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naraburns  nihil supernum  11mo ago (text post)   3994 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 30, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Sargant's Battle for the Mind, an early tract on brainwashing. Sargant is somewhat notorious and the book doesn't seem to be taken very seriously today, but I find that I often learn a lot more from founding myths than from contemporary consensus. In particular there seems to be an old popular debate about how Pavlovian conditioning-related ideas actually apply to the human sphere- whether conditioning is ubiquitous and therefore humans need safeguarding, or whether the will is primary and therefore punishment is futile- and while this may be a popular oversimplification, I'm trying to figure out what makes each side tick.

I’m still reading The Power Broker by Robert Caro. I expect this will take me at least another two months to finish.

It oscillates between extremely interesting biographical details and rather dry early 20th century state government procedural details. His prose is really good though, some of his paragraphs spark and crackle off the page.

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