{"id":3942,"date":"2016-01-29T17:18:51","date_gmt":"2016-01-30T01:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=3942"},"modified":"2016-06-10T14:03:42","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T22:03:42","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2016\/01\/29\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-34","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 34"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here are some things I found interesting this week. See the bottom for context.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. On The Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs<\/a> (David Robert Grimes, PLOS One): Oxford physicist Grimes came up with an equation that shows how likely a conspiracy will be to succeed under ideal conditions. Of particular interest is the chart on the bottom of page 11, showing that a conspiracy with more than 502 people has a 95% likelihood of exposure after just 25 years. Reading that puts 1 Corinthians 15:3\u20136 in a new light: \u201cFor what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.\u201d Please note that there are all kinds of assumptions in the paper that are subject to challenge\u2026 but if one of your friends brings this study up you should mention this passage to them. \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n
  2. Certitude And Seeking The Truth<\/a> (Peter Wehner, Commentary). Recommended by an alumnus (the recommendation was actually for a blog post<\/a> excerpting this article, but I thought the whole thing was worth reading \u2014 it aligns nicely with my disclaimer at the bottom).<\/li>\n
  3. My Major, Myself:<\/a> (Olga Khazan, The Atlantic). What does your major reveal (probabilistically) about your personality?<\/li>\n
  4. Why Humans Find It Hard To Do Away With Religion<\/a> (John Gray, The New Statesman): Gray is himself an atheist. My favorite line: \u201cThe inveterate human inclination to religion is, in effect, the atheist problem of evil.\u201d This isn\u2019t quite right but it is amusing.<\/li>\n
  5. People Can Be Convinced They Committed A Non-Existant Crime In Just Three Hours<\/a> (Bec Crew, Science Alert). Disturbing. This is a summary of the findings of an academic paper: Constructing Rich False Memories of Committing Crime<\/a> (Shaw & Porter, Psychological Science).<\/li>\n
  6. How Religion Is Shaping the 2016 Presidential Race<\/a> (Pew Research). If politics is your thing, this article will be interesting.<\/li>\n
  7. Are Academics Disproportionately Gay?<\/a> (Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Education). The tl;dr version is yes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Why Do You Send This Email?<\/b><\/h3>\n
    \n

    In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar produced shrewd warriors \u201cwho understood the times and knew what Israel should do\u201d (1 Chron 12:32). In a similar way, we need to become wise people whose faith interacts with the world.<\/p>\n

    To that end, on Fridays I\u2019ve been sharing articles\/resources I have found helpful recently in thinking about broader cultural, societal and theological issues (be sure to see the disclaimer at the bottom). I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may continue the tradition of Issachar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Disclaimer<\/b><\/h3>\n

    Chi Alpha is not a partisan organization. To paraphrase another minister: we are not about the donkey\u2019s agenda and we are not about the elephant\u2019s agenda \u2014 we are about the Lamb\u2019s agenda. Having said that, I read widely (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ideological Turing test<\/a> and in part because I do not believe I can fairly say \u201cI agree\u201d or \u201cI disagree\u201d until I can say \u201cI understand\u201d) 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\u2019ll usually mention it).<\/p>\n

    Also, remember that I\u2019m not reporting news \u2014 I\u2019m giving you a selection of things I found interesting. There\u2019s a lot happening in the world that\u2019s not making an appearance here because I haven\u2019t found stimulating articles written about it.<\/p>\n

    Past emails are archived at http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/category\/links<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Here are some things I found interesting this week. See the bottom for context. On The Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs (David Robert Grimes, PLOS One): Oxford physicist Grimes came up with an equation that shows how likely a conspiracy will be to succeed under ideal conditions. Of particular interest is the chart on the bottom of \u2026 Continue reading \u201cThings Glen Found Interesting, Volume 34\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[131,124,159,113,117],"class_list":["post-3942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","tag-academia","tag-apologetically-interesting","tag-justice","tag-lgbtq","tag-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-11A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3942"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3944,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942\/revisions\/3944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}