Off The Beaten Track

THEATLANTIC.COM -- Women's religiosity can have tangible consequences on the lives of families. A new report [2016] from the Pew Research Center suggests mothers have more influence on their children's religious upbringings than fathers, especially in interfaith households. One-third of respondents said their mom was more responsible for their religious experiences than their dad. In families with parents of mixed religious backgrounds, the percentage was well more than half. According to Pew, nearly half of people who grew up in interfaith households now practice their mom's faith, compared to less than a third who practice their dad's. In a lot of families, these patterns ...

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MINDMATTERS.AI -- Today, we know much more about what happens when we die -- and what we are learning does not support materialism. What's remarkable is people who have near death experiences come back with amazing stories. Like the young lady born blind and rushed to the emergency room after a car accident. She finds herself hovering over a group of doctors frantically working on a lady which she didn't immediately recognize was herself. After she was resuscitated, she shared her story and reminded them, "I'm a blind person and can tell you everything that went on in the operating room." Many report taking a journey through walls and down a tunnel with a light at the end, what I would call ...

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THEATLANTIC.COM -- A new study [2018] explores a strange paradox: In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions. While countries with the most female STEM graduates were also some of the least gender-equal countries. Something in even the most liberal societies is nudging women away from STEM, even when those are their best subjects. "Countries with the highest gender equality tend to be welfare states," they write, "with a high level of social security." Thus, the authors suggest, girls in less gender-equal countries might be more inclined to choose STEM professions, since they offer a more certain financial future than, say, painting or writing. That correlation echoes past research showing that ...

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FEE.ORG -- To measure sexism in earnings, we need to look at men and women doing the same job at the same place. A new study [2018] from Harvard does just this with data from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA). The MBTA is union shop with almost no scope for a sexist boss to favor men over women. And yet, even here, female train and bus operators earn less than their male counterparts. "The gap of $0.89," the authors concluded, "can be explained entirely by the fact that, while having the same choice sets in the workplace, women and men make different choices." For example, male train and bus drivers worked about 83% more overtime than female ...

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AREOMAGAZINE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2015: "If I were trying to sum up in a single word [AKDN's] central objective, I would focus on the word 'opportunity.'"] ARTICLE: Social Justice (the idea of correcting for unequal outcomes [as opposed to correcting for unequal opportunity]) defines fairness in terms of outcomes, rather than processes. It carries an implicit assumption that, were it not for such injustice, equal outcomes would be the norm. However, equal opportunity (the absence of arbitrary discrimination) does not imply equal probability. Since people differ in a myriad of ways, we have no reason to expect equal outcomes. As Sowell notes, "Given the innumerable factors influencing the current well-being and misfortunes of individuals and groups, the presumption of being able to disentangle all these factors and determine ...

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QUILLETTE.COM -- A deeper investigation into our religious nature casts doubt on the idea that science-centered secular culture can succeed without the sacred. Ultimately, religion is about the need for meaning. When people turn away from one source of meaning, such as religion, they simply look for another. Traditional religion's decline has come with a rise in supernatural, paranormal and related beliefs, Young adults are more inclined to believe in ghosts, astrology, clairvoyance and spiritual energy. And secular liberal regions tend to be where markets for alternative spiritual experiences and products are most lucrative. "They are filling the void that Christianity once owned, without any of the wisdom and culture and restraint that Christianity once provided" Andrew Sullivan wrote in New York magazine. ...

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EVIEMAGAZINE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: In honour of International Men's Day 2019.] ARTICLE: In a world where female empowerment revolves around denouncing masculinity, we tend to overlook the crucial role men play in society and fail to recognize how much a young girl needs a strong father. A decade ago Barack Obama said in his Father's Day speech "We know the statistics -- children who grow up without a father are 5 times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; 9 times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison." ... At a young age, it's crucial for us to witness our father treating women with respect. A strong father appreciates his wife's femininity and compliments her role in society. When he embraces a woman's femininity ...

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EVIEMAGAZINE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: In honour of International Men's Day 2019.] ARTICLE: If it's wrong to like strong, manly, powerful men, I don't want to be right! Men operate in a completely different way than women do, and that's a good thing. Men don't need to become more like women in order to have successful relationships. In fact, regardless of what modern feminists say, we wouldn't want them to. We want men to be men: protective, loyal, quick to take action, and willing to lead. We want them to be our rock, the shoulder we cry on, the mountain we stand behind that takes the brunt of the storm. And if we want those things -- which we do -- we have to understand that manliness comes with ...

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DISCOVERY.ORG -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Very highly recommended book.] ARTICLE: "Heretic: One Scientist's Journey from Darwin to Design" has two authors. One is Finish bio-engineer Matti Leisola. Former Dean at Helsinki University of Technology with 140 peer reviewed science articles to his name. His new book, Heretic, is about how the scientific evidence led him from Darwinism to Intelligent Design. From the Introduction: "As a young student, I used to laugh at those who placed God in the gaps of our scientific knowledge. To my way of thinking, such people lacked the patience and level-headedness that I possessed so I didn't listen to their arguments. But eventually I came to realize that this criticism cuts both ways, since a functional atheist also can reach for pat explanations ...

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EVOLUTIONNEWS.ORG -- Phillip E. Johnson, Berkeley law professor and author of "Darwin on Trial" (described as "brilliant and devastating") died on November 2 this year. I first met Phillip Johnson at a small Greek restaurant in Cambridge, UK, in the fall of 1987. However, only later did I learn of Johnson's intellectual pedigree: Harvard B.A.; top of class University of Chicago law grad; law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren; leading constitutional scholar; occupant of a distinguished chair at the University of California, Berkeley. A man of supple and prodigious intellect who seemed to have found the pulse of the origins issue. Johnson told me that his doubts about Darwinism had started with a visit to the British Natural History Museum where ...

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IFSTUDIES.ORG -- When a young person mentions cohabiting, you might suggest they consider questions Bradford Wilcox asked: "Is fidelity important to you? Having someone who always tells the truth? Has your back? Communicates well? If these are important to you, marriage looks best." Wilcox was responding to a new [Nov, 2019] Pew Research Center report on cohabitation and marriage which shows Americans, especially younger generations, embrace myths about cohabitation not reflected in reality or research. The results are telling. "By double digits," as the report puts it. Another 2017 study revealed that in the United States and 16 European countries, about 50% of cohabiting parents break up by a child's 12th birthday, compared to about 25% of married couples. Marriage also ...

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IFSTUDIES.ORG -- "Majority of Americans Now Believe in Cohabitation." That's the headline from a 2016 Barna Group survey. They found 84% of those who approve of cohabiting before marriage said that it was valuable for testing compatibility. However, a 2013 study showed testing is not the most common reason cohabitors give for *actually moving in together*. In fact, it was second-to-last at just 7%. Findings suggest that cohabiting to test a relationship is associated with many kinds of negatives. In fact, many thinking about cohabiting, to test their relationship, already know, on some level, what the grade of that test may be but are hoping that the answer looks better over time. There are many better ways to ...

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OZANVAROL.COM -- It was one of my first classes as a law professor. I was young and reluctant to admit what I didn't know, for fear of openly revealing what I was -- a novice. During class, a student asked a question that left me befuddled. Instead of saying what I should have said -- I don't know-- I winged it. Not only that, but I spoke with conviction. I was happy with myself. My high lasted for all of an hour. An astute student emailed me to point out (nicely) that the answer I provided was wrong. Not even a little wrong, but completely wrong. The next class ...

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TIMESOFISRAEL.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, New York, 1983: "Those who are most qualified in scientific subjects today are often the most humble and the most convinced in their attitude to the existence of Allah."] ARTICLE: Nobel Laureate Werner Arber: "Although a biologist I must confess that I do not understand how life came about. [It] remains a mystery to me. The possibility of the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to this problem." Origin of Life research has failed because basic laws of physics tell us systems tend toward chaos and disorder, not toward order and function. Our argument [for Intelligent Design] is not based on foolish truisms like God of the Gaps but on observed laws of nature and physics. And it is supported by world class scientists. The first thing I would bring to your attention ...

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EVOLUTIONNEWS.ORG -- In these 2 videos, Professor Tour, a heralded scientist and nanotechnology researcher at Rice University, delivers a tongue lashing to his fellow scientists laying out his devastating, detailed critique of current origins theories in plain language everyone can understand. "Whether you want to have [life] originate from Earth or from some other planet, you have to have the origin of life. You have to have the origin of that first cell. How does that happen? We have no idea." In this bonus video from the Science Uprising ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- The class of 2019, the first to experience all four high school years under Common Core, is the worst-prepared for college in 15 years, according to a new report. "The results are, frankly, devastating," said the U.S. Education Secretary said about the 2019 results. "Over the past decade [student achievement] has continued to worsen. Two out of three of our nation's children aren't proficient readers. Fourth grade reading declined in 17 states and eighth grade reading declined in 31." Common Core is a set of national instruction and testing mandates implemented [by President Obama] starting in 2010, over waves of bipartisan citizen protests. Experts said they thought it would improve student achievement but all were wrong, wrong, wrong. ...

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THEGOSPELCOALITION.ORG -- Named a top 100 and top 30 global thinker by Foreign Policy and British Prospect Magazine, respectively, Jonathan Haidt, professor of social psychology, has been writing about morality and religion since graduate school. His 2012 book "The Righteous Mind" debuted at number six on The New York Times bestseller list. Everyone loved it.... "I started realizing that the scientific community was really underestimating and misunderstanding religion." Haidt's book outlines his moral foundations theory. The six values he believes are common across time and cultures. Haidt found political liberals don't give much credence to the three of the six (loyality to ingroup/community, respect for authority, and sanctity) but conservatives value all six equally.... Haidt said his Christian students "radiated a kind of ...

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EVOLUTIONNEWS.ORG -- For 150 years Darwin's theory of evolution has been as unquestioned as Newton's theory of gravity. But science never stops asking questions. Or at least it's not supposed to. Stephen Meyer takes up the challenge in this video which has already been viewed by 1,000,000 people since its release just one week ago. That's an enormous conversation about a subject which Darwinists are most anxious thoughtful that adults and young people should not be discussing: whether the evidence for Darwinian evolution is genuinely persuasive. In 5 minutes Meyer summarizes two very telling problems with Darwinism -- covered in his first two books, "Signature in the Cell" and "Darwin's Doubt" -- that anyone can follow. It doesn't take a PhD. ...

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AREOMAGAZINE.COM -- According to Professor Douglas Carnine, education professors in the United States overwhelmingly advocate constructivist teaching methods, such as discovery-based learning, inquiry-based learning and project-based learning. With these teaching methods, teachers avoid directly instructing students. However, there are serious issues with such approaches and they are highly ineffective at promoting academic achievement. This has been repeatedly confirmed, over several decades, by different fields related to education. Professors Barak Rosenshine and E. D. Hirsch: "this consensus from several fields of study is a very strong indication that the findings are valid." The methods have also been shown to be much less effective than direct instruction for promoting critical thinking skills and self-esteem, according to Professors Siegfried Engelmann and Gary Adams. ...

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THESKEPTICALZONE.COM -- Can you imagine writing a book that can be read forwards and backwards containing 2 different stories that made sense? Not an easy task yet DNA is even more complex. Watch this video and pay special attention to the following mechanisms in DNA: A) Alternative splicing which produces multiple proteins from one gene. B) Overlapping sequences, called Duons, which simultaneously code for both protein expression and transcription factor binding sites. C) Dual coding genes in which one DNA sequence produces multiple proteins using multiple reading frames. ...

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CREV.INFO -- Imagine a book written in a language with no spaces, and every word is three letters. Now imagine you could get one story starting at the first letter, a different story starting at the second letter, and another starting at the third letter. That's the situation with some genes. DNA can code for one protein in the first reading frame (RF), but a different protein in another RF. Since the opposite DNA strand has three more RFs, there are potentially six RFs per gene. An international team researching RFs, said there was an almost zero probability RFs were due to chance. Maintaining RFs by natural selection is "costly" because mutations in one RF could disable the information in another RF. ...

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THEATLANTIC.COM -- Philip E. Tetlock decided to put expert political and economic predictions to the test. He collected forecasts from 284 highly educated experts who averaged more than 12 years of experience in their specialties. The project lasted 20 years, with 82,361 probability estimates about the future. The result: The experts were, by and large, horrific forecasters. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting and bad at long-term forecasting. They were bad at forecasting in every domain. Even faced with their results, many experts never admitted systematic flaws in their judgment. One subgroup of scholars, however, did ...

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THEVERGE.COM -- QUESTION: This idea of intellectual range and taking in lots of information. How does that dovetail with research on cognitive biases and not believing information that contradicts our beliefs? EPSTEIN: It's really difficult. If you look at [judgments and cognitive bias of] specialists with a narrow focus, they were actually worse as they accumulated information because they were better able to fit any story to whatever their views were. People with better judgment had "science curiosity." Not science knowledge, but science curiosity. When faced with information that didn't agree with their preconceived information, would they follow up and research broadly or would they put that aside and ignore it and leave it there? There were clever studies where ...

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NATIONALPOST.COM -- Darwinism's puzzling Achilles' heel is its utter failure to account for, alone amongst the species, humans' large brains and capacity for both abstract thought and speech. Darwin knew this himself, of course. To this day, no Darwinist can explain humans' power of speech. In 2016, eight prominent academics, including the world's most famous linguist, Noam Chomsky, published an article admitting that 150 years after the Theory of Evolution was birthed, and following an "explosion of research" in the modern discipline of linguistics, they cannot explain where language comes from. Intellectuals may stamp their feet and clutch their pearls all they want, but the debate, for so long taboo, is on again. ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazrat Ali: "World-wide glory can be undone by an hour's degradation. You will never find an equivalence for wounded honour."] ARTICLE: It's not uncommon to hear about people (famous or otherwise) ruthlessly attacked by the cancel culture because of old, long-forgotten online behavior. Parents of teens and young adults must be aware of cancel culture and the future ramifications of internet behavior for their children and start actively addressing it. It's just as important as talking about being kind to people in real life, because the electronic record of their online stupidity can be pulled up and used against them in job situations and other adult interactions. Do you know what platforms your teen is using? Really? All of them? You might be surprised, because research indicates ...

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NYTIMES.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazrat Ali: "Hasten not punish a man for a fault committed; but leave room for pardon between the two acts."] ARTICLE: Emily was a member of the punk music scene when a post denouncing her went viral. The object of nationwide group hate and banned from the punk scene, she didn't leave her house for what felt like months. Her friends dropped her. She was scared, traumatized and alone. She tried to vanish. "It's entirely my life," she said tearfully. "And it's all just done and over." In this small story we see something of our brutal cultural moment. There's no sense of proportion. There's no personal connection that allows apology and forgiveness. Even the quest for justice can turn into barbarism if it is not infused with mercy, an awareness of human frailty and a path to redemption. ...

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SLATE.COM -- Recent studies suggest that kids with over-involved parents and rigidly structured childhoods suffer psychological blow-back in college. From 2006 to 2008, I served on Stanford University's mental health task force, which examined student depression. Often brilliant, always accomplished, these students would sit on my couch holding their fragile, brittle parts together, resigned to the fact that these outwardly successful situations were their miserable lives. In 2010, psychology professor Neil Montgomery surveyed 300 college freshmen and found ... In a 2011 study, Terri LeMoyne and Tom Buchanan looked at more than 300 students and found ... A 2012 study of 438 college students found ... A 2013 study of 297 college students found ... And a 2014 study from researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder correlated ...

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REASON.COM -- LENORE SKENAZY & JONATHAN HAIDT -- We've had the best of intentions, of course. But efforts to protect our children may be backfiring. When we raise kids unaccustomed to facing anything on their own, including risk, failure, and hurt feelings, our society is threatened. Yet modern parenting practices and laws seem designed to cultivate this lack of preparedness. There's the fear that everything children see, do, eat, hear, and lick could hurt them. And a newer belief, spreading through higher education, that even words and ideas themselves can be traumatizing. The principle is simple: This generation of kids must be protected like none other. How did we come to think a generation of kids can't handle the basic challenges of growing up? Bad policy and paranoid ...

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MINDMATTERS.AI -- Some great computer scientists are deluding themselves believing in the AI Singularity. Someday, the theory goes, AI will write better AI that in turn writes still better AI and so on. This Singularity is espoused by luminaries like Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Google's Ray Kurzweil. A roadblock to AI singularity is creativity. Computers cannot be creative. Computer creativity occurs when a computer program does something it was not programmed to do. Software can write other software code but not creatively. Johns Hopkins' Gregory Chirikjian agrees and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella concurs. Oxford mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose forcefully argues this in his iconic book "The Emperor's New Mind." But haven't we already seen creative AI? What about ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- MINDMATTERS.AI -- In my talk, I'm going to address three points about the Walter Bradley Center. The Center will do more than demonstrate a qualitative difference between human and machine intelligence. It will show how we can thrive in a world of increasing automation. Such a vision ought to be praiseworthy and non-controversial. But we live in an age when much of the mainstream academy, inspired by scientific materialism, views humanity as unexceptional, replaceable by artificial intelligence. So if we succeed, we must prepare for controversy. Walter Bradley is someone who has reflected deeply on the intersection of natural and artificial intelligence, done seminal research in this area and been a fearless and uncompromising against the materialist currents of our age. ...

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UALBERTA.CA -- UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA -- UAlberta study shows second generation immigrant families are key to preserving heritage language." The literature says that by the third generation the language is lost, but the shift that you're worried about happens in the second generation," said graduate student June Cheung. "When parents immigrate to Canada, they worry about their children learning English. They often speak to their children in English instead of their first language. This is when heritage languages are often lost." "It's important that you're using your heritage language at home." "Don't worry about your child acquiring English--this is something that will come naturally. The question is: will they hold on to their mother tongue?" ...

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MINDMATTERS.AI -- Robert J. Marks: "IBM Watson beat the world champions at Jeopardy. I learned from your book that contest was kind of gamed [rigged] in a way -- Watson's programmers did not want Watson asked certain types of questions." Gary N. Smith: "You put anything in that's like a pun or a joke or a riddle or sarcasm and computers are helpless. For example, in the first round, one of the final Jeopardy clues was, 'Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest for a World War II battle.' The correct answer was "Chicago." Watson guessed 'Toronto,' because it was confused in the second part of that sentence, what 'it' referred to." ...

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MINDMATTERS.AI -- The real danger today is not that computers are smarter than us, but that we think computers are smarter than us. Despite their freakish skill at board games, computer algorithms do not possess anything resembling human wisdom, common sense, or critical thinking. Consider challenges by Stanford computer science professor Terry Winograd. What does the word "it" refer to in this sentence? "I can't cut that tree down with that axe; it is too [thick/small]." If the bracketed word is "thick," then "it" refers to the tree; if "small," then "it" refers to the axe. Humans understand such sentences immediately but computers don't because they do not have the real-world experience to place words in context. ...

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AREOMAGAZINE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2014: "The danger is that knowledge gaps so often run the risk of becoming empathy gaps. The struggle to remain empathetically open to the Other in a diversifying world is a continuing struggle of central importance for all of us."] ARTICLE: For many, the hubris of blind ideological conviction is hard to shake. They're all so damned sure. [But] it's okay to be uncertain. It's okay to question yourself, to show humility, to study other opinions. The gridlock of ideological certainty lessens when we listen to others. I get news from a variety of sources -- from the Atlantic to the National Review -- and keep my ears open to mindsets that challenge my own. It helps me avoid the shackles of certainty, which affords my heart a bit more empathy. ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- FS.BLOG -- Ray Dalio, founder of the investment firm Bridgewater Associates: "This episode taught me the importance of always fearing being wrong, no matter how confident I am that I'm right. I began seeking out the smartest people I could find who disagreed with me so that I could understand their reasoning. By doing this again and again over the years, not only have I increased my chances of being right, but I have also learned a huge amount. People who seek out thoughtful disagreement realize that there is always some probability they might be wrong and that it's worth the effort to consider what others are saying to ensure they aren't making a mistake themselves." ...

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