ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax


This is further confirmation of the research in public relations that we all, even "objective" scientists and economists, make decisions for emotional reasons first, then search for a rationale to defend those emotional decisions. The ability to be objective and discern truth requires neutralizing the emotions by putting yourself in such a state of mind that you do not care about the what the results or implications of the truth that you discover might be. In other words, you face the consequences of one set of facts being true, verses the consequences of their not being true, and you decide you care more about the truth than the consequences. That's tough to do!
I have actually read some scientists who have considered the claims of creation science and rejected them not on scinetific grounds, but because they thought the consequences were to awful to imagine.
This is further confirmation of the research in public relations that we all, even "objective" scientists and economists, make decisions for emotional reasons first, then search for a rationale to defend those emotional decisions.
Yep, for example.
I think this whole theory sprang from emotion, not reason, and probably after the fact. I am especially suspicious of the assignment of tendentious functions to particular brain regions. Shermer no doubt strongly wanted this experiment to come out one particular way.