Ok, let me begin by saying how much I love the New York Review of Books. You should totally subscribe to it. It is generally great content, and they make a lot of it free online to free loaders like you (haven’t subscribed yet?). Tons of thought provoking stuff. Second, Freeman Dyson is a super…
In the spirit of this liveblog of teaching Stanovich’s book, I thought I would share a quick anecdote of class discussion around the issues of Chapter 2 on Falsifiability and Scientific Theories. We were discussing how science answers testable questions, and how theories make falsifiable predictions, and I gave one well-worn example: “All swans are…
In the second chapter, Stanovich delves deeper into his third characteristic of science: Scientists deal with solvable problems. To define “solvable problems” in this context, we must start with two critical concepts: first, what are the defining characteristics of a scientific theory, and second, what does it mean to be falsifiable? Scientific theories must always…
The first chapter begins with where we all hate to begin, but we must: The Freud problem. Despite having loosed his grip on the world of psychological science many decades ago, Freud’s hold on the collective imagination and definition of psychology persists. Stanovich points out that fewer than 10% of members of the American Psychological…
I know one usually liveblogs a live event, like a debate, or an election, or an awards show. But I am teaching my most super-favoritest-ever psychology book starting today, and I thought it would be a good chance to share it with you, chapter by chapter. It is rare as a college instructor, or as…
I have a new guest post up at All Things Education, with my reactions to the latest salvo in the ongoing battle between research papers and blogs, and between high stakes testing education reform and its discontents. Please head there and read it, and comment. I would love to hear reactions from my loyal readers.
I spend a fair amount of time thinking about where my academic training would help in the education reform debates–in cognitive psychology, in research design and in statistics. But on those rare times when I get to engage someone whose take is largely different from mine, it seems that the evidence is irrelevant. So many…
>David Brooks recent column on education reform is not as immediately awful as many of his other columns. It does not make me want to throw it down in disgust (but in the bestest, smirking-est, Taibbi-est way possible). It does not make me want to mumble die yuppie scum (ok, maybe just a little bit). It has that…
>Since I just got back into Twitter I’ve been thinking more about the strengths and weaknesses of the web. I am going to focus on what I think the internet does right, instead of belaboring what the net is doing to kids brains when they spend all day on Facebook (back in my day, we spent…
Twas love at first sight! (At the 6th grade science fair) My last post was a review of Practical Wisdom, a book by Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe, about how wisdom relies on dedicated practice, and how that practice is being stifled by our educational, legal and medical institutions. I limited the post to a…
