Books! Links!

[wolffyluna]

I have been ~~procrastinating~~ waiting to write this post until I had 'enough' books and links, but then I decided, screw it, let's do this now.

How Minds Change by David McRaney

There is a truism in political science, especially now, that you can't actually change people's minds. They're set in their ways, and nothing anyone can ever do will ever convince anyone of anything. Except that's not actually... true? There's many examples of people changing their minds, from individual examples of people who left cults and conspiracy theories, to broader scale things like 'same sex marriage could not have got as much popular support as quickly without people changing their minds.' This book is a book about the science behind changing people's minds. It's also a book about why we even disagree in the first place-- with a really interesting chapter about That Dress that was either gold and white or black and blue, and how that was a really unusual optical illusion that prompted a bunch of study, because most optical illusions people can switch which version they see, but they really could not for the dress. But there's also things about the way that 'the truth is tribal' and also the some of the scientifically supported methods of changing people's minds (and the way those techniques seem to keep getting independently reinvented.) It's a really interesting book!

And now, some links:

• someone creates the textless Magic the Gathering deck that everyone will hate! even you! which is imo hilarious, though it does raise the question of 'why does Wizards of the Coast keep making textless versions of cards with complicated rules?'
• Hank Green has strong feelings about figs
• a beautiful Gideon the Ninth AMV, with it's own cover of 'Take me to Church' to boot! (NB: so many spoilers)
• I've been rereading TGCF, and thus watching a lot of AMVs, and I must share them. (NB: also, very spoilers.)
  • Money Money Money
  • Love Like You
  • From the Start