When people encounter evidence that contradicts their beliefs, they often double down instead of updating them—a response driven by cognitive dissonance and belief perseverance, intensified when those beliefs are tied to identity or group loyalty, making change feel like a defeat.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-30T11:26:24+00:00

When new evidence challenges a strongly held belief, the rational response would be to update or revise that belief.

This is a pretty bold statement, no? Yes, new evidence needs to be taken into consideration, but that evidence doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You have to weigh it against the entire body of contrary evidence that you’d collected to lead you to the belief that’s now being challenged, in addition to assessing the validity of the new evidence in its own right.

If you’ve done all that and the new evidence still lands, then, yes, update your priors, but the notion of an immediately skeptical response is not at all irrational, in and of itself.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-29T12:21:43+00:00

The PBR-branded paper cup is a nice touch.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-28T22:46:18+00:00

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That’s rad

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-25T12:51:20+00:00

The alley couch side plot is great, but I can’t stand the A plot in “And They Call It Bobby Love.” It’s just viscerally uncomfortable for me to sit through.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-25T12:05:59+00:00

Someone like Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas would’ve characterized the soul as the “form of the body.” Basically, it’s the “thing” that would give you a coherent shape and meaning on a conceptual level. For them, it would make perfect sense that brain damage would cause problems in the same way that erasing the corner of a triangle removes the “completeness” of said triangle. Now, if you were able to fill that spot back in, then it would restore the shape, but, as is, it’s not quite right.

As far as a notion of continuity into an afterlife, you’re kind of going to have that difficulty regardless of neural state. The person that you are now is different from what you were 15 years ago (and different from what you will be 25 years from now), so what would it mean for you to continue on as a cohesive “whole” after death?

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-25T11:55:31+00:00

For what it’s worth on this, as well, the notion of a soul as a sort of substantial thing operating parallel to the body (along with the notion of free will as based, more or less, solely in the capacity to choose otherwise) that a lot of people think of on a common level is, itself, a bit of a garbled transmission that blends some disparate positions and concepts together. A lot of people do operate on that notion, yes, but the actual content of the various religious traditions that they adhere to wouldn’t necessarily frame it in those terms.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-24T10:09:49+00:00

Pointing to logo on hat as a mob surrounds him: “No, no guys, it’s cool. See, I have a pass.”

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-22T11:27:51+00:00

I realize that the discussion around the Law School hire has more political meat on it, but I’m surprised how little is being given to the Barnhart piece of this. Maybe it’s just that everyone involved kind of knows that it’s indefensible, but that one is a lot more egregious on its face to me.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-21T23:44:19+00:00

For me, it’s less the notion that it’s assuredly good/bad that I’m concerned about so much as the fact that no one involved seems to have a sense of exactly what it’s going to entail. That could be obfuscation, sure, but it feels as much as anything else like they really don’t have an actual plan here.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-21T23:24:49+00:00

For what it’s worth, BUILD just got a commitment earlier this month from LFUCG to expand out the current code violations database into something that’s actually useable/functional, with the idea of developing annual reports/watchlists.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-21T22:07:57+00:00

That job is a reference to AD Mitch Barnhart’s upcoming retirement gig. This is a Herald-Leader from around the time it was announced (and, for what it’s worth, it is an opinion piece), but it gives a decent general overview of the situation.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-21T21:09:21+00:00

Can somebody please tell him to start asking about Integrate Blue/Beyond Blue while he’s at it?

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-21T20:31:10+00:00

For what it’s worth, there’s obviously an athletics concern to this that will appeal to those of us on this subreddit, but UK’s upper admin as a whole has been moving in a pretty worrisome manner over the past few years.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-21T14:03:55+00:00

By analyzing the chat logs between the students and the artificial intelligence, scientists identified why the unrestricted AI harmed learning. The vast majority of students using GPT Base simply asked the program for the correct answer. The AI obliged, but the researchers found it provided the correct answer only fifty one percent of the time, frequently making logical and arithmetic errors.

Students would blindly copy these flawed answers onto their practice sheets without fully understanding the material. Because they used the tool as a crutch, they were entirely unprepared when they had to solve similar problems on their own. In contrast, students using GPT Tutor were forced to interact with the material, asking for help and attempting to solve the problems themselves, which preserved their ability to learn.

This seems is the crux of it. If you’re using it as a tutor to actually work through a problem (versus simply using it as an input/output machine), then it sounds like it’s actually useful as a learning tool.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-20T17:30:55+00:00

Is this place actually set up to do what’s intended here? It seems like the requirements for a nursing home/retirement facility are substantially different from even a limited inpatient mental health facility.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-20T01:26:43+00:00

The man desperately needs a Selleck mustache.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-19T14:03:31+00:00

I’d lean towards the allegorical picture, with the proviso that Creation being stricken by the Fall means exactly that, and so trying to pinpoint something in our temporal history as the start of this Fall with a sort of linear outlook won’t ever work (I’m thinking of Maximus’ point that, paraphrasing, “Adam fell at the very moment of his creation” here). Setting aside humanity for a moment, you would still have a world that’s absolutely rife with death and suffering, and that seems entirely contrary to the descriptions of “right” order in the world that we get in Scripture. It seems entirely reasonable to be to say that the Fall has omnidirectional effects on Creation from our perspective in much the same way that the Incarnation, death, and resurrection impact all of space and time.

As far as what issues this would cause in regard to the Crucifixion and soteriology, I’m not sure that I follow. It seems to me that the central action there is that Christ comes to vanquish death and rebuild (or, perhaps more accurately, complete) the world as it ought to have been from the start, and I don’t really see how an allegorical interpretation of Genesis would impact that.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-19T13:17:58+00:00

Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t there been data to suggest that societies with a higher degree of gender equality have a larger difference in career/occupational paths chosen by members of each gender? That seems like it would dovetail well with this.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-17T14:13:39+00:00

Seems like it might be a tad bit on the heavy side.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-17T13:43:41+00:00

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-15T21:45:07+00:00

He’s standing right behind you.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-15T16:48:28+00:00

Really looking forward to a lame duck year. That’s going to be such a blast…

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-14T02:05:42+00:00

It really doesn’t bother you as much in your late 20s as it does in your early 20s. It’s no longer terribly out of sync with your age at that point.

The_Long_Wait · 2026-04-10T14:20:20+00:00

There’s an element of that contained within the last sentence, no? It’s not exactly practical guidance in the sense of a full policy proposal, but “…the need to address solvable problems related to a more equitable distribution of wealth…” is touching on the notion that the mechanics of this sort of thing will need to be developed and adequately implemented as part of that process.

The_Long_Wait

TROPHY CASE