Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 449

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

This is vol­ume 449, which is not a super inter­est­ing num­ber. It has this going for it: its base 3 rep­re­sen­ta­tion (121122) begins with the same dig­its as its base 7 rep­re­sen­ta­tion (1211).

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Reli­gious Wor­ship Atten­dance in Amer­i­ca: Evi­dence from Cell­phone Data (Devin G. Pope, NBER): “I estab­lish sev­er­al key find­ings. First, 73% of peo­ple step into a reli­gious place of wor­ship at least once dur­ing the year on the pri­ma­ry day of wor­ship (e.g. Sun­days for most Chris­t­ian church­es). How­ev­er, only 5% of Amer­i­cans attend ser­vices ‘week­ly’, far few­er than the ~22% who report to do so in sur­veys. The num­ber of occa­sion­al vs. fre­quent atten­ders varies sub­stan­tial­ly by reli­gion. I esti­mate that approx­i­mate­ly 45M Amer­i­cans attend wor­ship ser­vices in a typ­i­cal week of the year, but with large changes around Hol­i­days (e.g. East­er).”
   • Excerpt is from the abstract. Author is a prof of behav­ioral sci­ence and eco­nom­ics at U Chica­go.
   • See also this (some­what harsh) cri­tique by Lyman Stone: https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1779889740260499820 (read the whole thread for the cri­tique)
   • Response from Devin Pope, on reli­gious atten­dance (Devin Pope, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “There are def­i­nite­ly lim­i­ta­tions with the cell­phone data (I’ve had about 100 peo­ple tell me that I’m not doing a good job track­ing Ortho­dox Jews!). I know that these issues exist. But sur­vey data has its own issues. Social desir­abil­i­ty bias and oth­er issues could lead to wide­ly incor­rect esti­mates of the num­ber of peo­ple who fre­quent­ly attend ser­vices (and sur­veys are going to have a hard time sam­pling Ortho­dox Jews too!). Giv­en the dif­fi­cul­ty of mea­sur­ing some of these ques­tions, I think that a new method – even with lim­i­ta­tions – is use­ful.”
   • Lyman Stone help­ful­ly replies to Devin Pope (Twit­ter thread)
   • Extreme­ly inter­est­ing through­out. If you don’t have time to dive in then just read the abstract of the ini­tial arti­cle and the Stone’s final Twit­ter thread.
2. Amer­i­cans are still not wor­ried enough about the risk of world war (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “So if you were liv­ing at any point in 1931 through 1940, you would already be wit­ness­ing con­flicts that would even­tu­al­ly turn into the blood­i­est, most cat­a­clysmic war that human­i­ty has yet known — but you might not real­ize it. You would be stand­ing in the foothills of the Sec­ond World War, but unless you were able to make far-sight­ed pre­dic­tions, you wouldn’t know what hor­rors lurked in the near future. In case the par­al­lel isn’t blind­ing­ly obvi­ous, we might be stand­ing in the foothills of World War 3 right now. If WW3 hap­pens, future blog­gers might list the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in a time­line like the one I just gave.”
   • This was pub­lished before Iran attacked Israel. btw.
3. How to Stop Los­ing 17,500 Kid­neys (San­ti Ruiz, Sub­stack): “Greg and the researchers that he worked with showed that there are 17,500 kid­neys, 7,500 liv­ers, 1,500 hearts, and 1,500 lungs that go untrans­plant­ed every year from poten­tial Amer­i­can organ donors. For scale, that means the Unit­ed States does not need to have a wait­ing list for liv­ers, hearts, or lungs with­in three years, and the kid­ney wait­ing list should come way down. That data con­vinced not only the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, but also the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. This reform move­ment has now crossed three admin­is­tra­tions, and that almost nev­er hap­pens.”
4. Should We Change Species to Save Them? (Emi­ly Anthes, New York Times): “In some ways, assist­ed evo­lu­tion is an argu­ment — or, per­haps, an acknowl­edg­ment — that there is no step­ping back, no future in which humans do not pro­found­ly shape the lives and fates of wild crea­tures. To Dr. Harley, it has become clear that pre­vent­ing more extinc­tions will require human inter­ven­tion, inno­va­tion and effort.”
   • Includ­ing part­ly for the amaz­ing head­er art. Unlocked.
5. Abol­ish Grades (Bethany Lor­den, Stan­ford Review): “I have earned an ‘A’ on archi­tec­ture draw­ings which were not my most care­ful, on physics prob­lem sets that I did not ful­ly under­stand, on sto­ries which were not my most cre­ative. Some­thing is bro­ken in the grad­ing sys­tem. Feed­back on work ought to be in words, not let­ters, and it should be rel­a­tive to a stu­den­t’s best work, not to the per­for­mance of the class.”
   • Bethany is a stu­dent in Chi Alpha.
6. Mate Poach­ing: Social Taboo or Healthy Way to Find Love? (Kevin Ben­nett, Psy­chol­o­gy Today): “Psy­cho­log­i­cal research sug­gests that 10 to 20 per­cent of new rela­tion­ships among het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples are formed direct­ly from mate poach­ing. One study found that 10 to 15 per­cent of par­tic­i­pants’ cur­rent rela­tion­ships were the result of suc­cess­ful mate poach­ing. Anoth­er study sur­veyed under­grad­u­ate stu­dents and found that 20 per­cent were cur­rent­ly involved in a rela­tion­ship that began this way.… Research sug­gests that mate poachers—and those most sus­cep­ti­ble to poaching—share some char­ac­ter­is­tics. There is a link between nar­cis­sism, infi­deli­ty, uncom­mit­ted sex, and mate poach­ing, and these find­ings are not lim­it­ed to mod­ern indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries.”
   • That’s a lot of rela­tion­ships begun on the shady side! A bit of advice from a long­time observ­er of col­lege romances: if they cheat with you they are like­ly to cheat on you.
7. Switch to Web-Based Sur­veys Dur­ing COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic Left Out the Most Reli­gious, Cre­at­ing a False Impres­sion of Rapid Reli­gious Decline (Schn­abel et al, Soci­ol­o­gy of Reli­gion):  “Although at first glance it appears that intense reli­gion declined dra­mat­i­cal­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion reveals how this shift is a func­tion of changes in how the sur­vey was field­ed rather than Amer­i­cans turn­ing away from reli­gion dur­ing a time of cri­sis.… reli­gion is more per­sis­tent than it appears, intense­ly reli­gious peo­ple are less like­ly to agree to par­tic­i­pate in sur­veys, and data col­lec­tion efforts like the typ­i­cal in-per­son GSS are invalu­able for accu­rate­ly esti­mat­ing reli­gion and oth­er ide­o­log­i­cal fac­tors in the Unit­ed States asso­ci­at­ed with the like­li­hood of par­tic­i­pat­ing in sur­veys.”
   • The authors are soci­ol­o­gists at Cor­nell, Har­vard, and NYU. Fas­ci­nat­ing.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Sticky Sit­u­a­tion (Load­ing Artist) — there are two kinds of peo­ple
• A Dun­geons & Drag­ons actu­al play show is going to sell out Madi­son Square Gar­den (Aman­da Sil­ber­ling, Tech Crunch): “Dropout’s Dun­geons & Drag­ons actu­al play show, Dimen­sion 20, is get­ting pret­ty close to sell­ing out a 19,000-seat venue just hours after tick­et sales opened to the gen­er­al pub­lic. To the unini­ti­at­ed, it may seem absurd to go to a mas­sive sports are­na and watch peo­ple play D&D. As one Red­di­tor com­ment­ed, ‘This bog­gles my mind. When I was play­ing D&D in the ear­ly eight­ies, I would have nev­er believed that there was a future where peo­ple would watch live D&D at Madi­son Square Gar­den. It’s incom­pre­hen­si­ble to me.’ ”

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In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.