Checklist of cognitive distortions

And how to counteract them! This is a seven-page PDF, taken from the book The Feeling Good Handbook (David, Burns D., 1999).

The first list is of ten cognitive distortions and their descriptions: All or nothing thinking; Overgeneralization; Mental filter; Discounting the positives; Jumping to conclusions; Magnification or minimalization; Emotional reasoning; “Should” statements; Labeling; Personalization and blame.

More lists: Ten ways to untwist your thinking; Ways to challenge automatic thoughts; Your thoughts and feelings.

https://arfamiliesfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Cognitive-Distortions.pdf. David’s website is https://feelinggood.com/.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

…Harry hesitated. He couldn’t help himself. Actually, under the circumstances, he shouldn’t be helping himself. It was right and proper to be curious. “What else can you do?”
Professor McGonagall turned into a cat.
Harry scrambled back unthinkingly, backpedalling so fast that he tripped over a stray stack of books and landed hard on his bottom with a thwack. His hands came down to catch himself without quite reaching properly, and there was a warning twinge in his shoulder as the weight came down unbraced.
At once the small tabby cat morphed back up into a robed woman. “I’m sorry, Mr. Potter,” said the witch, sounding sincere, though the corners of her lips were twitching upwards. “I should have warned you.”
Harry was breathing in short gasps. His voice came out choked. “You can’t DO that!“
“It’s only a Transfiguration,” said Professor McGonagall. “An Animagus transformation, to be exact.”
“You turned into a cat! A SMALL cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That’s not just an arbitrary rule, it’s implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signalling! And cats are COMPLICATED! A human mind can’t just visualise a whole cat’s anatomy and, and all the cat biochemistry, and what about the neurology? How can you go on thinking using a cat-sized brain?”
Professor McGonagall’s lips were twitching harder now. “Magic.”

I’m only up to chapter 8 of 122, but this is so funny… in every chapter so far. Check it out. https://www.hpmor.com/.

First gene therapy for Tay-Sachs disease

Tay-Sachs is a severe neurological disease caused by a deficiency in an enzyme called HexA. This enzyme breaks down a fatlike substance that normally exists in very small, harmless amounts in the brain. Without HexA, however, this fatlike substance can accumulate to toxic levels that damage and kill neurons…
Our treatment uses two harmless viral vectors to deliver DNA instructions to brain cells that teach them how to produce the missing enzyme… The first child who received our gene therapy treatment was age 2 ½, with late-stage disease symptoms. Three months after treatment, they had better muscle control and could focus their eyes. Now at age 5, the child is in stable health and is seizure-free, which usually isn’t possible for patients at this age.

https://theconversation.com/first-gene-therapy-for-tay-sachs-disease-successfully-given-to-two-children-17687 0

HTTP Cats

This is a little techie, but funny. The point is that when your browser asks for a web page, the computer that sends the web page back to you includes a three-digit status code. The first digit says whether the request is in progress, was successful, had a client or server error etc. From Wikipedia:

1xx informational response – the request was received, continuing process
2xx successful – the request was successfully received, understood, and accepted
3xx redirection – further action needs to be taken in order to complete the request
4xx client error – the request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled
5xx server error – the server failed to fulfill an apparently valid request

Anyway, this site will supply a cat picture (yes!) for each return code: https://http.cat/. Click on the picture for an expanded picture. Example: 400 = Bad Request:

The Endgames of Bad Faith Communication

Seeking to understand others and communicate honestly is an essential democratic virtue. Can it be maintained in the digital age?…

Powerful disincentives and barriers to making this choice have been put in place during many decades of escalating cultural conflict. Understanding why it has become so hard to engage in good faith communication is the first step towards shifting the cultural balance back in its favor…

The article includes “Some signs of good faith communication” (noting that any of these can be faked), plus “Some signs of bad faith communication” (and noting that these can be disguised and denied).

In some political discussions today, it is common to hear that “you can’t engage in good faith with Nazis!” A generous interpretation of this statement is that there are truly unreasonable people who must not be trusted because they have proven themselves to be dangerous and unethical. But this is not an argument against good faith communication in general. It’s an argument against engaging in naive forms of good faith communication, which would play into the hands of those actively seeking to cause harm to others. Likewise, for those who have been lied to historically and treated with disrespect by specific groups, naively engaging with those same groups again in good faith would be foolish.

2,100 words: https://consilienceproject.org/endgames-of-bad-communication/.

And here is someone who is working on good-faith communication:

Sharon McMahon, the 45-year-old Instagram star in question, regularly performs what amounts to a magic trick. Hearing information that challenges our beliefs does not usually feel good. Yet participants in McMahon’s abortion workshop did not seem to want the lesson to end…

3,100 words: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/sharon-says-so-podcast-mcmahon/661150/

Celestial white noise

“White noise” (evenly-distributed random noise) from the sky:

This 10 hour ambient track of soothing white noise masks distracting sounds to help you sleep better and focus at work or school. The video is ten hours long so that you can achieve deep sleep and not be woken by extraneous noises in the night. You’ll enjoy the benefits of relaxation, focus, deeper sleep and freedom from outside distractions.

The sound, uniquely crafted and based upon cosmic radiation, is similar to brown noise but has more bass and less on the high end.

Tinnitus sufferers may also find their symptoms temporarily masked by the ambient mix.

Ten hours long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzjWIxXBs_s. And for maximum enjoyment, turn on the closed captioning.

The comments are also good, here are a few:

Robloxmemer 59: Can’t believe I’m still listening to this song 14 billion years after it first came out

Comrade Wolf: This is my favorite band. I can’t wait to see them in concert!!

Tomi 24: i love the fact that i paused the video when i went to the bathroom so i wouldn’t miss a thing 💀

Guns are now leading cause of death for US kids

By the numbers: Nearly two-thirds of the 4,368 U.S. children up to age 19 who were killed by guns in 2020 were homicide victims, per the CDC. Motor vehicle crashes, formerly the leading cause of death for kids one and older, killed nearly 4,000 children.

• Another 30% of firearm-related child fatalities were suicides, 3% were accidental and 2% were of undetermined intent.
• Male youths were significantly more likely to be killed by guns, while vehicle crashes claimed more females.
• There were also stark racial disparities. The firearm death rate for Black children was more than four times that of white children, and white children were still more likely to be killed by motor vehicles than guns.
• D.C. had the highest firearm death rate, followed by Louisiana, Alaska and Mississippi.

https://www.axios.com/2022/05/26/gun-deaths-children-america

How to apologize… NOT.

From Crazy Ex-Girlfriend:

Rebecca & Paula together:
AND I REALLY WANNA TELL YOU THAT I’M SORRY
AND I REALLY WANNA TELL YOU THAT I AM THE WORST
AND I JUST WANNA SAY
I MISS YOU EVERY DAY
AND I WILL… BUT YOU GO FIRST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-anbK8DUOw (2:27)

How not to launch

The preliminary report of the investigation indicated that three of the first stage angular velocity sensors, responsible for yaw control, were installed in an incorrect orientation. As the error affected the redundant sensors as well as the primary ones, the rocket was left with no yaw control, which resulted in the failure. Telemetry data also indicated that a pad umbilical had detached prematurely, suggesting that the Proton may have launched several tenths of a second early, before the engines reached full thrust.

Realtime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUhK5vnSigo (1 minute)

Slo-mo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqW0LEcTAYg (2 minutes)