myth. The only advantage of playing at home is officiating bias.

If you can, read the book Scorecasting. I was trying to find a big enough section of their analysis of Home Field (Pitch) Advantage, but it was hard finding a direct quote sufficient enough. While the book focuses on American sports, they do look at European Football leagues when analyzing home advantage.

MLB 53.9%

NHL 55.7%

NFL 57.3%

NBA 60.5%

MLS 69.1%

Baseball is actually even better. The conclusion of the economists who wrote Scorecasting is that proximity to the crowd is a major factor. NHL has the glass and MLB the nets as well as outfield fans being extremely far away from the umpire. Additionally, MLB has the most scrutinized refs in any sport due to their use of technology. What would explain how the same umpire magically makes more accurate calls when he knows he is being double checked by strikezone technology?

Read Traffic: Why we drive the way we do. The dude just might convince you to become a late merger; it's better for the whole system if we all just merge late.

Haven't read this but I plan to when I have the money. Heard its supposed to be a good one

• The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics: How Conservatism and Liberalism Evolved Within Humans

My understanding of r/K selection theory (from Ecology) is that it's been jettisoned and superseded by better insights. I don't think there are experts in the relevant field today that use it or take it to be the most rigorous instrument of analysis.

It's mostly used by people like Molyneux or Anonymous Conservative in favor of their own personal theories about the political differences between liberal and conservative. Interesting, but I don't lend much credence to it.

This is an excellent book on this and other subjects: http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-drive-what-says-about-ebook/dp/B001BAGWQE/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1421727514&sr=8-4&keywords=traffic&pebp=1421727519225&peasin=B001BAGWQE

You sound like you are beating yourself down. I can recommend exploring teachings that emphasize a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset. Read up on "deliberate practice" for more on this:

https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Handbooks-Psychology/dp/0521600812

Merging late is better for traffic flow. Stop driving with your ego.

Read some traffic theory. This is a good start: http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307264785

Is it this book?

I'm going to give it a read. Sounds fascinating.

Yet more scientific proof that humans are pretty good at judging people based on their appearance alone, and that old school stereotyping and discrimination was (and still is) scientifically justified - which has all sorts of "disturbing" implications when it comes to passing judgement on the the racism, classism, and phrenology of previous generations, modern police profiling, and the hereditarian views of we Alt-Righters.

And if anybody is interested in looking at more of this type of taboo science, Edward Dutton wrote an entire book on how to judge people based on their appearance alone. And you can watch this YouTube video that he made which conveniently summarized the book's findings.

Patricia Churchland !

Patricia Churchland, professor at UC San Diego in neurophysiology and philosopher of mind, especially her recent book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality.

She has great insights, especially in the challenging process of dragging the enormous weight of philosophical thought since Plato to acknowledge the reality of the human brain/mind as we are learning what it really is and how it really operates.

Much of that thousands of years of philosophy -- including much of religion -- is based on completely erroneous assumptions about the brain. This is similar to the deep philosophical pondering about the ultimate meaning of the reasons why there were exactly five planets and why they moved often forward but sometimes in retrograde motion, and why the stars were fixed in the firmament of the heavens, etc. This entire topic of the great philosophers is now simply ignored.

In the same way, in the future, we have to discard and ignore much of their writings on Free Will, Morality and Abstract Thinking, etc., and thus completely restructure all of our thinking that is based on them.

IMHO, Sam Harris has taken many of her ideas and, because he is a man and because he has written about them more pithily and because he is willing to be controversial while she is more pedantic, he is famous and she is not. (Not to say anything bad about Harris, but Churchland should be given her due.)

Youtube has a number of Churchland videos, including Morality and the Mammalian Brain.

Here's a good book that summarizes the research:

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Heart-Psychology-Spreading-Social/dp/159056233X

George Lakoff does a lot of work in this area. See his The Political Mind for a good place to start.

Got through most of it, ended around here: "BAP asserts an inherent connection between physical health, good looks, and human worth. No 'eye of the beholder' clichés here! I suppose this is the place to note that one constant in BAP’s Twitter feed is pictures of muscled, shirtless beefcake"


Celebrities tend to have predictably progressive politics. What to make of them, then? They'd balk at BAP.


Also, reminds me of this book How to Judge People by What They Look Like.

Quirkology by Richard Wiseman - this is more focused on day-to-day psychology than it is science in general.

Someone else recommended this book on here a while back: Wired for Story. It's so focused and clear in its writing advice that I usually make it halfway through a chapter before I want to stop reading and get to work.

Check out Traffic:Why We Drive The Way Do. Pretty good book on the subject.

Now, why should anyone care if someone cuts ahead, you're only causing yourself stress by getting annoyed with that driver and it's not actually preventing you from getting to where you are going. It's pointless.

If you're interested in looking at baseball from this perspective, check out The Psychology of Baseball.

If you're a sports guy I recommend Scorecasting

Yep. Traffic capacity is there to be used. If your lane is ending, don't merge 1/4 mile before the lane ends, that's just unused roadway.

Read this!

Giver det her mening for dig?

https://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/the-theory/rk-selection-theory/

https://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Psychology-Behind-Politics-Conservatism/dp/0982947933

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Framing is a persuasion technique and so far as i know it is called framing and re-framing in rhetoric studies here , a great book on framing is ''denk niet aan een roze olifant'' translated don't think about an pink elephant. sadly it is only written in Dutch, however the most scientific and informative book on this subject probably is :The Political Mind, written by George Lakoff.

https://www.amazon.com/Political-Mind-Cognitive-Scientists-Politics/dp/0143115685

Frame = worldview and mindset.

I don't really have the time or expertise to delve deeply into those questions, but a coworker recommended this book, which sounds right up your alley.

>The guys who build and run organizations do so with skills and personalities that are almost orthogonal to being alpha.

You sir are looking for r/K, the x axis to α/β on the evolutionary psychology plane.

Funny enough you'll not find a more perfect example of K psychology than a wolf in the winter.

Indeed. But like I said, there have been a number of studies.

Thomas Dohmen published a paper that demonstrated that Bundesliga referees are less influenced by the home crowd in stadiums where there's a track around the field than where they exists no separation between the field and the crowd. This has been extrapolated as a reason why referees in the NBA, where there's no separation at all between the game and the fans, overwhelming favor the home team... I think it's talked about in the book Scorecasting but I don't remember for sure.

Here's a piece on how HCA has declined in the NBA over time, which it attributes to a number of factors, such as the rise in three-point attempts diminishing the impact of referees. Not really a study so much as a piece put together by the stats department.

Et. al.

I think you should check out this book: How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach. I don't agree with everything but you should check out the section on defining veganism and the "confusion" of labels.

This might also be relevant: http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307264785

Listen to the book Traffic, it will change how you think about how the roads we use are built. Also, I'm an audiobook listener so I suppose you could read it too. http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307264785

I used to be an early merger, then I read this book.

Read a book. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002N2XHGW/

Purely coincidental, here is where I'm coming from: https://www.amazon.com/Quirkology-Discover-Truths-Small-Things/dp/0465010237

That is precisely why. This book focuses, in part, on Sweden's traffic changeover.

>During his campaign, Quist's life has come into the public light, including his regular musical performances at an Idaho nudist resort with his daughter.

this book explains not just why these types of people go to nudist colonies, but why they fantasize about other people deaths.

The book cited as evidence is by that well-known titan in the field of psychology, Anonymous Conservative:

https://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Psychology-Behind-Politics-Conservatism/dp/0982947933

It's published by Federalist Publications of MacClenny, FL. That publishing house does not appear to have published any other works.

Hilariously, this anonymously self-published 'science' book has been cited by blogger John Press in a screed about how the left hates science.

There was a chapter about this in the book Scorecasting.

The book Scorecasting did a breakdown and found what sosuhme said. I don't have the book near me at the moment or else I'd take a picture or something.

aka affect heuristics

Also relevant: Lakoff's The Political Mind

The late merge that you talk about actually isn't so bad. At least, according to this book: http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307264785

Proven scientifically: http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307264785

Correct -- and many other things people don't realize. Someone actually wrote a book about it. Traffic: Why we drive the way we do.

Traffic moves faster if everyone goes up to the point of merging and alternates one car form each lane into the reduced space.

Amazon Link.

Have you seen this blog, and the book? Someone just posted an article from it here, and the book is linked at the very bottom of this page. Seems a bit related to your question.

http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/podesta-pizza-pedophiles-discomfiting-coincidences/

https://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Psychology-Behind-Politics-Conservatism/dp/0982947933/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&redirect=true&ref_=as_li_tl&linkCode=sl1&tag=anonymoconser-20&linkId=4b0aafa7a6c5c7585bb0b019de949cfd

Here is the mobile version of your link

Yea, a bunch studying different things. This conclusion was teased out of a number of different areas of research.

Maybe start here:

https://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Psychology-Behind-Politics-Conservatism/dp/0982947933

Studies have actually shown that waiting to merge until the last minute optimizes usage of the road. Leaving the lane empty for a quarter mile before it ends is just wasted asphalt. Source: http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307264785

That said, I generally merge early since it is considered polite.

> I know nothing about the efforts of vegan activists.

Finally, we're getting to some truth.

> My goal is to discuss idea that acting negativity toward meat-eaters is worse than saying nothing, as it potentially drives away them and random lurkers.

Who doesn't agree with this? Is your problem actually that vegans are unable to command, control, and change other vegans who suck at outreach? I'm not responsible for what a random asshole vegan writes in the vegan subreddit. But I can actually do the activist work myself and lead by example. You should, too.

---

Edit: I forgot about Tobias Leenaert's book, How to Create a Vegan World, which I strongly recommend if you're genuinely interested in critiquing vegan activism and learning about what works. https://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Vegan-World-Pragmatic/dp/1590565703

sometimes, although last night i was being kept awake thinking about how wrong this book is. it makes me so angry.

Been through the same. Got quite depressed because people just couldn't see the harm they were doing, or didn't care. But then someday I wondered why didn't I see the harm I was doing sooner? Why didn't I go vegan years earlier? I could have saved dozens of lives, not to mention taken better care of myself and the planet. So I dove into the currently available literature on human psychology which explained why people are so susceptible to social norms[1], why we so often can't reason ourselves out of a position were in [2] and why it is so difficult to come up with an idea like going vegan on your own [3]. After having read that I still get frustrated from time to time but much less so than first. I feel it's a bit like being angry at the earth shaking every now and then and tearing my house down. There is no one to be angry at, not really. You've just got to build a better house[4].

Are you an idiot or just a troll? The sources for my parts about genetics are in the videos' descriptions. You can easily find them. The videos about genetics are based around r/K genetic theory, which is a genetic topic that has been studied for many, many years. Hell, you could go on Amazon right now and order a major book on this topic:

https://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Psychology-Behind-Politics-Conservatism/dp/0982947933

I just wanted to provide you a more interesting presentation on the topic. The website I linked you to that analyses leftism provides many sources and even dozens of books on specific topics to do further research. The rest of my sources are historical and you can find many books on them. All you have done with this conversation is prove my point even further: leftists are irrational. Even a leftist like you, who tries to be rational, still falls victim to the symptoms of leftism. Leftists just double down when presented with facts that conflict with their viewpoints. The worst part of all is that they do not realize it. They are so smug with their ignorance and stupidity. It would be funny if it were not so dangerous to our society. Fortunately, the more time passes, the more people on the left will leave and go to the right. There is still hope, thankfully. I know that you have no legitimate counter-argument, so can you please, for the love of God, not respond back? All you are doing is wasting your time and, especially, mine. Goodbye (hopefully).

There are roughly a million things wrong with this, I don't even know where to start.

• Obviously this thing is ripe for abuse by just about anyone. Did you piss of your neighbor because your lawn isn't mowed to their standards? Be ready to be flagged.
  
  
• Encouraging people to fuck about with their cellphones while driving can't reasonably be said to be endorsing safe driving practices.
  
  
• What DMV is ever going to even accept this information? And if they do, what are they going to do with it? It's not like they could ticket somebody.
  
  
• What police department is going to respond to this? Same issue as above.
  
  
• The article hints towards this issue - insurance companies are heavily regulated in regards to how they set their rates. There have been court battles all over the country fighting insurance companies utilizing credit scores as a factor in individual driver policy rates. This thing will send consumer protection groups through the roof.
  
  
• There almost certainly won't be enough users of this app to chance a single driver from ever being tagged twice, leaving absolutely no room for a statistically significant analysis of individual driver behavior.
  
  
• Voice recognition is laughably bad on even the best devices. How is this thing going to get the tagged plates right - every time?
  
  This exact sort of solution to driver behavior modification has been suggested (and implemented) before. In Tom Vanderbuilt's book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), this type of solution is discussed in brief. Here's an excerpt:
  
  > What if there was an eBay-like system of "reputation management" for traffic? This idea was raised in a provocative paper by Lior J. Strahilevitz, a law professor at the University of Chicago. "A modern, urban freeway is a lot like eBay, without reputation scores," he wrote. "Most drivers on the freeway are reasonably skilled and willing to cooperate conditionally with fellow drivers, but there is a sizeable minority that imposes substantial costs on other drivers, in the form of accidents, delays, stress, incivility, and rising insurance premiums." 15
  
  > Inspired by the HOW'S MY DRIVING stickers used by commercial fleets, the idea is that drivers, when witnessing an act of dangerous or illegal driving, could phone a call center and lodge a complaint, using mandatory identification numbers posted on every driver's bumper or license plate. Calls could also be made to reward good drivers. An account would be kept and, at the end of each month, drivers would receive a "bill" tallying the positive or negative comments called in. Drivers exceeding a certain threshold could be punished in some way, such as by higher insurance premiums or a suspension of their license. Strahilevitz argues that this system would be more effective than sporadic law enforcement, which can monitor only a fraction of the traffic stream. The police are usually limited to issuing tickets based on obvious violations (like speeding) and are essentially powerless to do anything about the more subtle rude and dangerous moments we encounter—how often have you wished in vain for a police car to be there to catch someone doing something dangerous, like tailgating or texting on their BlackBerry? It would help insurance companies more effectively set rates, not to mention giving frustrated drivers a safer and more useful outlet to express their disapproval, and gain a sense of justice—than by responding in kind with acts of aggressive driving.
  
  > But what about false or biased feedback? What if your next-door neighbor who's mad at you for your barking dog phones in a report saying you were acting crazy on the turnpike? As Strahilevitz points out, eBay-style software can sniff out suspicious activity—"outliers" like one negative comment among many positives, or repeated negative comments from the same person. What about privacy concerns? Well, that's exactly the point: People are free to terrorize others on the road because their identity is largely protected. The road is not a private place, and speeding is not a private act. As Strahilevitz argues, "We should protect privacy if, and only if, doing so promotes social welfare."
  
  > Less ambitious and official versions of this have been tried. 16 The Web site Platewire.com , which was begun, in the words of its founder, "to make people more accountable for their actions on the roadways in one forum or another," gives drivers a place to lodge complaints about bad drivers, along with the offenders' license plate numbers; posts chastise "Too Busy Brushing Her Hair" in California and "Audi A-hole" in New Jersey. Much less frequently, users give kudos to good drivers.
  
  > However noble the effort, the shortcomings of such sites are obvious. For one, Platewire, at the time of this writing, has a bit over sixty thousand members, representing only a minuscule fraction of the driving public. Platewire complaints are falling on few ears. For another, given the sheer randomness of driving, the chances are remote that I would ever come across the owner of New Jersey license plate VR347N—more remote even than the chance that they're reading this book—and, moreover, I'm unlikely to remember that they were the one a Platewire member had tagged for "reading the newspaper" while driving! Lastly, Platewire lacks real consequences beyond the anonymous shame of a small, disparate number of readers.