Off The Beaten Track

UNMISTAKABLECREATIVE.COM -- At the start of the year, I quit social media for 30 days and adopted Cal Newport's philosophy and title of his new book: "Digital Minimalism." I noticed changes in my life that made me question the value of social media: decreased symptoms of depression, quitting social media led to time on meaningful projects, deeper and more meaningful interactions. When I interviewed Cal, I asked him what he thought the consequences were of the way we currently use social media. There are really scary results when looking at how social media affects mental health, especially if ...

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CALNEWPORT.COM -- As I've talked with more digital minimalist parents, a consistent reality has emerged: Any successful attempt to instill in your kids a healthier relationship with technology has to start with you. Most parents haven't gone so far as to give up their smartphones, but share a serious interest in reshaping their digital lives to provide a better role model for their kids. One interesting strategy I encountered is the so-called foyer phone method. In the evening, after work, you leave your phone in the foyer by the front door with your keys. It seems like a simple hack, but the result is that your interactions with your family become screen-free by default. Another minimalist parenting strategy ...

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NYTIMES.COM -- The ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming more and more valuable. Social media weakens this skill because it's engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media the way it's designed to be used -- persistently throughout your day -- the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom. Once this addiction is solidified, the unbroken concentration needed for hard tasks becomes hard. The idea of purposefully using a service designed to fragment my attention is as scary to me as the idea of smoking would be to an endurance athlete, and it should be to you if you're serious about creating things that matter. ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- YOUTUBE.COM -- CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: We cannot stress enough that everyone watch this important and straight forward talk.] ARTICLE: "The real danger is not that computers are smarter than us, but that we think computers are smarter than us. And so we trust them to make important decisions they shouldn't be making." - Gary Smith ...

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MINDMATTERS.AI -- The answers that computers give must themselves be questioned. This is especially true of AI. Questioning AI is the topic today on Mind Matters. Show Notes: Introduction to Gary Smith, The AI Delusion, Stocks and Data, Presidential campaigns and data analytics, Bill Clinton and neural networks, IBM Watson and Jeopardy, Winograd Challenge, Bob Dylan and IBM Watson, Understanding words. ...

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MINDMATTERS.AI -- Last year, McAfee released the unsettling results of a survey of 1,000 parents of children ages 1 month to 16 years old in the U.S.: Almost three quarters of parents agree the images they share online could end up in the wrong hands. Why do parents ignore risks that they acknowledge? One suggested answer is the "anxiety to be seen." A 2018 UK report, estimates that "by the age of 13, parents have posted roughly 1300 photos and videos of their children." And there they stay. A tech commentator says it's time to stop kidding ourselves about all this "sharenting". Parents' behavior is increasingly putting children at risk for identity theft, humiliation and future discrimination. ...

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CALNEWPORT.COM -- Common to many religions is an emphasis on contemplative practices -- turning one's focus inward in search of transcendent insight (what Karen Armstrong calls "intimations of the divine."). I stumbled across a growing tension between social media and religion when checking media hits for my book "Digital Minimalism." I discovered the amount of attention the book had started receiving in religious circles. The issue that kept arising is the way in which the ubiquitous distraction they provide corrodes the contemplative life. One of the consequences of an always-present source of attention-snagging noise is that the quiet mind [for contemplation] disappears. The religious are increasingly concerned with this. ...

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GQ.COM -- A Q+A with a computer scientist about his new book "Digital Minimalism." The problem isn't about utility, it's about autonomy: manipulative black holes specifically designed to be addicting. "They created this behavior of, 'I have to keep tapping this thing throughout the day.'" "If you train your brain, 'I always have to have stimuli. I can't be bored for a moment,' you're gonna have both professional and social ramifications." "The psychological data on young people is just incredibly distressing. 13-year-olds are going to the hospital at unprecedented levels. It's social media. Nothing else fits the timing." "99% of the value that people actually get out of Facebook probably requires 20 minutes on Sunday." ...

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HUFFPOST.COM -- You're confused by your kid. She doesn't act the way you did when you were growing up. She's hesitant and reserved. Instead of diving in to play, she'd rather stand back and watch the other kids. She talks to you in fits and starts -- sometimes she rambles on, telling you stories, but other times, she's silent, and you can't figure out what's going on in her head. She spends a lot of time alone in her bedroom. Her teacher says he wishes she'd participate more in class. Her social life is limited to two people. Even weirder, she seems totally okay with that. Congratulations: you've got an introvert. And here's how to care for your introverted child. ...

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PSYCHOLOGYJUNKIE.COM -- Is Your Child An Introvert or An Extrovert? A lot of people think this question is super simple and mistype their children (and themselves). I hear statements like this a lot: "Oh, my kid is so shy. There's no way they're an extrovert!" "My kid always wants to be on the tablet in his room. He's totally an introvert." "My kid is so sweet and compassionate. Definitely an extrovert." Extroverts can be shy. Extroverts can have social anxiety. Extroverts need alone time when they're exhausted. Introverts can be shy or confident. Introverts can have good communication skills. Introverts enjoy occasional socializing, particularly in a one-on-one context. ...

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CHRONICLE.COM -- THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION -- The manure has piled up deep in the hallways, classrooms, and administration buildings of American higher education. And it's mortally corrosive to society. Many thoughtful people in higher education today are well aware of different piles of BS around them. Fewer recognize the magnitude of the mounds of it that have accumulated and how badly they defile us. What do I mean by BS? BS is the university's loss of capacity to grapple with life's Big Questions, because of our crisis of faith in truth, reality, reason, evidence, argument, civility, and our common humanity. BS is administrators' delusion that what is important in higher education can be evaluated by quantitative "metrics," the use of ...

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YOUTUBE.COM -- As we know, according to neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, random changes and unguided natural processes routinely succeed in assembling functional equipment for a range of uses. Wait...it doesn't work that way? ...

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KREATIVEMOMMY.COM -- Our series about Homeschooling moms in India is an initiative to help all the parents who are confused about the whole process of homeschooling in India. It's great to see that there are many parents who are homeschooling their kids and are ready to share the inputs. We recently met Sandhya who is one such mom who not only is homeschooling her kids but helping other parents. She is an admin of two main groups related to schools and homeschooling in India. ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Since this 2008 article, almost all first-tier universities now accept homeschoolers. For our other homeschooling articles, please search Ismaili Digest for "homeschool".] ARTICLE: I would be hard pressed to think of an issue which has more misconceptions, myths and misunderstandings than home-schooling. Once considered unusual, home-schooling has finally gained the mainstream recognition and acceptance it deserves. "Home-schoolers bring certain skills - motivation, curiosity, the capacity to be responsible for their education - that high schools don't induce very well." said Jon Reider, Senior Associate Director of Admissions, Stanford University. "Home-schoolers are the epitome of Brown students. They are self-directed, they take risks, and they don't back off." - Dean Joyce Read, Brown University. ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- NYTIMES.COM -- Addiction is the relentless pull to a substance or an activity that becomes so compulsive it ultimately interferes with everyday life. By that definition, nearly everyone I know is addicted in some measure to the Internet. According to one recent survey [2015], the average white-collar worker spends about 6 hours a day on email. That doesn't count time online spent shopping, searching or keeping up with social media. The brain's craving for novelty, constant stimulation and immediate gratification creates a "compulsion loop." Like drug addicts, we need more and more to get the same effect. I've known all of this for a long time. I teach it to clients every day. I just never really believed it could become so true of me. ...

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THEATLANTIC.COM -- What is workism? It is the belief that work is the centerpiece of one's identity and life's purpose. On a deeper level, Americans have forgotten an old-fashioned goal of working: It's about buying free time. The vast majority of workers are happier when they spend more hours with family, friends, and partners, according to research from Harvard. One study concluded the happiest young workers were those who said they preferred careers that gave them time to focus on their relationships and their hobbies. How quaint that sounds. But it's the same perspective that inspired the economist John Maynard Keynes to predict in 1930 that ...

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IFSTUDIES.ORG -- My research indicates that couples are substantially more likely to report being happy in their relationship when both partners attend church regularly than when neither partner does. Couples in which both members attend church are more likely to say that they often pray together. We [also] found that shared prayer is the most powerful religious predictor of relationship. More powerful than denomination, religious attendance, or shared religious friendships. In simple terms the couple that prays together, flourishes together. And new research from Harvard, tracking thousands of middle-aged women, found that women who regularly attended church were 47% less likely to divorce than women who did not regularly attend church. ...

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THEATLANTIC.COM -- It's time to stop fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the first woman director of policy planning at the [Obama] State Department. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here's what has to change. When I found myself in a job working long hours on someone else's schedule, I could no longer be both the parent and the professional I wanted to be. I am hardly alone in this realization. Michèle Flournoy stepped down as undersecretary of defense for policy to spend more time with her children. Karen Hughes left as counselor to President George W. Bush for the sake of her family. Mary Matalin, assistant to Bush and the counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, stepped down to spend more time with her daughters. She wrote: "Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work." ...

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THEATLANTIC.COM -- Two facts are often obscured in the public conversation devoted to women, work, and family. First, research shows the vast majority of married mothers don't want to work full-time. A Pew Research Center study found that married mothers are especially likely to prefer part-time work. Similarly a New York Times/CBS News survey found 49% of mothers wished to work part-time, compared to 27% who wished to work full-time. Second, married mothers who ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- Character is formed by consistently making right choices. It is the product of habits, something you do over and over again. Good choices are based on good intentions. Habits that form character are made from good choices that shape you into a virtuous person. But in developing our character, how can we determine how much is too much or too little? Aristotle said there isn't a fast rule of moderation. Character is not a mean between excess and defect. It takes practical wisdom to discern these things, which is often developed by experience. Rules of moral intention and accurate judgment of the best thing that can be achieved. That's what you have to cultivate. It is difficult and confusing, and usually requires sacrificing something desired. ...

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AEON.CO -- By fetishising mathematical models, economists turned economics into a highly paid pseudoscience. Mathematics imbues economic theory with unearned empirical authority. 'Modelling,' Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman told me, 'is now elevated to the point where things have validity just because you can come up with a model.' Yet when mathematical theory is the ultimate arbiter of truth, it becomes difficult to see the difference between science and pseudoscience. As a scholar of Chinese religion, it struck me that I'd seen this kind of mistake before, in ancient Chinese attitudes towards the astral sciences. ...

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SLATE.COM -- We face a replication crisis in the field of biomedicine, not unlike in psychology but with far more dire implications. The former head of cancer research at Amgen, Glenn Begley, said, in 2012, Amgen tried to replicate the findings of 53 "landmark" studies in cancer biology. Just 6 of them (11%) came up with positive results. He blames these failures on some systematic problems in the literature, not just in cancer research but all of biomedicine. In 2011, a team from Bayer had reported that only 20% to 25% of the studies they tried to reproduce came to results "completely in line" with those of the original publications. ...

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SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.COM -- "Postmodernists have tried to hijack biology, have taken over large parts of political science, almost all of anthropology, history and English," writes graduate researcher Sumantra Maitra of the University of Nottingham. Students are taught by postmodern professors that there is no truth, that science and empirical facts are tools of oppression by the white patriarchy.... If you teach students to be warriors, don't be surprised when they turn on their professors and administrators. This is what happens when you separate facts from values, empiricism from morality, science from the humanities. ...

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EVOLUTIONNEWS.ORG -- As Professor Behe explains the Long-Term Evolution Experiment conducted by Lenski has not demonstrated the creative power of unguided evolution but the occasional benefits of devolution, of breaking or disabling genes. Devolutionary mutations can help organisms, but they can't build anything. Behe notes that the Lenski experiment covers 60,000+ generations of E. coli bacteria, the equivalent of 1.5 million years of human evolutionary history. Yet for all the mutations observed, there are no innovations like the ones needed to produce the wonders of biology that we know. The real science uprising will come when thoughtful lay people realize they've been fooled on this point. ...

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EVOLUTIONNEWS.ORG -- Two remarkable advances in science together sealed the doom of any materialist evolutionary theory. They are the development of computer software, and the discovery that digital code lies at the foundation of life. Atheists Craig Venter and Richard Dawkins are famed scientists who freely agree on the analogy between software and genetic coding. As Stephen Meyer points out, "random changes in a section of functional code is going to degrade that code long before you get to something fundamentally new. That's the problem with the mutation-selection mechanism as an explanation for new genetic information." ...

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FS.BLOG -- I find it frustrating we often struggle with diversity of thought. This type of diversity shouldn't threaten us but energise us. Thought diversity is necessary for creativity, innovation, attacking problems from all angles and identifying more solutions. Intelligence agencies face a unique set of problems that require creative solutions to one-off problems. You'd think they would value and seek out diversity. And you'd be wrong. Increasingly it's harder and harder to get a security clearance and there is less and less diversity in the door. The people that make it through are Stormtroopers which look at -- and attempt to solve -- problems the same way. This is the Stormtrooper problem. ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- Parenting in Israel offers more freedom to both kids and parents. It also seems to result in happier parents with more kids. In Israel, there's longer maternity leave, better health care, designated days for families, and very little helicopter parenting. Can we learn from them? #1) Parenthood is typical! Israeli culture starts from an assumption that (nearly) every family will have some kids and need kid-related things. By extension, parents in families with three or more kids aren't looked at funnily or quizzed about their lifestyle choices. #12) No helicopter parenting! This may be the biggest one of all. Free-range parenting is the national default. ...

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GOOGLE.COM -- SACRED WEB -- Transhumanism can be defined as the ideology which seeks to modify or improve the human race. A very basic question that must be asked before we presume to tamper with humanity is what it means to be 'human'. From the standpoint of traditional thought, transhumanism rests on the fallacy of materialism. Materialistic science's attempts to address these philosophical issues are inadequate. It reduces man to matter and humanity to its mechanisms, thereby rejecting their true spiritual foundations. By denying those spiritual foundations, transhumanism dehumanizes man, devaluing his true stature, substance, heritage and purpose, and deprives him of the humility of his creaturehood, the dignity of his spiritual status, and his capacity for the grace of transcendence. ...

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FS.BLOG -- Most of us are amateurs but we refuse to believe it. This is a problem because we're often playing the game of the professionals. What we should do, when we're the amateur, is to invert the problem. Rather than trying to win, we should avoid losing. This was a point Charlie Munger, the billionaire business partner of Warren Buffett, made in a letter to Wesco Shareholders. Munger wrote: "Wesco continues to try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.... It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent." ...

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WASHINGTONPOST.COM -- Last year, a group of liberal New Yorkers flew to Michigan to [stay with] a group of conservative Christian corrections officers. It was an improbable experiment in bridging the political divide. To complete the exchange, the Michigan conservatives flew to New York City and stayed in the apartments of the Jewish liberals. "I feel like this brought out the best of me," Ackelsberg [a liberal] told me. "I wish I could appear everywhere in my life the way I felt called to appear then." Follett [a conservative] found himself feeling unusually emotional around the New Yorkers. "This had a very therapeutic aspect to it," he said, "because we were being heard, genuinely heard, by those that we felt misunderstood us." ...

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THEATLANTIC.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2008: "The quest for identity can then become an exclusionary process -- we define ourselves less by what we are for and more by whom we are against. When this happens, diversity turns quickly from a source of beauty to a cause of discord."] ARTICLE: America's political divisions are driven by hatred of an out-group rather than love of the in-group. Why? A new study helps provide an answer. What they found is fascinating: Americans' mental image of the "other side" is a caricature. Among Democrats, education seems to make the problem much worse. Democrats with a high-school degree suffer from a greater perception gap than those who don't. Democrats with a college degree harbour greater misunderstandings than those who don't. And those with a postgrad degree have a way more skewed view of Republicans than anybody else. Americans who rarely or never follow the news are surprisingly good at estimating the views of people with whom they disagree, as compared to those who follow the news most of the time. ...

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PERCEPTIONGAP.US -- To learn how well Americans understand each other, we partnered with YouGov to survey 2,100 Americans. We asked Americans what they themselves believed and what they estimated people on the other side believed. We then calculated the difference between the predictions and reality. The conclusion? Americans have a deeply distorted understanding of each other. We call this America's "Perception Gap". Overall, Democrats and Republicans imagine their political opponents hold "extreme" views twice as much as they do. Even on the most controversial issues, Americans are less divided than most of us think. The majority of Americans hold views that may not be so different from your own. News media and (for Democrats) education increases, rather than reduces, the "Perception Gap." ...

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OZANVAROL.COM -- Mathematician Andrew Wiles became a celebrity after proving Fermat's Last Theorem -- which had remained unsolved for more than three centuries. When he got stuck -- which was often -- Wiles stopped, let his mind relax, and go for a walk by the lake. "Walking," he explains, "has a very good effect in that you're in this state of relaxation, but at the same time you're allowing the sub-conscious to work on you." Solutions to complex problems often come as a subtle whisper -- not a big bang. To perceive the whisper, you must walk away from the problem and create space for interior silence to oppose contemporary chaos. ...

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INTROVERTDEAR.COM -- First and foremost, a ringing phone is incredibly intrusive. Like an alarm clock or crying baby, it demands attention RIGHT NOW! We have to switch gears quickly, wrenching our focus away from whatever we were doing -- and when you're deep in thought, that's really irritating. Furthermore, we don't have time to mentally prepare for the conversation, which, for introverts, can be like pulling teeth. Generally speaking, we have a tendency to take our time thinking things through and responding. Those long, awkward pauses don't translate well over the phone. Non-verbal communication (aka body language) is remarkably important to ...

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