EP 15 - The Mind of Gatsby: A Look Through the Cognitive Lens

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

2:00 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - “A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism” from March 20212:09 - See Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett and Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson2:30 - See the “Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism” subsection of the Purdue Online Writing Lab website3:28 - F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby3:48 - See the entry on “allostasis” from the extended endnotes of How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett and/or the “Allostasis” Wikipedia entry3:50 - See “Confirmation bias”, and the “Cognitive bias cheat sheet” and “What Can We Do About Our Bias?” by Buster Benson writing for Better Humans14:39 - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which Jeff and I discussed at length in Beautiful Illusions Episode 05 - “It’s Alive!” from October 202014:41 - Jacques Lacan was an influential French psychoanalyst15:16 - Watch Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson describe “The Pyramid of Choice” and how it leads to justification of actions and leads to further action and self justification22:50 - See “How Robert Zimmerman Became Bob Dylan” - Born in Minnesota as Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, he settled officially on the name Bob Dylan in 1961, having already gone by Elston Gunn, and Robert Allen. In a 2004 interview Dylan said "You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free." and perhaps most tellingly, in the 2019 Martin Scorscese documentary “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story” he says “Life isn’t about finding yourself—or about finding anything, Life is about creating yourself.”23:20 - Released in 2007, I’m Not There explores different aspects of Dylan’s life and career through 6 vignettes where the “Dylan” character is played by different actors26:40 - The quote “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 novel Mother Night40:05 - For more on System 1 and System 2 thinking see “Of 2 Minds: How Fast and Slow Thinking Shape Perception and Choice” from Scientifc American, excerpted from Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman41:14 - Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, listen to episode 40 of the It’s Not What It Seems podcast where Darron discusses Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert with his brother Doug44:05 - See the entry on “Tuning and pruning” from the extended endnotes of Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett53:06 - The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich53:39 - See “Secret Fears of the Super-Rich” (The Atlantic, 2011)55:25 - According to American Heritage “Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color is apparently the book that Tom Buchanan of The Great Gatsby has in mind when he praises “‘The Rise of the Coloured Empires’ by this man Goddard.” Although he had the title and author wrong, he wasn’t all that far off. Henry Goddard was, in fact, the author of the famous eugenical study of The Kallikak Family.57:10 - See “Ten Years Later: Timeline of Tiger’s Scandal” (Golf Channel, 2019)1:06:55 - For more on the predictive nature of the brain see the entry on “allostasis” from the extended endnotes of How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett and/or the “Allostasis” Wikipedia entry1:08:29 - The quote “‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” comes from George Orwell’s 1949 classic Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel1:11:20 - Slaughterhouse Five  by Kurt Vonnegut

This episode was recorded remotely via Zoom in May 2021

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti