#tania lombrozo

[luxe-pauvre]

What did these explanations look like? A religious explanation in response to what happens after we die might note that we’ll be reunited with our loved ones: “Our soul will go to a place where our loved ones will greet us and it will be a great reunion.” A natural explanation might suggest that we live on in memories or in new forms: “Our memory remains in the hearts and minds of those who loved us and those we left behind,” “The molecules of our bodies … become building blocks of new forms.” A religious explanation for the origin of the universe might appeal to our purpose in God’s design: “Rest assured that you have a place in God’s universe and everything is unfolding exactly as planned.” A natural explanation might celebrate our place in the universe: “We are part of that flow that stretches back to before the Big Bang and we are lucky enough to see it at one of its most interesting stages. Stars have grown and life has started, as someone else said, ‘We are the universe experiencing itself,’ which is beautiful and should be treasured.” So while appealing to traditionally religious beliefs was one way to offer existential comfort, for many participants natural or humanistic beliefs could be summoned to play similar roles. That’s +1 for meaning without magic, humanist style. At least when it comes to satisfying existential anxiety, value and meaning can come without a commitment to supernatural metaphysics and magic.

Tania Lombrozo, Existential Comfort Without God

[npr]

Is Curiosity A Positive Or Negative Feeling?

Not all feelings of curiosity are the same. A study finds that one factor affecting the balance of negative and positive when it comes to curiosity is time, says psychologist Tania Lombrozo.

[luxe-pauvre]

Waytz and Young argue that, at least in some cases, aversion to playing God and negative attitudes toward science and technology are not only correlated, but related causally, where the former drives the latter. They also argue that aversion to playing God could hinder progress in areas such as reproductive technology, medicine, robotics, and artificial intelligence, where rapid technological advances are pushing the boundaries of what humans can achieve. This aversion could result in restrictions to research on gene editing in humans—which could prevent disease—or discourage the widespread adoption of artificially intelligent agents in decision-making roles that could improve the efficient and equitable distribution of resources. This makes it pressing to understand what underlies aversion to playing God. Is it something we can change? Is it something we should change? [...] Rather than reflecting a specific commitment to God, Waytz and Young suggest that aversion to playing God reflects “an aversion to human agency in a domain in which another agent is thought to be responsible.” For some people, that “agent” could be nature. In fact, one of their studies revealed a significant (though modest) relationship between aversion to playing God and belief in a “natural order.” [...] Research also suggests that it might be unsettling to think of ourselves as falling fully within the scope of science. In a set of psychological studies with my former Ph.D. student Sara Gottlieb, we found that people were happy to embrace the idea that science could one day provide complete explanations for some aspects of the human mind, such as motor control or depth perception.7 But when it came to other psychological phenomena, such as altruistic behavior, romantic love, or belief in God, people were less likely to consider a complete scientific explanation possible, and more likely to find the very idea of such an explanation uncomfortable. One of the largest predictors of which phenomena were judged to fall within, versus beyond, the scope of science was whether the phenomenon was thought to be uniquely human: The more a phenomenon was thought to contribute to making us exceptional, the less possible and comfortable a scientific explanation was deemed. If human exceptionalism explains our aversion to playing God when it comes to scientific interventions on humans, it might also explain our aversion to intervening in aspects of the natural world that make it special for us. The trouble is that human exceptionalism is almost certainly false. If we are exceptional, it’s in no small part because of the progress we’ve made in understanding the natural world and developing tools to manipulate it. One of the most important outcomes of this understanding has been recognizing our own place within the natural world—one organism among many, albeit one we care a lot about.

Tania Lombrozo, Human Exceptionalism Stifles Progress

[averycanadianfilm]

The first notable result was that asking participants to ground their answers in logic and evidence made them less likely to offer religious explanations: The rate went from around 34 percent in the baseline condition to 23 percent in the condition emphasizing logic and evidence. By contrast, the percentage of scientific explanations increased, from 53 percent to 71 percent.

TANIA LOMBROZO

[averycanadianfilm]

Existential Comfort Without God - Issue 106: Intelligent Life - Nautilus

Last month, Harvard University named a new Chief Chaplain: Greg Epstein, an atheist. As reported in The New York Times,1 Epstein,…

Across three studies, we asked participants to consider the kinds of existential questions that typically elicit a range of both religious and non-religious responses. How did the universe come to exist? Why is there suffering in the world? What happens after we die? Answers to these questions can differ in a variety of ways—offering comfort or eliciting anxiety; fostering meaning or prompting despair; offering evidence or merely wishful thinking. We were interested in the characteristics of religious versus non-religious answers to such questions, including whether participants could find ways to offer existential comfort without appeal to God(s).

[npr]

Is Gun Violence Due To Dangerous People Or Dangerous Guns?

The killings of two journalists in Virginia last week have reignited a national conversation on mass shootings and gun control. Tania Lombrozo looks at some research and what it might mean for policy.

[npr]

About 94 percent of Americans know how to ride a bike. For some, it's a primary form of transport, for others an occasional diversion.

But for just about everyone, bicycles are a familiar artifact of contemporary life — a simple device that's easy to recognize and easy to understand. Unlike a car, or even a motorcycle, a bicycle's mechanism is straightforward and on display. We can all appreciate how the pedals make the wheels turn, how steering works, and why bikes don't simply fall over. Right?

Wrong.

What You Really Know About Bicycles

Photo Credit:  Paul Piebinga/iStockphoto

[npr]

Don't Believe In Evolution? Try Thinking Harder

The theory of evolution by natural selection is among the best established in science, yet also among the most controversial for subsets of the American public.

For decades we've known that beliefs about evolution are well-predicted by demographic factors, such as religious upbringing and political affiliation. There's also enormous variation in the acceptance of evolution across different countries, all of which suggests an important role for cultural input in driving beliefs about evolution. A child raised by Buddhists in California is much more likely to accept evolution than one raised by evangelical Protestants in Kansas.

But in the last 20 years or so, research in psychology and the cognitive science of religion has increasingly focused on another factor that contributes to evolutionary disbelief: the very cognitive mechanisms underlying human cognition.

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