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Random musings about science, psychology, and what-have-yous

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social justice

Two Psychologists Four Beers: Giving the Finger (with Alice Dregers)

September 12, 2018

Yoel and Mickey welcome author, journalist, historian, and bioethicist Alice Dreger to the show. Alice, who wrote Galileo’s Middle Finger, discusses how her upbringing, her academic background, and her own Galilean personality led her to piss so many people off in the service of serving both truth and justice. Can academics pursue both truth and justice? What is a Galilean personality? Do activists pollute science? Why did Alice refuse to be lumped in with the so-called Intellectual Dark Web? How can we improve the way newspapers work?

Bonus: Why did Yoel and Mickey create an (Alice approved) drinking podcast?

Tags: activism, Galilean Personality, intellectual dark web, social justice, truth, newspapers, research ethics

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Two Psychologists Four Beers: When Does the Left Go Too Far?

August 15, 2018

Yoel and Mickey ask how to know when the political Left has gone too far. Assuming the Left can indeed go too far--turning off even other progressives who feel abandoned by their natural political home--Yoel and Mickey riff on ways this might manifest. The conversation includes a discussion of identity politics, the problems with subjectivity, the challenge of balancing the desire for justice with the desire for truth, and the inherent problem of being both a scientist and activist. Before debating the supposed sins of the Left, Yoel and Mickey discuss a new paper overturning the cause of the so-called negativity bias (i.e., the notion that bad is stronger than good). Bonus: Mickey makes a risky hypothesis about German beers. Can any listeners provide evidence that disconfirms Mickey’s bold claim?

Tags: left-wing politics, identity politics, subjectivity, activism, social justice, micro-aggressions, German beers

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The surprising promise and profound perils of AIs that fake empathy

It might seem strange that AI can even attempt to offer this kind of assistance. But millions of people are already turning to ChatGPT and specialist therapy chatbots, which offer convenient and inexpensive mental health support. Even doctors are purportedly using AI to help. Some experts say this is a boon. After all, AI, unhindered by embarrassment and burnout, might be able to express empathy more openly and tirelessly than humans. “We praise empathetic AI,” one group of psychology researchers recently wrote.

Why do people find "bed rotting" so hard?

‘People would rather shock themselves than spend 15 minutes alone with their thoughts’ — could you handle the ‘bed rotting’ trend?

Over the past few years, wellness advocates have championed “niksen” (the Dutch art of doing nothing) as an antidote to burnout. Before that, we had il dolce far niente, a 200-plus-year-old Italian phrase that refers to the pleasures of doing nothing: a romantic concept that enjoyed a little comeback when it was name-checked in the 2010 movie “Eat, Pray, Love.” “Actually doing nothing is something a lot of people find aversive,” explained Michael Inzlicht, a professor in the University of Toronto’s department of psychology. “People associate doing nothing with boredom, which is an emotion most people try to avoid.”

How Painful Should Your Workout Be?

Every strenuous exercise involves some mixture of suffering and pleasure. The key to sticking with it is getting the balance right

“People avoid effort, but it’s also something that we can learn to like,” said Michael Inzlicht, a colleague of Dr. Bloom’s at the University of Toronto. In addition to pleasure, humans seek out things like competence, mastery and self-understanding. “You can’t get those without pushing yourself,” he said.

Joshua Aronson, New York University
Avi Ben-Zeev, San Francisco State University
Elliot Berkman, University of Oregon
Kirk Brown, Virginia Commonwealth University
Daryl Cameron, Penn State University
Belle Derks, Utrecht University
Jennifer Gutsell, Brandeis University
Greg Hajcak, Florida State University
Eddie Harmon-Jones, University of New South Wales
Jacob Hirsh, University of Toronto
Cendri Hutcherson, University of Toronto
Sonia Kang, University of Toronto
Michael Larson, Brigham Young University
Lisa Legault, Clarkson University
Ian McGregor, University of Waterloo
Marina Milyavskaya, Carleton University
Sukhvinder Obhi, McMaster University
Liz Page-Gould, University of Toronto
Travis Proulx, Cardiff University
Blair Saunders, University of Dundee
Brandon Schmeichel, Texas A&M University
Zindel Segal, University of Toronto
Alexa Tullett, University of Alabama

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