Plays and Games of Deception
This issue is about political strategy, the games people play, and about luck.
In this issue we’re learning about the tools of politics, creating awareness for fake papers in the science industry, and gaining perspective in gender equality related questions within the modern war between the sexes. And finally, in a new article we’re discovering the mechanics beneath events of good and bad luck.
✨ Sparks
🍿 Movie: Get Me Roger Stone
Documentary film by Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro and Morgan Pehme that explores the life and career of Roger Stone, a Republican political strategist and lobbyist and longtime advisor of Donald Trump as well as former US presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Dive into an equally educating and entertaining story about lobbyism and the shaping of opinion, polarity, opposition and consent in democratic systems.
I ravel in your hatred. Because if I weren’t effective, you wouldn’t hate me.
📝 Article: Fake scientific papers are alarmingly common
The higher the reputation of a certain discipline devised by man, the more likely it is to lend itself to abuse. Just like institutional religion is often used as a shell to install or maintain business endeavors or for the pursuit of individual agendas that don’t necessarily align with the spirit of the religion, so is science. Keep your mind open and always remember to hold a healthy amount of scepticism, particularly if scientific concepts or findings are used to back moral or political positions.
After screening some 5000 papers, [neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel] estimates up to 34% of neuroscience papers published in 2020 were likely made up or plagiarized; in medicine, the figure was 24%. Both numbers, which he and colleagues report in a medRxiv preprint posted on 8 May [2023], are well above levels they calculated for 2010—and far larger than the 2% baseline estimated in a 2022 publishers’ group report.
Journals are awash in a rising tide of scientific manuscripts from paper mills—secretive businesses that allow researchers to pad their publication records by paying for fake papers or undeserved authorship. “Paper mills have made a fortune by basically attacking a system that has had no idea how to cope with this stuff,” says Dorothy Bishop, a University of Oxford psychologist who studies fraudulent publishing practices.
🎬 YouTube Video: Jordan Peterson debate on the gender pay gap, campus protests and postmodernism
Jordan Peterson, one of the greatest minds of our time, provides reasonable and clear perspectives on the concepts of patriarchy, masculinity, feminism, freedom of speech, the gender pay gap and differences between the sexes. Learn not just about some highly controversial and emotionally loaded topics of our time but also from Peterson’s incredible capacity for professionalism and patience.
🆕 New Content
📝 Article: There Is No Luck
The bipolar categorization of your life’s events into good and bad luck leads to misery. Learn to grow your awareness to live a happy life.
Ferdinand Kutschker
💡 This Week’s Wisdom
What, then, is the State as a sociological concept? The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors.
From The State by FRANZ OPPENHEIMER.
Captured and resurfaced using the phenomenal Kindle reader.
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Flows straight into content, not coffee.
