(Part 2) Best products from r/lectures

I recommend Beyond the Mechanical Universe.

Registration is quick and free, but necessary.

Books are published that accompany this series.

If you like this then also check out Danial Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow, which, among other things, discusses the planning fallacy and Dunning-Kruger effect.

For a lighter resource, I would recommend Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.

My pleasure. If you like the series, you may also want to check out The Trouble With Testosterone - an essay collection by Professor Sapolsky. He has another book, but I haven't read it yet.

read the top comment on his book at amazon

Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes also goes into great detail about this subject. Very interesting/informative read.

The speaker is John Gray (wiki) and the title of the lecture seems to be Isaiah Berlin and the Meaning of Freedom:

> John Nicholas Gray (born 17 April 1948, in South Shields, then in County Durham) is an English political philosopher with interests in analytic philosophy and the history of ideas. He is formerly School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

> He has written several influential books, including False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (1998), which argues that free market globalization is an unstable Enlightenment project currently in the process of disintegration, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2003), which attacks philosophical humanism, a worldview which Gray sees as originating in religious ideologies, and Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007), a critique of utopian thinking in the modern world.

>Gray sees volition, and hence morality, as an illusion, and portrays humanity as a ravenous species engaged in wiping out other forms of life. Gray writes that 'humans ... cannot destroy the Earth, but they can easily wreck the environment that sustains them.'

• Here (PDF) is the first chapter of John Gray's book, Isaiah Berlin: An Interpretation of His Thought, titled The Idea of Freedom.
  
  
• More links about John Gray on /r/HistoryofIdeas, among them reviews of his latest book, The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths.
  
  
• More links about John Gray from isaiahberlin.org

Ben's new book bad pharma.

> And I am going to say this partially based on how you edited the title of your submission. I'm going to point out that "hack" has multiple meanings.

I uneditorialized the title of the youtube video and used his book title:

https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Hack-America-Cyberspies-WikiLeaks/dp/1510723323

His utilitarianism is based on his personal, pragmatic, double-entry-bookkeeping values for 'good'. Even Mill had doubts, but not Singer.

Yet: “an ethical judgement that is no good in practice must suffer from a theoretical defect as well, for the whole point of ethical judgement is to guide practice.” (Singer, Practical Ethics, 1993) and he often admits he fails in his own silly standards yet doesn't admit his edifice of morality is fundamentally flawed.

I confess I prefer American pragmatism and some elements of relativism, but still.

Astra Taylor's work covers a lot of the same themes from a social perspective. Here's an interview where she goes over some of the ideas from her book.

>Instead of eliminating middlemen and enabling peer-to-peer relationships, it has empowered an influential and practically omnipresent crop of mediators. Instead of making our relationships horizontal and bringing prosperity to all, the gap between the most popular and the practically invisible, the haves and have-nots, has grown. Instead of unshackling individuals from the grip of high-priced spectacles, it has helped entertainment firms dominate global audiences. Instead of decommodifying art and culture, every communication has become an advertising opportunity.

>The utopian undercurrents that suffused these erroneous predictions are not the problem. The problem is that we have not confronted the obstacles that have impeded them, particularly the economic ones. A more open, egalitarian, participatory, and sustainable culture is profoundly worth championing, but technology alone cannot bring it into being. Left to race along its current course, the new order will come increasingly to resemble the old, and may end up worse in many ways.

Apparently a lot of people have raged against these researchers quite a bit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogi_Ogas#Book:_A_Billion_Wicked_Thoughts

Also see the Amazon tags on this page:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/tags-on-product/0525952098/

I think you can absolutely make that argument! In fact, it's been recently made in book form here. As Merridale argues, without Germany's role in Lenin's return, the USSR would not have existed.

More to the point, the German role in transporting Lenin was part of a broader plan to foment revolution in Russia, topple the provisional government, and ensure Russia withdrew from the war. This was the only plausible path to victory the Germans had in 1917. And in the short term the plot was very successful, although it backfired dramatically in the ensuing decades.

Richard Wolff has actually coauthored a book on why the USSR failed using the theories in this course. The book is called Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR. http://www.amazon.com/Class-Theory-History-Capitalism-Communism/dp/0415933188

Dr. Jason Fung gives an alternative explanation for the causes of obesity and ways to treat it.

He is also the author of the book which covers the same ideas, The Obesity Code

Here is the rest of the lecture series:

[The Aetiology of Obesity Part 2 of 6: The New Science of Diabesity]
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dimP7IdM2Og)

[The Aetiology of Obesity Part 3 of 6: Trial by Diet]
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbnshVO4PRM)

[The Aetiology of Obesity Part 4 of 6: The Fast Solution]
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG89j432w-Y)

[The Aetiology of Obesity Part 5 of 6: Diet and Disease]
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yoOx_7MLn0)

[The Aetiology of Obesity Part 6 of 6: Dietary Villains - Fat Phobia]
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QetsIU-3k7Y)

van der Kolk notably the author of The Body Keeps the Score, best selling book on CPTSD.

edit: more personal note; I dealt with abuse and emotional neglect in childhood, also some physical and sexual abuse from classmates. What is interesting is that I am transgender but at a certain point in childhood I somehow forgot and stopped understanding this about myself. I previously thought that I might have CPTSD, most specifically because I often deal with depersonalization and derealization, but it turns out that is extremely common in gender dysphoria. And more importantly, childhood trauma causes that splintering of the personality, or impairment in describing emotional states and their meanings. That is to say, for many years I could no longer recognize that gender dysphoria I was experiencing came from being internally female, rather than arising out of apparently nowhere.

I said problems. I did some research, and I can find articles talking about how Nordic countries are cutting back the welfare state, but I'm honestly not satisfied with the explanations as to why some make the claim it doesn't work or is on the verge of collapse. The basic premise of the argument is government spending normalizes to the income it receives during normal economic times, but exceeds it when the tax base dwindles during down turns. This causes radical cuts, especially painful when such a large portion of the economy is the public sector.

Anyways here are some articles I found which had good information:

1. Sweden is having problems affording the welfare state as is, and many want to see it expand without raising taxes.
   
   
2. Swedes are increasingly turning to private insurance to reduce long wait times and rationed health care services.
   
   
3. While not going to depth about why the Nordic countries are slimming down their welfare states, this article does give some detail as to what they're cutting.
   
   
4. This Austrian blog talks a little more about Sweden's privatization.
   
   
5. While not directly related to the problems of a welfare state, Sweden does seem to have a housing bubble.^1 ^2 If the bubble pop, tax revenue goes down, and the state potentially cannot provide the benefits they promised without printing money or taking on debt.
   
   
6. This is the article gives a high level view of the problems Sweden had with it's welfare state in the 90's and why it might happen again. Krugman also warns of how Sweden could turn in Japan.
   
   
7. Here's an article praising the Nordic states for bouncing back from the 2008 crisis. It also goes on to talk a little bit about the welfare state and how government spending is decrease on the fears of "welfare tourism."
   
   I would also like to add The Swedish Story: From extreme experiment to normal nation. It's an interesting read, although clunky, and gets into some more unique elements of Swedish economics.

I saw Ronson on C-SPAN back then, and it was like he was describing my brother. I read his book, and many others, and sooo many mysteries of my life were explained. It turns out my mother was a psychopath, and two of my siblings inherited it from her. Growing up in a family of psychopaths caused me to think they were the normal ones. And, so, I ended up marrying one. That's all in the past now.

My standard elevator talk about the danger of psychopaths:
(Recommended references are at the end.)

-- I am on a mission to expose the reality of psychopaths. Like David Vincent on the old TV show The Invaders, I know there are predators among us. Like on the show, many people I talk to can't fathom their existence.

-- The words psychopath and sociopath are synonymous today.
Disparate avenues of research came to be understood to have the same subject. (The so-called "official" name, anti-social personality disorder, in DSM-5 is so vague it's meaningless.) The originator of the clinical test for the condition prefers psychopath, and this is what I will use. Also, see the first paragraph of the fifth reference.

-- Psychopathy is a brain defect.
It is not treatable. Their brains are not wired to see humans as anything besides objects to exploit. Their amygdala, the area of the brain that processes emotions, does not function as in a normal brain. That is why they feel no emotions or empathy, although many learn to fake these when it benefits them. (There is also a controversial hypothesis that their mirror neurons are inoperative.) Surprisingly, at least to me, this defect comes with two effects:

1. Our mental states are completely hidden to them. They don't realize humans have minds and memories, hence their behavior of lying as easily as they breathe. Words have no meaning, and are simply tools to manipulate us automatons. Lies are throw-away and immediately forgotten. That's why they can make contradictory back-to-back statements without blinking an eye. It is sometimes said they are experts at reading people, but this is wrong. Instead, they are experts at putting people into situations with predictable reactions, a skill learned in childhood by "successful" psychopaths.
   
2. They don't experience time like us. There is no past or future, only the now. Hence, they have no thought of past actions, or concern for future consequences of current actions.
   
   -- Not all narcissists are psychopaths, but all psychopaths are narcissistic.
   This is easy to understand because, to themselves, they are the only conscious being on Earth. They are the only thing that really matters. Everything and everyone are merely props in their world.
   
   -- Psychopaths are not crazy.
   Imagine being fully rational but without the burden of emotions like guilt, remorse, or shame, and without the chains of ethics, morals, or compassion. ("burden" and "chains" would be their words, not mine. They would say, "Only chumps follow the rules or give a shit.") They know what they're doing, and have to avoid being caught. Hence, they do their thing secretively, and behind peoples' backs. They will also distract and deflect attention away from their actions by blaming others, "throwing grenades," sabotaging or otherwise neutralizing anyone they regard as threats, and sowing doubt and distrust. But to your face, many are charming and disarming. One fascinating trait is their insistence on never being wrong or held accountable. This is a ploy for avoiding suspicion, and this is when their lying becomes truly bewildering.
   
   -- But psychopaths are lazy
   To a psychopath, life is a con on humans. Their goal is to acquire whatever drives them with the least effort. They learn early how to appear productive and hard-working, but it is usually superficial. They are the ultimate brown-nosers and flatterers since this helps get ahead, disguise their actions, and defend against peers' accusations of misdeeds. They are notorious for taking credit for other people's work. My favorite ploy is when they have to produce results or make a decision for which they have no idea, they will temporize in an effort to appear smart, and try to bluff their way till a meeting ends. (This last one is not limited to psychopaths, of course. But they are consummate posers.)
   
   -- Tips for identifying a psychopath
   (These are meant to help cold-read a suspected psychopath, not to substitute for more extensive analysis, such as presented in the recommended readings. They are based on 50+ years of experience living intimately with psychopaths.)
   

• A psychopath flies blind when talking on a phone. Without a human present for cues, they tend to expose their thought processes, which can be jarring and disturbing, and a departure from their public persona.
  
• A psychopath does not cry (except for those who have learned to). A female psychopath once told me only wimps cry, to justify her never crying. Remember, no emotions, so no normal emotional responses.
  
• Psychopaths do not understand word play or figurative language, and they tend to take language literally. Communication often requires getting inside another's head to understand the words, and to read between the lines. Psychopaths are unable to do this.
  
• A psychopath manipulates by relying on our normal reactions to situations. They become confused and impotent when you react differently than they expect. For example, if they insult you to put you on the defensive, simply laugh back.
  
• Psychopaths are generally glib, using language (as untruthful as it is) to smoothly smother suspicion, and to control interactions. They aren't interested in what you have to say, and will dominate the time rather than yield in a conversation -- and risk exposing their inability to connect or care.
  
• Many people report a 1000-foot stare or "dead eyes" in a psychopath. This is not unexpected as they simply regard you as an object and not a person.
  
  -- A psychopath uses tactics common to salespersons to manipulate you.
  This is because these tactics work. This specific problem is not with psychopaths (or salespersons!), but with us. It's human nature to believe people are trustworthy, to believe flattery, to question our own eyes when presented with disturbing evidence -- in other words, to be easy marks.
  
  -- It is estimated that at least 1 in 100 is a psychopath.
  That's over 3 million in the US. The percentage is higher in certain fields, such as politics and finance, that attract the psychopath. Seemingly, they pursue the Big Three: money, power, sex. (Why? With no real connection to humankind, and devoid of morals, these are aspects of life that can be easily taken and enjoyed.) Educate yourself on psychopathy because the odds are good one or more of them are fucking up your life.
  
  -- Here are some books I used on my journey to discovery of the malevolent influence of psychopaths in my own life.
  
  Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us
  Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work
  Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
  The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
  The Inner World of the Psychopath: A definitive primer on the psychopathic personality
  The Sociopath Next Door
  The Wisdom of Psychopaths
  
  The first two books are written by Dr. Robert Hare. He developed the clinical test for psychopathy that is the subject of the fourth book (which is an entertaining, yet disturbing, read).