Episode 320: Forgive Me (Kafka's "A Hunger Artist")
Very Bad Wizards
David and Tamler return to one of their favorites, Frans Kafka, this time on his beautiful and distressing short story “The Hunger Artist,” a story that brims with metaphorical possibilities but also implores us to accept it on its own mysterious terms. Plus gooning. by Daniel Kolitz [harpers.org] [urbandictionary.com] [wikipedia.org] [kafka-online.info]
info_outline
Episode 319: The Shadow of the Object (Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia")
Very Bad Wizards
David and Tamler transfer their libidinal energy to Freud’s 1917 article “Mourning and Melancholia,” in which he tries to understand what's going on with depression, attempts to distinguish it from normal grief, and arrives at some ideas that laid the groundwork for his later theory of normal human development. Plus, another blind ranking segment--this time Tamler gives David a list of rappers to rank blindly. Finally, in between segments we make an announcement about the topic of our next bonus series (it's gonna be epic). [wikipedia.org] [sas.upenn.edu] ...
info_outline
Episode 318: A PTA Meeting
Very Bad Wizards
David and Tamler share some brief thoughts about Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest masterpiece One Battle After Another before going deep on his most underrated movie Inherent Vice. We explore the many connections between the two movies - Pynchon adaptations, shadowy forces, snitches who abandon their families, the blend of comedy and political fatalism, and the intrinsic and external forces that threaten relationships and resistance to power. [Note: some spoilers to OBAA in the opening segment but we note where they begin, and of course full spoilers to Inherent Vice.] A really fun...
info_outline
Episode 317: For Shame
Very Bad Wizards
What is the psychology of shame? Is the experience of shame a human universal? How can we investigate the nature of shame across cultures? David and Tamler dive into Richard Shweder’s “Towards a Deep Cultural Psychology of Shame.” We talk about the methodological challenges of studying shame in other contexts and languages, the virtues of ethnographic approaches, studying literature, and more. Plus, bloody hell are the Brits starting queues at pubs? Bollocks! by Will Dunn [newstatesmen.com] Shweder, R. A. (2003). Social Research: An International...
info_outline
Episode 316: A Four-Letter Man (Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber")
Very Bad Wizards
David and Tamler go big game hunting and explore their first Hemingway short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” We dig into his characteristic themes of courage, cowardice, shifting power dynamics in marriages, and what it truly means to live a happy life. Plus, neuroscience may be complex, but can these AI generated neuroscience jokes tickle David’s funny bone? And a super timely discussion of an urgent issue: The Cracker Barrel logo. [apnews.com] [punsify.com] by Ernest Hemingway [wikipedia.org]
info_outline
Episode 315: Ceaseless Striving (Schopenhauer’s Pessimism)
Very Bad Wizards
David and Tamler tackle the topic chosen by our beloved Patreon supporters in the first VBW madness tournament – Schopenhauer. We discuss his essays “On the Sufferings of the World” and “The Vanity of Existence,” their strikingly modern perspectives on human life and behavior and the influences Schopenhauer took from Eastern thought. Plus, David has Tamler do a blind ranking of movie directors. [plato.stanford.edu] [iep.utm.edu] [full-text from gutenberg.org]
info_outline
Episode 314: The In-Betweeny Place
Very Bad Wizards
David and Tamler go long on McDonagh’s 2008 masterpiece "In Bruges." We talk about the terrific performances and all the weighty themes - sin, guilt, redemption, honor, language, and very inappropriate jokes. Plus philosophers talk about “sex within the discipline” and Tamler can’t handle it. [dailynous.com] [wikipedia.org]
info_outline
Episode 313: The Spontaneous Eruption of Now
Very Bad Wizards
David and Tamler try to wrap their heads around the metaphysics of past and future via the Borges essay(s) “A New Refutation of Time.” What does it mean to be a time skeptic or a time realist for that matter? If you’re a Berkeleyan idealist and Humean skeptic about the self, do you have to deny succession and simultaneity? The world, unfortunately, is real; and we, unfortunately, are Very Bad Wizards. Plus for centuries philosophers insisted that you couldn’t measure qualia, but then scientists just went ahead and… measured it! ...
info_outline
Episode 312: MechaSkeptic
Very Bad Wizards
David and Tamler return to David Hume’s somewhat slippery brand of skepticism, this time focusing Chapter 12 of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Plus speaking of things to be skeptical about, we dive into a recent paper called “Your Brain on ChatGPT” – does neuroscience show that LLM users incur a “cognitive debt”? [wikipedia.org] Hume's Enquiry Section 12: [davidhume.org]
info_outline
Episode 311: The Way to Dusty Death (Shakespeare's "Macbeth")
Very Bad Wizards
David and Tamler screw their courage to the sticking place and talk about their first Shakespeare play – The Tragedy of Macbeth. Plus we select 16 topics for our first VBW topic tournament suggested and voted by our beloved Patreon patrons.
info_outlineDavid and Tamler share a few brief thoughts on the election and then raise some questions about Tucker Carlson being attacked by a demon as he slept in the woods with his wife and four dogs (still don’t believe in ghosts, people?). In the main segment we talk about one of the most popular measures in social psychology – the cognitive reflection test (CRT). Originally designed to identify differences in people’s ability to employ reflection (system 2) to override their initial intuition (system 1), this three-item measure has mushroomed into its own industry with researchers linking CRT scores to job performance, religious belief, conspiracy theorizing and more. But what psychological attribute is this test supposed to measure exactly, and how can we determine its validity? And has the dual process system 1/system 2 framework outlived its usefulness?
Tucker Carlson was totally mauled by a demon and not scratched by his dogs [youtube.com]
Frederick, S. (2005). Cognitive reflection and decision making. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(4), 25-42.
Blacksmith, N., Yang, Y., Ruark, G., & Behrend, T. (2018, July). A Validity Analysis of the Cognitive Reflection Test Using an Item-Response-Tree Model. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2018, No. 1, p. 18090). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.
Erceg, N., Galić, Z., & Ružojčić, M. (2020). A reflection on cognitive reflection–testing convergent/divergent validity of two measures of cognitive reflection. Judgment and Decision making, 15(5), 741-755.
Meyer, A., & Frederick, S. (2023). The formation and revision of intuitions. Cognition, 240, 105380.