Eldon Taylor's Blog, page 10

October 8, 2018

Believe or Not

In today’s spotlight I would like to discuss something I have been working on recently—the idea that I Could Have Been An Atheist. Every week I interview some of the brightest and most informed people on our planet and I consider myself lucky to have such an opportunity. Very often our guest is a well qualified scientist, and/or an expert in their field, and they inform us that the notion of a god is but a left-over from a time when folks failed to understand the world they live in—a supernatural story that replaces the failure of understanding. Science and ...
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Published on October 08, 2018 09:15

September 28, 2018

Sins of the Father

In today’s spotlight I would like to address the notion often referred to as “sins of the father.” The Bible informs us according to Exodus 20:5, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.” However, later in the Bible we can find many verses such as this one from Deuteronomy 24:16, “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put ...
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Published on September 28, 2018 15:17

September 13, 2018

Freedom In Forgiveness

Many years ago I was asked if the technology I developed, InnerTalk, might be used with an incarcerated population to lower aggression and hostility, and otherwise assist in rehabilitation efforts. As such, in the mid 1980s, together with two colleagues, we set up the first double-blind study of it’s kind to test this idea. Hypothesis The hypothesis was straight forward: change the way people think, their self-talk, and you’ll change their expectation, and that will lead to changing their behavior. Little did I know at the time how remarkably true this simple hypothesis would turn out to be, but as ...
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Published on September 13, 2018 13:14

September 6, 2018

Lie, Cheat, Steal–and the Shame of It All?

Today’s spotlight is all about deception and shame. If I haven’t already told you about Steven Pinker’s book, Blank Slate, let me recommend it now. The subtitle to this wonderful contribution is The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Pinker essentially shows that the idea of the mind as a blank slate and the notion of the so-called noble savage are gross errors that have led to many misunderstandings and political fallacies. I have no intention of stealing any of his thunder, so let me just say—this is an important read for anyone interested in understanding both the human condition and ...
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Published on September 06, 2018 16:49

August 31, 2018

Ambiguities

In this week’s spotlight I would like to take up the idea of ambiguity. If you give any serious thought to this, you must wonder how it is that our minds are equipped to recognize an ambiguity let alone decipher it. Think of artificial intelligence (AI) for a moment. Machine learning (ML) experts recognize that the world we live in is messy, full of uncertainty and ambiguity. Brian Ziebart, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has suggested one working solution for this. His solution, “. . . feeding systems messier data in the lab ...
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Published on August 31, 2018 15:52

August 9, 2018

Using the Truth to Lie

In this spotlight I wish to remind you about the prevalence of the various methods in use today to win your heart and mind, or in plain language, to manipulate your thinking and beliefs. Hector Macdonald in his book, Truth, informs us of the many ways that “truth” can be used to lie. I found his Colgate story most informative. Colgate sent questionnaires to dentists asking them to identify the toothpastes they recommended. When the questionnaires were returned, Colgate announced that 80% of dentists recommended Colgate. This in turn persuaded other dentists to begin to recommend Colgate as well. Why? ...
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Published on August 09, 2018 12:26

August 2, 2018

Fallibility

In this week’s spotlight I would like to once again remind you of the importance of both recognizing and accepting the inherent nature of our human fallibility when it comes to interpreting so-called facts and forming our opinions and beliefs. I have written books that cover the many ways in which we find ourselves manipulated by biases, contexts, framing, influence, defense mechanisms, compliance principles, and so forth. Indeed, my NY Times Bestseller, Choices and Illusions, illustrates this influence from our chicken yard teachings to the sophisticated deployment of technology designed to influence and shape our beliefs—all for the purpose of ...
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Published on August 02, 2018 15:37

July 26, 2018

American Dream

In this week’s spotlight I would like to discuss the American Dream. Webster defines the American Dream this way, “The ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.” Owning Your Own Business This ambitious statement is often trivialized with idioms of baseball and apple pie. That said, if we take a moment to think about the true meaning, “that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative,” then we can quickly understand why so many Americans ...
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Published on July 26, 2018 12:36

July 20, 2018

Humility and Civility

In this week’s spotlight I would once again like to visit the idea of civility in our society. My lifetime has never seen a divide in America as deep as it is today. People no longer seem to listen to one another. Instead they meet opposing views as though they were threatened with a violent confrontation. I sometimes think of this inability to hear another out as a form of social narcissism, in that everyone has their own opinions, beliefs, and so-called “truths,” and they’re exclusive to all else. Indeed, folks can be so invested in their private perspective as ...
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Published on July 20, 2018 15:43

July 13, 2018

Words and Biases

In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss the nature of bias, particularly those biases that most fail to recognize as a bias at all. Last week I read and shared a new study that showed that men have a working advantage over women in turns of promotional identity, in part simply because of how and when we use surnames. For example, “When talking about famous people, do you say “Darwin” but “Marie Curie?” Dickens but Emily Dickinson? Shakespeare but Jane Austen? What’s in a name—or part of a name—matters.” 1 In eight different studies, research at Cornell University yielded ...
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Published on July 13, 2018 09:05