EP 20 - Reflections on a Year of Beautiful Illusions

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

Selected References:

2:43 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 10 - Craft Beer Culture: A Personal History from January 20215:10 - Athletic Brewing Company6:43 - Listen the Beautiful Illusions Episode 19 - How We Learn Like A Scout: Critically Thinking About Critical Thinking from October 2020, which is centered around a discussion of two books: The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef and How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine...for Now by Stanislas Dehaene7:36 - Listen and read “This is Water” (Farnam Street Blog) by David Foster Wallace8:18 - In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, psychologist Jonathan Haidt characterizes the human mind as a partnership between separate but connected entities using the metaphor of the rider and the elephant - the rider represents all that is conscious and is the director of actions and executor of thought and long term goals, while the elephant represents all that is automatic, and often acts independently of conscious thought. According to Haidt, our problem is that we overemphasize the power and importance of our conscious verbal thinking and neglect the other components of our mind. In his book, he argues that we must improve our understanding of these divisions and learn to let them operate in harmony, not compete for control.8:33 - For more on “System 1” and “System 2” see  “Of 2 Minds: How Fast and Slow Thinking Shape Perception and Choice” from Scientifc American, excerpted from Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman15:46 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 08 - System 2, Superman, & Simulacra: Jeff's Amateur Philosophy from December 202017:59 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 11 - Darwin & The Dude: Darron's Journey to Poetic Naturalism from February 202119:38 - Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett21:58 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 03 - The Examined Life from September 2020 and see the “I know that I know nothing” Wikipedia entry24:09 - The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt27:50 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 06 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics from November 2020 and Episode 13 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Politics Part 2: Just the Facts from April 202130:35 - See “Why Chimpanzees Don’t Hold Elections: The Power of Social Reality” by Lisa Feldman Barrett (Undark, 2021) - “We all live in a world of social reality that exists only inside our collective human brains. Nothing in physics or chemistry determines that you’re leaving the United States and entering Canada, or that an expanse of water has certain fishing rights, or that a specific arc of the Earth’s orbit around the sun is called January. These things are real to us anyway. Socially real.”32:38 -  See “Moral Foundations Theory” (Conceptually), the Moral foundations theory Wikipedia page, read chapter 7 of The Righteous Mind which outlines Haidt’s 6 moral foundations of politics, “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2009), and watch Haidt’s 2012 TED Talk on “The moral roots of liberals and conservatives” (YouTube)35:13 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism from March 202135:38 - Watch the Statue of Liberty, Higher and Higher scene from Ghostbusters 2 (YouTube)37:54 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 15 - The Mind of Gatsby: A Look Through the Cognitive Lens from June 202141:19 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 17 - BI Book Club 1: The Reality Bubble from August 2021 where we discuss The Reality Bubble by Ziya Tong, and then follow that up with Episode 18 - Making Progress Better where we continue to explore themes raised in the previous episode45:29 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 04 - Too Cultured from October 202045:43 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 05 - It’s Alive! from October 202046:46 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 16 - Partisan Pizza from July 202147:50 - We ate the Cheeseburger Pizza from Tipsy Tomato in Derby, CT, along with the Loaded Mashed Potato and Baked Stuffed Shrimp pizzas50:52 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 09 - Lying About Santa: Naughty or Nice? from December 202052:37 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 01 - Why It's Pointless to Start a Podcast in a Pandemic from September 202052:48 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 02 - Our Back Pages from September 2020, which was actually recorded in 2019 with the intention of becoming the first episode of Beautiful Illusions53:55 - Listen to “My Back Pages” by Bob Dylan and read the lyrics54:16 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 07 - Boxing Aristotle from November 202054:38 - Listen to the Brain Science podcast1:03:58 -  See Apple Podcasts Statistics and  “Why there really aren’t 2 million podcasts” (Amplifi Media, 2021)1:07:05 - The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Heinrich1:07:43 - Slaughterhouse-Five  by Kurt Vonnegut 

This episode was recorded in October 2021

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