Best behavioral psychology books according to redditors

We found 48 Reddit comments discussing the best behavioral psychology books. We ranked the 14 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Behavioral Psychology:

u/Mimble75 · 17 pointsr/childfree

I just finished a book called Assholes: A Theory by Aaron James, and he talks a bit about the irrational and extreme anger we sometimes feel toward other people who are behaving like assholes. He says basically, when we feel this kind of wild anger that what's really happening is that we are fighting to be seen as morally equal to the asshole; that we are here, that we matter in the same way and are therefore deserving of better/fairer treatment from the asshole (or, that at the very least, the asshole is not deserving of special treatment just for being).

He says all this far more eloquently than I ever could though. I highly recommend his book.

u/DerpalSherpa · 7 pointsr/bigfoot
u/lankist · 5 pointsr/politics

Elections aren't won by who belongs to which party. Elections are won by who shows up to the voting booth.

Campaigning isn't about convincing people you're right and it hasn't been for a long, long time. Most people have made up their minds on just about every issue. If they haven't, they will very quickly once they are exposed to it (and they won't so readily take the word of a single source.) The most a candidate can do is attempt to align themselves to the beliefs of an already decided electorate.

Campaigns are, in reality, won through mobilization. It isn't about convincing people you're right. It's about getting as many of your people out to the voting booth as you can without getting their people out in the process. Something like this is a double-edged sword because Democrats aren't the only people watching. This is a public drama and Republicans are watching, too. And you may well end up inadvertently mobilizing decidedly Republican voters in your attempt to mobilize Democratic voters.

In other words: voters are already convinced of what they believe and, more or less, convinced of what party they would vote for. The question for campaigners is whether they're actually going to go out and vote. A campaigner needs to convince their own voters that they need to go vote, but they need to do so without frightening or angering their opposition's voters such that they go out and vote, too.

The Obama/Biden 2008 campaign had some VERY clever campaign tactics using microtargeting, which--for lack of a better word--stealthily campaigned directly to probable Democratic voters without actually exposing their message broadly to Republican voters. e.g. instead of blasting TV commercials exclusively, the Obama campaign did stuff like put QR codes on buses and benches in predominately Democratic neighborhoods, ensuring that only people who gave enough of a shit about Obama actually went to those sites. They also used this strategy with layman donors and used more technical microtargeting software to profile probable supporters and advertise to them directly via emails, mailers, etc. Rick Perry's gubernatorial campaigns pioneered many of these techniques, openly allowing studies to be conducted from within his own campaign. A good book for reference.

u/calladus · 5 pointsr/atheism

>which accepted as true by a wide number of scientists

No, it isn't..

Check out Quantum indeterminacy

Quantum physics shows that all physical systems (including our universe, or you and me) necessarily have randomness as part of their basic makeup.

Also see the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.


Now, having said that, it is possible to postulate a universe that looks as if it is random, even to our physics and math, but where every single state in our universe is actually predetermined. But in such a universe, we will be completely convinced that we live in an uncertain universe, and will act accordingly. Indeed, the sheer complexity of such a universe may make it seem as if it were random even to an observer who knew better - like watching a complex game of Conway's "Life". (See "Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett)

But this is philosophy, and from what I read in the science journals physicists believe that the universe we live in does support indeterminacy.

u/eek04 · 5 pointsr/booksuggestions

I'd start with What's Wrong with Jung? or The Jung Cult : Origins of a Charismatic Movement

As in all areas that have a cult-like following for something, it's a good idea to read the criticisms before you start on the cult-forming material.

u/disquieter · 4 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

A cellular automaton (CA) is an object that exists and continues to exist in a cellular space.

One kind of cellular space is an arrangement of cells in columns and rows, like a grid.

Each cell will either be ON or OFF in any single moment of time. In this basic cellular world there are rules that decide whether a cell will be ON or OFF in the next moment of time, given just two factors:

  • whether the cell is ON or OFF in the current moment; and
  • how many of its neighbors are currently ON. The second rule is adjustable. This is just a mathematical exploration, after all. :)

    If the cell is ON and not too crowded or too starved for neighbors, it will remain ON in the next moment of time. Otherwise, it will be OFF in the next moment.

    Most arbitrary arrangements of cells will disappear after just a few moments. But certain arrangements are special. They manage to persist over time. They do cool things like move across the grid, reproduce, or spawn others.

    CAs are these special arrangements of cells that manage to persist through time and/or do interesting things.

    CAs are interesting to mathematicians as systems/structures that can be studied based on starting with careful definitions of cellular worlds.

    CAs are interesting to intellectuals generally because CAs seem to resemble unicellular life forms. CAs and their worlds seem like a good metaphor for how life, a surprisingly complex and interesting phenomenon, can arise from what seem to be relatively simple rules of physics and chemistry.

    In short, CAs are cool, complex things happen in world with just a few simple rules. Kind of like life.

    If you want to read about some of the ways in which a particular CA world called the "Game of Life" (defined by mathematician John Conway) is really thought-provoking, you can read Daniel Dennett's awesome book, Freedom Evolves.

    Edit: I accidentally some words.
u/mjrice · 3 pointsr/askscience

In the realm of philosophy (not empirical science) Daniel Dennett does a (imo) nice job of making the case for free will in a deterministic universe in his book Freedom Evolves. Check it out if you are interested in this sort of thing.

u/commentsrus · 3 pointsr/EconPapers

While I'm parsing through this, I'll recommend Epstein and Axtell's "Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up." The authors use adaptive agent-based computational simulations to model population dynamics, trade, conflict, and disease. The agents possess heterogeneous characteristics and although--for the case of trade--their actions can approach a statistical equilibrium, it need not be Pareto-optimal. Trade is carried out locally based on two agents' marginal rates of substitution for two commodities, so the Walrasian central auctioneer is thrown out. They use some pretty simple rules for individual behavior yet achieve some insightful emergent results.

Edit: Also, /r/ComputationalEcon exists if anyone is interested.

u/TheYeasayer · 3 pointsr/canada

There's actually a fairly good book written on the topic titled ["Assholes: A Theory"] (http://www.amazon.ca/Assholes-A-Theory-Aaron-James/dp/0804171351) about those lone individuals who ruin everything for everybody else. The book presents a philosophical theory as to why those assholes exist, why they disturb society so much, techniques in asshole management, and many historical and contemporary examples of assholes.

u/jostler57 · 3 pointsr/China

Ha! Everything you linked me is either non-sequitur or unproven bunk. Your links prove nothing, other than your own lack of understanding, and inconsistent argument.

I’m not a scientist in this field, so I’m not replying to disprove it. I’m here to shut down your fallacious logic, and provide links to why your pseudo-science is hot garbage.

Let’s start with the non-sequitur:

Biological genetic memory doesn’t equal psychological genetic memory! One doesn’t prove the other, and you’re arguing for the latter. Biological genetic memory is merely for cell development, and other microscopic functions, and has nothing to do with brain memory.

As for psychological genetic memory, did you even read the wiki page you sent me? Straight from that page: “In modern psychology, genetic memory is generally considered a false idea.”

Further, that string of google scholar links is all about the biological genetic memory, which has zero to do with anything you’re talking about.

————

Now for the garbage fire that is your main argument and links:

The PsychologyToday link... oof, where to begin?

Carl Jung was great for many things, but his “popular theory of the collective unconscious is especially criticized as an example of over-interpretation and a failure to examine the diversity of cultural evidence.”

Also, Noam Chomsky is also great for many things, but his universal grammar theory is not related to what we’re discussing, at all.

Lastly, the creator of morphic resonance, Rupert Sheldrake, is widely panned as a pseudo-scientist by the scientific community, and his theory has never been proven, and has been disproven numerous times.

> “the concept of morphic resonance, a conjecture which lacks mainstream acceptance and has been characterised as pseudoscience.”

And more from his page:

> "there is no way that this straightforward and impressive body of evidence can be taken to imply that memories are not in the brain, still less that the brain is tuning into some indeterminate, undefined, resonating and extra-corporeal field."

And more:

> “Sheldrake's interpretation of the data was "misleading" and attributable to experimenter effects.”

This guy you’ve decided to believe is a whack job, and his theories hold as much weight as saying crystals heal the body.

Get the tinfoil off your head.

u/PaulSchipper · 3 pointsr/Political_Revolution

Every one of those platforms is something on which I'm running, so yes!

Unfortunately though this is one of my main priorities, I know it's not going to be something that will help me get elected. But once in office, you can bet I'll be proposing/cosponsoring legislation to get the ball rolling here in South Dakota. Check out The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns and It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism. They highlight a number of these endeavors.

u/Snukkems · 2 pointsr/worldnews

>What parts of Jung's work were "demonstrably proven false?"

There's a whole genre of book based around his theories being false

There are just TONS of them

You can go on for days about why his theories don't hold up. There are good bits, and those good bits live on. Depth Psychology was abandoned by psychologists as a whole, because there's nothing there.

> Are the archetypes non existent? was synchronicity not proved by his work with astrology and marriage? Could alchemy not be construed as a model for individuation? Idk what could possible have been demonstrably proven false.

You're going to try to tell me Jungs work holds up, because of astrology.

>Jung's method was simply to talk to folks.

There is no big couch that people sit on, because as it turns out, that's not an effective way to work through problems. That's an outdated method of psychology that only lives on in movies.

>I have read no Freud.

You can't read Jung and not read Freud. You're ignoring the whole reason he came up with Jungian psychology as a refutation of Freud.

>You don't think pills are good, but you think I'm wrong for saying they're bad. Soooo your point is something like " Hey! You're dumb!" ??

No, I think you're wrong for taking the role of an actual licensed therapist, whose actually studied psychology, and going up to their patients and going "You don't need drugs! Jung says we don't need drugs!"

Which is odd, because Jung liked drugs


>Lol how are you comparing Jung's talk-it-out approach to drilling a hole in someone's head?

Because they're both methods of psychology that went out of date as newer and better methods for treatment became available.

>The way I see it, capitalism is an evil system built on a mental illness ( greed )

Greed is not a mental illness. You can be right about it being an evil system, but greed is not a mental illness.

>Including profiting off the sickness of folks.

Awesome, then support Universal Health Care.

>o deny the possible effects of capitalism in every aspect of life is simply ignorant.

It's weird that we're suddenly talking about capitalism when it never came up before in the conversation, it's like you're changing the subject.

>To assume that everything is corrupt because of capitalism is also ignorant,

Weird how we're making assumptions in a conversation we weren't having.

>but I find this side of assumption to be right more often than not.

Psychology 102. Take a class on it.

u/phenylphenol · 2 pointsr/JordanPeterson

None that I'm immediately aware of -- to fully grok it, you really need to have some pretty solid statistical background; I studied this as part of doctoral training. Something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Behavioral-Sciences-Frederick-Gravetter/dp/1111830991

u/prider · 2 pointsr/funny

Assholes. There is a book written about them https://www.amazon.com/Assholes-Theory-Aaron-James/dp/0804171351

u/vampedvixen · 2 pointsr/AbuseInterrupted

I have a habit of buying presents for people that I don't like. I've sent a few people this book before: https://www.amazon.com/Assholes-Theory-Aaron-James/dp/0804171351/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473274251&sr=8-1&keywords=asshole

They deserved it. But trust me, the giver knows when they're doing it. It's not a real gift. It's $15 worth of 'I hate you and wish you would go away'.

u/TychoCelchuuu · 2 pointsr/askphilosophy

On this topic see Aaron James' aptly titled book, Assholes.

u/Mysterious_Lesions · 2 pointsr/news

In his book, Assholes, the author refers to the uncanny capability of these type of people to selectively filter out contrary reality in their outlooks.


Not in the book, but you see phenomena like this in out-of-control (for a part of their life at least) celebrities such as Justin Bieber who are surrounded by sycophants and see only adulation around them. This allows them to act and talk with impunity without really seeing or hearing the naysayers.

u/CANOODLING_SOCIOPATH · 2 pointsr/PoliticalDiscussion

I strongly suggest that you read The Victory Lab. The book goes into great detail how elections work and how the money is spent.

One thing that Obama showed was that TV ad buys don't mean all that much but instead micro targeted voter outreach is far more effective. By figuring out exactly who is more likely to vote for you and then contacting them in face to face canvassing efforts you are far more likely to get them to turn out. The volunteer canvassers will inform these likely supporters how to register if they are unregistered, where and when they can vote, what they need to bring to vote, help organize transportation if necessary, and motivate them to vote.

One thing that is also extremely important is that general elections aren't primaries. Primaries are largely persuasion games rather than voters outreach, and that is where Trump succeeded. The general election is filled with lots of people who are already decided as our country is so polarized, so increasing voter turnout among those who like you is extremely important.

u/besttrousers · 2 pointsr/AskSocialScience

The key part of your ost is:

> (based on an admittedly limited dataset)

Sure, we have limited information on events that have only happened ~50 times. Take a physical phenomena with that limited of a data set and there will be lots of uncertainty on physics too!

But if you take something like congressional elections, we can actually predict those with a very high degree of accuracy. There's actually been a lot of really exiting work done in the last few years in campaign science- read up on the Analyst Instiute which has spent several years conducting full scale RCTs on voter contact methods. There's a whole book that just came out a few weeks ago, too: The Victory Lab.

u/OrbitRock · 2 pointsr/Psychonaut

Yeah man, I think your onto some stuff.

>My question for you, is that during ones life, does our actions alone influence gene expression, and therefor, does our everyday actions influence gene expression that has to do with the 'activities (both physical and mental (ie. thoughts))' they do most?

Yes, I think this is true. For example, there's the example that is often associated with epigenetics that the children of people who experienced starvation at some point in their life would have epigenetic changes that made their body hold onto calories and store much more fat, even though they themselves had never experienced starvation. I'm sure this happens with all sorts of different environemtnal stimuli, like drugs, diet, if they've experienced trauma, etc. You might see this in a way of environmental and cultural stimuli causing physical genetic changes in unborn future generations.

>Ive came up with the idea, which is something about the evolution of beliefs, and how that in turn influences actions.

I think humans primary mode of evolution is cultural. We dictate the structure of our societies by the beleifs of our culture. And the structure of our society is quite literally the survival strategy of our species. It is our Ecological Niche. And just as coming out of trees and choosing to hunt and forage on the ground has had physical evolutionary changes on our species, so does any survival strategy alter our evolutionary course.

Our culture is how we pass down our survival strategies and the beleifs that shape how we act. So culture has very real evolutionary implications, and IS how our species primarily evolves, imo.

>here is then sub cultures, and linkages of sub cultures, for which all thought (semantics) is connected. What is this 'source' that integrates all semantics (meaning), and how does it influence our actions? Do we have the power to choose what we feed this source, and therefor spread good karma, which would then make our actions, and generally our world a better place?

I don't know if your familiar with the idea, but you should look into the concept of memetics which is a concept for how ideas and behaviors spread through a population, and looks at it in evolutionary terms. Seems really relevant to all the ideas you put forward here.

I think I agree with the idea that religion has evolutionary implications, and also the idea that your own mindset, thoughts, and behaviors, can influence the people around you, the culture, and even our evolutionary course.

Some more scientific books that are in line with what you're saying here that you might want to check out:

Evolution in Four Dimensions which seeks to show that evolution isn't just about genes, but also things like behaviors, culture, and also epigenetics.

The Social Conquest of Earth by the great biologist E.O. Wilson. This guy also developed the concept and field of study of sociobiology which looks at how organisms in a society (whether human or ant) interact and how their social systems evolve. Here he goes really deep into the biological foundations of human culture and society.

The Evolving Self; a psychology for the third millenium. I just mention this one because the way you talk about these things makes me think you'd enjoy this book. This is kind of a book that tries to get at the ethics that a modern person could adopt, and the conclusion is along the lines of doing what you can to contribute to the larger evolutionary process that we are all a part of. He goes into a lot of thinking about genes, memetics, and what impact a person could have in it all.

u/iugameprof · 2 pointsr/MMOVW

This is a good book, though a bit old now. If you're interested in agent-based simulations, a lot of great work has been done since then -- I'd suggest starting with something like Growing Artificial Societies, or reading up in general on Sugarscape and the models that have followed it.

Both these and The Limits to Growth lead to "systems thinking," which Meadows wrote about in Thinking in Systems. That book in turn (along with many others) was a big influence on my game designs, and on my book about game design and systems thinking. Understanding how systems and games work together is vital, IMO, for building virtual worlds.

u/grandzooby · 2 pointsr/Scholar

Responding publicly to: "Any recommendations for stuff to read about agent based modeling?"

One of the best resources for agent based modeling is the modeling tool, NetLogo. It's developed by Northwestern:

https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

It has TONS of sample models in quite a few different disciplines to see how things work.

Railsback and Grimm have a nice textbook style book on agent based modeling (http://www.amazon.com/Agent-Based-Individual-Based-Modeling-Practical-Introduction/dp/0691136742)

Mitchel and Resnick have a smaller book focused on the concepts of ABM called Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams. (http://www.amazon.com/Turtles-Termites-Traffic-Jams-Explorations/dp/0262680939)

Lastly Growing Artificial Societies by Epstien (http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Artificial-Societies-Science-Adaptive/dp/0262550253). He developed generative models of economics using an environment he called "Sugarscape".

Another popular modeling system is Repast (written by people at Argonne National Labs) but I think it's not as easy for the non-programmer to get started with. If you happen to be near University of Oregon, they are having a complexity conference later this month that features a day-long seminar on Repast taught by some guys from Argonne.
http://calendar.uoregon.edu/event/exploring_complexity

u/tylersalt · 2 pointsr/promos

Yeah, a bunch of it. Check out The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg.

u/Parmeniscus · 2 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

Daniel Dennett's entire book on free will is a discussion of what free will is, why it can exist in a materialistic and natural world, and the implications of defining free-will out of existence - which has been done on one side by theologians who claim free-will must be supernatural, and on the other by naive neuroscientists who claim free will is an illusion.

u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/woahdude

Daniel Dennett wrote a book called Freedom Evolves and a huge part of it is based on the concept of this game.

u/lanemik · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

Compatiblist philosophers like Dan Dennett disagree with you. The topic looks like it might interest you, so check out Freedom Evolves and Elbow Room.

u/xycr · 1 pointr/slavelabour

Looking for this book for $5 via PayPal: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0747RCDPS

​

Edit: I got it, thanks!

u/thedward · 1 pointr/programming

Thank you for your detailed reply.

You present a compelling list of things that we
don't fully understand about the human mind, but I'd
hesitate to lump all these things together in the
"concsiousness" bin. Otherwise, we risk "consciousness"
just meaning "the things about the mind we haven't
figured out yet".

> although they're superficially awake, they later have
> no memory of stretch of road they navigated.

Do we remember those things we were conscious of, or do
we say we were conscious of them because we remember
them?

> And it doesn't help to try to explain it away by
> saying "it's just that their attention was diverted
> and they were multitasking", because all of those
> issues of attention and multitasking are part of what
> we need explained by a theory of consciousness.

This is certainly a phenomenon worthy of explanation,
but seems more likely to be a result of our
limitations. If we have a only a certain amount of
processing power available, we can't put everything at
top priority at once.


> I mean, think about it: a hypothetical AI might be
> able to pass the verbal Turing test and pass various
> visual and problem solving equivalent tests that have
> been proposed, but not be able to multitask, and not
> be able to divert its attention away from the world
> around it.

Or, it might be able to pass several verbal turing
tests at once, while creating a new branch of physics
and writing a play about existentialism. It might have
any arbitrary number of loci of conciousness limited
only by available processing power and memory. Only
having one locus of consciousness seems to be more of a
bug than a feature.

> Therefore, the usual "thought is all about logic"
> notion of AI, isn't even trying to explain certain
> things that just about everyone has noticed
> informally about the human mind.

I don't think anyone working in AI these days
subscribes to that particular notion. There is still
AI work going on using logic programming and such, but
I don't think anyone believes that is the pathway to
human level abstract thought.

> Another area is about the conscious mind versus the
> subconscious mind. There is controversy over whether
> the latter exists, but if it does, how are the two
> different?

I think anyone who would argue against the existance
of the subconcious mind is either being disingenuous
or playing terminology games. I'd argue that the
difference between what is conscious and subconcious
is largely a matter of processing priority and what
actually gets recorded into memory.


> Yet aside from trivial things (like startle
> reflexes), comparatively little is known about the
> subject. How are things allowed by the pre-conscious
> to become conscious, and why?

If we imagine each thought having a volume, then we
could say that the one with the loudest volume is the
one we actually hear, or are conscious of. That thought
can choose to raise the volume of a different one,
or you can have an emotional response that raises or
lowers the volume of various thoughts.

Our analytical thought is driven by our emotions. Our
emotions give us cues (sometimes commands) about what
is important.

> And how does all of this fit in with our intuitive
> feelings that we have free will?

The free will discussion is a whole other bag of
worms. I would highly recommend checking out [Freedom
Evolves](http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Evolves-Daniel-C
-Dennett/dp/0142003840/) by Daniel Dennett. Even if you
don't agree with his conclusions, I think you would
find it interesting.

> Those things, and more, should be explained by a
> theory of consciousness.

I think it more likely than not that they will
eventually be explained by several different theories.

We may end up with a bunch of different theories that
explain almost all of these things, but I bet whatever
is leftover will still get labeled "consciousness". :)


> I believe that it may be possible to have some kind
> of strong AI without a theory of consciousness, and
> without the AI "being conscious", but I would think
> it's obvious that it could not be a human-like strong
> AI.

I strongly supsect that any AI we create will not be
very human like at all. Though it is possible we may
end up with uploaded people running on simulations of
the physical brain.

> I further believe that it could not duplicate the
> full range of human cognitive skills, absent such a
> thing. (We already know that it can do somethings as
> well or better, like play chess, but what about the
> entire range?)

An inhuman AI might be less competent than humans at
things specifically human (things that depend on our
particular emotional complement) or an AI that was
significantly smarter (whatever that means) than us
might be able to model human emotions well enough to
fake them when appropriate.

> This overlaps with, but is not identical, to the
> important role that emotion plays in human cognition
> (if emotion is not otherwise accounted for in a
> strong AI theory, then put it in the consciousness
> theory).

Emotion plays a key part in human consciousness, but it
may be that it is just one possible way of directing
consciousness. Even if we create AI with something like
emotion, it is unlikely that their emotions would map
directly onto ours.

This is fun.

Thanks again.

u/big_bad_bunny · 1 pointr/atheism

recommended reading: Freedom evolves by Daniel C. Dennett.

I found it a tough but very interesting, enlightening and liberating read. The book seems to downloadable as a free pdf too, but at first glance I couldn't find any sites that I trust enough to download from.

EDIT: Wikipedia article

u/Crazy__Eddie · 1 pointr/DebateAnAtheist

I could go on and on about how uninformed your post is, but it would take time and it would most likely be completely pointless and unappreciated. So I'll just give you this as a starting point to inform yourself. Obviously not the only way of looking at things but certainly an interesting one.

u/larkasaur · 1 pointr/skeptic

Dennett's book Freedom Evolves is a well thought out explanation of how free will coexists with determinism.

u/Eh_Priori · 1 pointr/TrueAtheism

Denett also wrote a book or two on the topic.

u/shizzy0 · 1 pointr/gaming

Strange article. I liked how he put the game into a serious context, but there are some statements that aren't well founded.

> Science in the shadow of Darwin therefore became concerned not with prescribing rigid order to the universe, but rather with observing the intrinsically random behavior of natural systems. There is a principle of spontaneity at work in the universe, and Darwin touched his fingers to its pulse.

We model genetic mutation as a random event, but that doesn't mean it happens spontaneously without any physical cause. We can't distinguish between a truly random event and a huge causal network whose components we lack observable access to.

> Determinism, in the long run, is untenable, and anything we cannot believe, in the long run, cannot possibly be true.

"Anything we cannot believe cannot possibly be true." Who says? This author obviously, but there's no principle that demonstrates we have a perfect receptacle to understand and believe what's true. Death probably won't serve as an entrance to a cushy afterlife. Lots of people refuse to believe that, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

Overall, I liked the article and the game sounds intriguing. I can see why the author wants to preserve notions like free will, but I don't see determinism being anti-thetical to free will. Daniel Dennett has a neat examination of this topic in his book Freedom Evolves where he demonstrates a world both with and without determinism that still has what he defines as free will.

u/BigXris · 1 pointr/AmItheAsshole

Every time I’m in this sub I think of this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Assholes-Theory-Aaron-James/dp/0804171351/ref=nodl_

This is actually a really good book about why people think they are special and how they’re not. Problem is, it kind of turned me into an asshole, because now I hunt assholes and tell them all about themselves. Which makes me an asshole.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Peace out, assholes!

u/DReicht · 1 pointr/philosophy

Eugenics isn't really eugenics. I suggest Evolution in Four Dimensions if you're interested in the philosophy of genetics.

u/fauxmystic · 1 pointr/biology

I highly recommend the book "Evolution in Four Dimensions" for this discussion. https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Four-Dimensions-Epigenetic-Philosophical/dp/0262600692

u/Baelzebubba · 1 pointr/conspiracy

The only one with any actual science you mention is Tesla.

Cayce and Skinner? Come on man. You are ready to bite at any prechewed rubbish?

Grab yourself a book

You ain't winning any credibility with that tripe.

Teslas problem was he said things like "People have given up on experimentation over math" well the thing is every single thing he truly did can be expressed mathematically. He could have saved himself lota of effort by just doing the math.

u/Just_Another_Staffer · 1 pointr/PoliticalScience

Here is a short reading list that should give you the essentials:

Some of these will read like stories, others are more academic in nature. There is both Canadian and American material included. overall, you should get a pretty good impression of how political campaigns are planned and how they actually roll out.

  1. Burton, M.J. & Shea, D.M. (2010). Campaign craft: The strategies, tactics, and art of political campaign management (4th ed.). Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers. https://www.amazon.com/Campaign-Craft-Strategies-Political-Management/dp/031338343X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1479856930&sr=8-2&keywords=campaign+craft

  2. Green, D.P. & Gerber, A.S. (2015). Get out the vote: How to increase voter turnout (3rd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. https://www.amazon.com/Get-Out-Vote-Increase-Turnout/dp/081572568X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479857921&sr=1-1&keywords=get+out+the+vote+how+to+increase+voter+turnout

  3. Thurber, J.A. & Nelson, C.J. (Eds.) (2014). Campaigns and elections American style: Transforming American politics (4th ed.). Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. https://www.amazon.com/Campaigns-Elections-American-Transforming-Politics/dp/0813348358/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479857939&sr=1-1&keywords=Campaign+And+Elections+American

  4. Faucheux, R.A. (Ed.) (2003). Winning elections: Political campaign management, strategy, and tactics. New York: M. Evans & Company. https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Elections-Political-Campaign-Management/dp/1590770269/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479857978&sr=1-1&keywords=Winning+elections%3A+Political+campaign+management%2C+strategy%2C+and+tactics

  5. Issenberg, S. (2012). The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns. New York: Broadway Books. https://www.amazon.com/Victory-Lab-Science-Winning-Campaigns/dp/0307954803/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479858008&sr=1-1&keywords=the+victory+lab+the+secret+science+of+winning+campaigns

  6. Laschinger, J. (2016). Campaign Confessions: Tales from the War Rooms of Politics. Toronto: Dundurn. https://www.amazon.com/Campaign-Confessions-Tales-Rooms-Politics/dp/1459736532/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479858025&sr=1-1&keywords=campaign+confessions

  7. Delacourt, S. (2013). Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose us and we Choose them. Madeira Park, BC: Douglas and McIntyre. https://www.amazon.com/Shopping-Votes-Politicians-Choose-Them/dp/1771621095/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479858059&sr=1-1&keywords=Shopping+for+votes
u/socalian · 1 pointr/funny

There is a ton of political science to back it up. But if you want to read just one book on the subject, I would recommend The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg. He covers research going back to the late 19th century up through the most recent electoral cycles, as well as the way that research has be put into practice by campaigns. You should also read "The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A
Field Experiment
" [pdf] by Gerber and Green (2000), which is the most significant modern paper on the subject.

u/PragMATHimatiCOOL · 1 pointr/CrazyIdeas

No worries, I appreciate your continued interest and not dismissing this set of thought-patterns outright since there’s many compelling off-ramps / reasons they are not as common as you’d expect real/correct ones to be! :) Maybe the real “crazy idea” to me here is that it’s kind of wild how vastly common the non-reality-matching vague understanding is, when there is one that is more compelling / coherent / reality-observation-matching. I understand why we as humans have mostly begun thinking there, though, and it’s pretty interesting from a historical/evolutionary/meme-evolution angle.

Viewing the “mechanistic view” as opposed to “free will” is a false dichotomy—it’s crazy common though! In reality, the bundle of patterns we regard as “free will” is an emergent pattern FROM mechanistic patterns evolving. (In case you’re suuuper interested in a thorough slaying of the false dichotomy, the concisely-named Freedom Evolves by neuroscience-friendly philosopher-scientist Dennett is a mountain of science-backed evidence on the topic—but my caveat is he’s more annoyingly dense than anything you’ve just read from me! b/c this is hard shit we’re not very well set up / evolved to naturally comprehend—watching some YouTube videos of his might be more enjoyable)

I think the reason many folks view a vague concept of free will as vaguely opposed to a mechanistic view is often just (1) a failure of imagination — I can tell you I believe with extremely high confidence that there’s nothing non-physical about our brain’s operation in the mechanistic universe, and that doesn’t strike me as odd, wrong or irreconcilable. It just strikes me as—we were not historically great at thinking about how the very high level pattern of feeling of free will emerges from the low level pattern of the brain—given we didn’t even understand how the brain recognized objects based on our vision until less than 10 years ago—and it didn’t matter for our continued existence as patterns in the universe so why would we have evolved to care :D

Reason #2 is that many cling to a notion that the MIND must be somehow distinct from the BRAIN (i.e., “magical person sitting in your brain controlling it with levers” — we’ve peered into the brain and understand it quite well — that’s just not how the brain’s constituent patterns are structured). Why cling to such a notion? Why did we assume it’s distinct? Because it fits many of our preconceived world views — it helps us hold on to human special-ness, our religious precepts, hell—many words (fossils of past ideas) we are using to discuss with one another right now have these prejudices / assumptions baked in to them (notice the “I”s, “you”s, etc. — these are artificial distinctions we’ve just found evolutionarily / continued-pattern-existence useful).

We’re just in the last 5 or so years developing software thinking patterns (AI, narrowly focused than AGI) that have surpassed human-based thinking patterns in more and more fields. I can tell you with high confidence there is no ceiling that separates our bodies and brains and that which can be accomplished through software (even set within the Game of Life — just with a really large game board—the universe is vast like a super giant game of life game board). Those closest to development consider AGI something that will happen this century (myself included).

I believe there’s value in this reality-matching view becoming more common. It’s kind of like taking a dump and seeing things clearly when it clicks—damn—reality is all that is real. He’s a pattern, she’s a pattern, we’re all patterns, and that’s all cool!!

u/iaintbrainwashed · -1 pointsr/writing

Carl Jung is intellectually a fucking joke. He settled for spirits, seances, and the make believe. Raised by a lunatic mother, he spent the rest of his life trying to put the pieces of his shattered-dual-personality-existence-psyche back together. Follow in that shadow at your own peril.


“In this detailed and systematic critique of the theories of psychologist Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), Don McGowan exposes the many flaws in Jungian analysis and methodology. Beginning with Jung's interpretation of religion and his attempts to draw parallels between mythology and his patients' dreams, McGowan finds a consistent lack of rigor, a highly selective use of evidence, and a tendency toward broad generalization, which ignores important cultural distinctions.”


“Jung's popular theory of the collective unconscious is especially criticized as an example of over-interpretation and a failure to examine the diversity of cultural evidence.”


https://www.amazon.com/What-Wrong-Jung-Don-Mcgowan/dp/0879758597


“This reassessment of Carl Jung and the present-day applications of his theories will please few followers of Jungian thought. Noll argues that Jungian analysis has evolved to a cult of personality around its founder, to the point of becoming a religion--with Jung as its prophet, and today's analysts its priesthood. If it's a religious movement, Noll argues, there's too much focus on economic and personal promotion. As a way to explain the workings of the human mind, Noll asserts, Jungian theory contains little that is truly new, borrowing as it does from nineteenth-century occultism, social Darwinism, and neopaganism. Noll further takes to task many cornerstones of Jungian thought, such as the collective unconscious.”



https://www.amazon.com/Jung-Cult-Origins-Charismatic-Movement/dp/0684834235/ref=pd_sim_sbs_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=51KRdxqf8RL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL320_SR208%2C320_&psc=1&refRID=8Z9GVGMYEGSVGF7HXHN7


“His system has a revelatory, unproveable basis of much introspection and fantasising ("creative imagination") firmly grounded in the Aryan "New Age" ideas of his day, spiritualism and gnostic ideas spread through Theosophical publishing and the vitalistic, Lamarckian, Haeckelian "Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny" pseudo-science of his childhood. It is ironic that nearly 100 years later he is used as an "authority" by the latest round of "New Age intellectuals".


“Jung's followers have a large Internet presence.”


http://www.prem-rawat-bio.org/gurus/jung.htm