SCIENCE SALON # 103
Michael Shermer with Robert Frank — Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work
Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But social influence is a two-way street — our environments are themselves products of our behavior. Under the Influence explains how to unlock the latent power of social context. We are building bigger houses, driving heavier cars, and engaging in a host of other activities that threaten the planet — mainly because that’s what friends and neighbors do. In the wake of the hottest years on record, only robust measures to curb greenhouse gases promise relief from more frequent and intense storms, droughts, flooding, wildfires, and famines. Robert Frank describes how the strongest predictor of our willingness to support climate-friendly policies, install solar panels, or buy an electric car is the number of people we know who have already done so. Frank and Shermer also discuss:
- luck and how lives turn out
- circumstances of behavior
- peer pressure and pressures on peers
- free will, volition, and self-control
- positive behavioral externalities, e.g., solar panels
- happiness vs. purpose/meaning/comfort
- utilitarianism vs. natural rights theory
- abortion, capital punishment, polygamy, prostitution, and the selling of organs
- behavioral contagions: smoking, problem drinking, obesity, tax cheating, bullying, and wasteful energy use
- same-sex marriage and other areas of moral progress
- arms races: good and bad
- climate change
- belief in god and religion in decline, and
- UBI (Universal Basic Income).
Robert H. Frank received his M.A. in statistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, and his Ph.D. in economics in 1972, also from U.C. Berkeley. He is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1972 and where he currently holds a joint appointment in the department of economics and the Johnson Graduate School of Management. He has published on a variety of subjects, including price and wage discrimination, public utility pricing, the measurement of unemployment spell lengths, and the distributional consequences of direct foreign investment. For the past several years, his research has focused on rivalry and cooperation in economic and social behaviour.
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Image: J. Allen Hynek in Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation (2019) [Source]
Are We Alone?
J. Allen Hynek & UFOs
It was 1966 and I was living a dream working at my high school 10-watt FM radio station. Radio was a childhood passion and finally I had my own show; I was even the board operator recording shows like the monthly 15-minute update, Your Congressman Speaks, with our local congressional rep, a fellow named Donald Rumsfeld. I also was enraptured by astronomy and space and created an hourlong radio special called Are We Alone?, a look at the question of extra-terrestrial life and UFOs.
In March of that year Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Chair of Astronomy at Northwestern, came to national prominence as a lead investigator of mysterious sightings in Michigan when he introduced the notion that swamp gas could be the culprit for the illusion. Hynek had a storied career as the globally respected UFOlogist, consulting the famed Project Blue Book, the US Air Force and NASA, and founded CUFOS, The Center for UFO Studies. While he was very much sought after then, Hynek granted this 17 year-old an hour plus with himself and cohort Fred Beckman, a renowned University of Chicago photo analyst, to dig into this subject.
The show also includes a discussion with Sherman J. Larson, the President of the Chicago affiliate of NICAP—the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon.
Now after 50+ years, this historic content has been restored from badly deteriorating reel to reel tapes. It was originally broadcast on the high school station WNTH and later re-aired on Denver radio.
Enjoy a vintage slice of history, science, and skepticism about UFOs. Listen to Part 1 and 2 of the radio show below.
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