behaviour

November 24, 2021

Thoughtlets. xxxvi. (Repost; January 27,2021)

Tacitus, an Roman historian, writes these words in the Annals sometime around 117 CE: “I wanted to dispel the fictions of hearsay, and to ask people into whose hands my book may come not to prefer widely circulated and eagerly accepted fantasies over truth uncorrupted by sensationalism.” Tacitus. The Annals: The Reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Continue reading

Thoughtlets

ancient, behaviour, CNN, criticism, fact, fiction, Fox, gossip, hearsay, history, media, MSNBC, news, patterns, Philosophy, rhetoric, sensationalization, tabloid, truth, wisdom
July 16, 2021

Thoughtlets. XLVI. Observing patterns of human behaviour.

Some find Tacitus’ Annals tedious. Some of it is. But his work keeps me riveted. I’m not so interested in history, per se. Rather I’m interested in identifying patterns of human behaviour, events that repeat over millennia, and asking why they repeat themselves. But then, so was Tacitus, “Perhaps there is a sort of cycle Continue reading

Thoughtlets

ambiguity, ambiguous, Annals, behaviour, control, Darwin, hard sciences, hisotry, meme, memes, memic slection, occurences, patterns, Philosophy, political, prediction, social, social and political, Tactitus
April 30, 2021

The Lesser Known Logical Fallacies.

If you’ve ever taken a logic and critical thinking course, you’ll have learned about logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are patterns of bad reasoning that occur so often they’re given their own special names. Ad hominem arguments are directed at the person holding a position rather than at the position she holds. Ad populum or ‘bandwagon’ Continue reading

Philosophy, Political Rhetoric

argument, behaviour, critical thinking, fallacy, logic, logical fallacies, logicians, Philosophy, psychology, reasoning, rhetoric, social, strategy
January 26, 2021

Thoughtlets. xxxii.

A scapegoat is (usually) a person or group of people unjustly blamed for some set of circumstances arising from the actions of others. Scapegoats bear the brunt of crowd hostility and, once identified by an angry mob, find themselves in no-win, dangerous — even lethal — situations. Scapegoating is as old as humankind. In The Annals, Continue reading

Thoughtlets

anger, behaviour, blame, crowd, fear, madness, mentality, mob, scapegoat, Tacitus, tension

behaviour

Thoughtlets. xxxvi. (Repost; January 27,2021)

Thoughtlets. XLVI. Observing patterns of human behaviour.

The Lesser Known Logical Fallacies.

Thoughtlets. xxxii.