If I had to choose, I’d go with a meaningful life over a happy one. But that’s a false choice based on an idealized concept of happiness as pure lightness, unburdened by cares or worries. Not what I’m looking for. Wellbeing is more like it, at least wellbeing as the feeling that swells with autonomy (sense of agency, the ability to act on goals and values), competence (feeling able and effective), and relatedness (a sense of belonging and being connected to others). A feeling that grows stronger by overcoming challenge.
“Attempting recall of information from memory, as occurs when taking a practice test, is one of the most potent training techniques known to learning science. However, does testing yield learning that transfers to different contexts?” - Pan & Rickard, 2018.
A lot of people think healthy food is expensive and so either give up on the whole concept or take a bunch of vitamins and supplements and call it a day. Thing is, healthy food is not expensive. And by “healthy” I don’t mean organic or available only at the local farmers’ market. I mean at the very least 7 servings of fruit and vegetables, plus protein and carbohydrates. Some fresh produce is nice, but canned and frozen stuff will do too, nutritionally speaking. Like in this USDA table:
So we’ve got high crime, lots of police department staff, and low crime clearance rates. First thought: what’s wrong with the cops in San Francisco? Maybe nothing. Let me explain, starting with some relevant context…
Since would-be burglars typically prefer unoccupied buildings, San Francisco’s steep rise in burglaries in 2020 is not all that surprising. And the large rise in auto thefts can be at least partly explained by supply issues, which increased the market for stolen cars. Larceny and robbery are still down from the pre-pandemic baseline, which makes sense since these crimes are often committed in commercial establishments, parking lots, garages, parks, fields, and areas near public transportation - in other words, the type of places that have closed in great numbers or become sparsely peopled since the pandemic began, thanks to remote work, the decline of tourism, and widespread avoidance of public spaces.
Crime rates based on residential population are a poor indicator of victimization risk in cities that attract a large daily population from outside the city limits. In these cities, the population at risk of crime includes tourists and inbound commuters to work. Tourists and commuters are typically victims of crimes committed by strangers, such as robbery or car theft, while residents are more likely to be victims of crimes committed by family and friends, such as homicide, rape and aggravated assault.
In a previous post, I provided evidence that most Americans of prime working age (25-54) want to live in detached houses in low-density residential areas. Americans also prefer community and residential features such as limited street traffic, open space options nearby, large back yards and off-street parking. They especially want to live in quiet neighborhoods that are safe for walking and for kids to play outdoors. So is there a way to make low-density residential communities climate friendly?
“...you’ll see that mostly what we’re building these days is single-family homes. That form is inherently challenging when it comes to carbon emissions, and it’s made more so by the fact that we’re building much bigger houses than we used to…Simply put, you should build as small as you can for what you need, and if possible, you should avoid having a [concrete] basement.” - Professor Shoshanna Saxe/University of Toronto, quoted in Large carbon footprint of new house construction mostly due to concrete basements (2021)
It might be tempting to dismiss housing preferences as merely a matter of taste or culture, which can evolve with the proper incentives or education. However, global studies have consistently found that high-rise apartment living is a net negative for most people, especially families and children, and regardless of culture, nationality, or aesthetic traditions. Here’s a smattering of what researchers have found…
Specifically, the average homicide rate in the Most Restrictive states over the period of 2010-2020 was 4.6 homicide per 100,000 population. For the Least Restrictive non-southern states, the average homicide rate for 2010-2020 was 3.8 per 100,000, and for the Least Restrictive southern states it was 7.3 per 100,000. What’s going on here?
The FBI’s Data Explorer System does provide yearly state homicide data for the period of 2010-2020. Over that eleven-year period, the average annual homicide rate per 100,000 population was 4.7 for California, 4.9 for Texas, and 5.2 for Florida.
Secure attachment provides a foundation for resilience and a sense of control. A secure toddler can always return to home base, where she will be safe and loved. Or at least she will have faith that the caregiver will return. That certainty encourages exploratory behavior – going where baby has not gone before – which in turn increases tolerance of uncertainty and a willingness to power through anxiety....resulting in a succession of discoveries and delights, setting the stage for more confident explorations.
Of course, early experience is not destiny.
You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand correctly. And you can’t begin to understand a problem unless you see it as a problem. And you won’t perceive it as a problem unless it conflicts with some ideal of what you want the world to look like: a vision of the good (not just a vision of a fixed bad).
In that spirit, here’s an outline of my ideal society – at least today’s version…
New legislation that would see planes forced to use "sustainable aviation fuel"… Overall, this is good, says Chelsea Baldino at the International Council on Clean Transportation, a non-profit research organisation. But several suggested amendments to the legislation widen the definition of sustainable aviation fuels to include food-based biofuels, she says. And it isn’t just about the climate. The loss of habitat is the main driver of biodiversity loss around the world. “The main message is that there should not be any food and feedstock biofuels,” says Baldino.
— EU plan for cutting emissions from planes could end up increasing them. By Michael Le Page/New Scientist April 27, 2022
Approximately 73% (over 94 million acres) of remaining grasslands in the Northern Great Plains are privately owned. While ranchers operate across a spectrum of sustainability, they all face pressure to convert existing grasslands into cropland, which—depending on market fluctuations—can yield better short-term profits than livestock can. This reality means that, when wheat and barley prices go up, ranchers may feel compelled to plow up and plant crops on large areas of intact grasslands. But in the long term, plains land is not well-suited for row crops. - Common Ground. By Di Tipping-Woods, World Wildlife Magazine/Summer 2022
California’s pretrial diversion programs allow eligible criminal defendants to avoid jail time by undergoing treatment. Upon successful completion of diversion, the case is dismissed and the arrest record gets sealed as though it never happened. San Francisco provides a variety of pretrial diversion programs to defendants with complex needs, including those with mental illness, substance abuse issues, felony charges, and long criminal histories. San Francisco’s diversion programs last up to two years and can be very intensive. People in these programs are assigned to a case manager and a treatment plan, which could include counseling, employment, training, graffiti cleanup and other requirements. Participation is supervised and most people complete their programs without picking up a new charge or being accused of violating their probation or parole.
But are these diversion programs successful in keeping participants out of trouble after they complete their programs?
…Put another way: emotions and values are part of a cognitive team that includes appraisal of the situation at hand, embedded in a wider understanding of how the world works in general.
Based on the above considerations, I’m going to guess that about half of self-described Black Americans would qualify for reparations - roughly 22,500, 000 individuals currently alive, plus 250,000 Black children born to eligible parents within the first 18 years of program implementation, after which the reparations program would no longer accept new applicants. A tax on households in the top 20% income bracket would pay for the reparations program…Here’s a possible budget…
I used to be an active member of a debate club that met monthly before the pandemic. We switched to online debates, but none have been scheduled for several months. Basically, the spirit has died, killed off by the venom of partisan hatred. A taste from last week’s group email thread: …
In other words, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) does a poor job of predicting behavior and is no better at predicting behavior than self-report measures. Nor does the IAT appear to provide a window to unconscious bias, given that research participants have been highly accurate in predicting their own IAT scores (Hahn eta l, 2014). Nor does the IAT capture stable, context-free racial attitudes that are resistant to change (James, 2018; Gawronski & Hahn, 2019). Rather, implicit bias is less (not more) stable over time than self-reported bias (Gawronski, 2019).