How to Predict Recent Disney Movie Plot Twists

One of my many roles at MIT is as a Hall Councilor in my graduate dorm, Sidney-Pacific. The role mostly means that I hold small events for my hallmates, often with free food. For the last event of my tenure, they voted unanimously to watch Big Hero 6, which seemed to be Disney's best impression of what grad school is like.

SPOILER WARNING: As you can probably tell from the title, I'm spoiling a bunch of recent Disney movies: Along with Big Hero 6, I also talk about Frozen, Wreck It Ralph, and Toy Story 3 in detail, and mix in Tangled a bunch as well. If you still want to see any of these movies, I'd suggest you bookmark this post and come back to it after you do so.

Veritas Forum Lessons, Part 1: Stop Optimizing Everything

As many of you know (from my Facebook event invitation or previous blog post), I coordinated the Veritas Forum at MIT for the second year in a row Monday night. Since everyone asks, it was recorded and will be on veritas.org/mit some time in the next 3-6 weeks. I'll be reflecting on the event over two or more blog posts, and this is the first.

What was it about? Well, you can read the super long title on the Facebook page to see how we advertised it. To get feedback on the forum, we ask all of the participants what their biggest takeaway from the forum was. Here are some random examples to give you a flavor of the discussion.

the motives of actions are important. In other words, it's not just actions, it's the truth behind the actions that matter. True belief matters, and belief is valuable because provable absolutes don't exist. Even "cogito ergosum" is doubtable

There are very smart people on both sides of this issue

Religion shapes how people act and is important in that way
Respect more important than convincing

MIT professors are not philosophers (mostly)

The limits of science and proving God's existence should be considered.

The presence of God cannot be proven nor disproven, though this fact should not deter belief.

I need to do my taxes in the next two days!

Okay, so that last one was fake, but it did come up in Professor Formaggio's presentation. If you weren't there, I guess you'll have to wait for the video to see how he tied that in to his agnostic beliefs, because you'll never guess.

Anyways, as the organizer, I was already familiar with the content that they presented, and my biggest takeaway was not generated from the discussion itself. Instead, it was through this event that I learned the value in letting go of my perfectionism.

Insufficiently Updating Thomas and the True Nature of Faith

Yesterday was Easter, which as I wrote last week provides an excellent window into the core of Christianity. Christmas might be more widely celebrated in our culture today, but Jesus' virgin birth is far less important than his resurrection to the existence, progress, and veracity of Christianity.

The centrality of the resurrection to Christianity could really not be understated. In text frequently read at Easter, Paul claims that Christians are really all-in on the resurrection: "And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14). Historically, the ideas of Christianity would not have gotten off the ground if all it was spreading was the message preached by a dead messiah-claimant. At the very least, Jesus's followers would have needed to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead.

But one famously didn't...

The Thermodynamics of Religious Conversion

Back in November, I wrote an answer on Quora (which I'll link to later) that made me think even more about the subject afterwards. An outspoken atheist there had posed the following challenge:

Can anyone offer one serious, credible reason why I should consider a belief in your god? I'm not asking for empirical evidence. Just one credible reason we should discuss this further.

Even though the OP had a vanishing chance of changing his mind about anything because of this question, I found a certain elegance and importance to how it was posed. So much conversation about beliefs hinges on whether this particular piece of evidence or line of argument is convincing or not convincing, but only rarely do you ask why you should be taking up the case in the court of your mind in the first place.

And it's an important question. The vast majority of our lives, we don't make significant changes to our mindset, thought processes, worldview. We might pick up a habit from a friend, find the wisdom in our parents' advice, or learn another useful lifehack from Buzzfeed here and there. But it's only in rare moments that we take a moment to step back and reexamine whether we want to entertain a much more dramatic shift.

The Best of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

This weekend, the wildly popular fanfiction Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, written by Eliezer Yudkowsky, finally completed. With 122 chapters and around 650,000 words or 2,000 pages (over half as long as all seven of the original Harry Potter books combined), it's no walk in the park.

While I've encouraged many of my friends to pick up the series, the time involved should not be taken lightly. With that in mind, I thought I'd put together a highlight reel containing, in my opinion, the best stand-alone chapters and/or passages, without spoiling too much of the plot.

Thanks to my friends and fellow readers Ben Gunby, Megan Jackson and Timothy Johnson for some of the recommendations, as well as countless conversations about the chapters as we read them.

Feeling intimidated by math

If you knew me in high school or undergrad, this wouldn't have been something you’d expect that I’d talk about. You might even have tried to explain to me how you had felt intimidated in some math class, and thought that I couldn't possibly understand. Well, I think I've met my match here in grad school, at the research level.

Mindless Replicators

In thinking about my discussion last week based on the movie Selma, one question struck me later as obviously the natural question that I didn't ask:

Why is activism dead?

In fact, the movie gives a striking example of activism working as it's supposed to, and it isn't far off from reality, insofar as the Selma marches did change the national consciousness and put political pressure on President Johnson.

And yet, as I wrote about last week, it doesn't seem to be accomplishing as much today. This should be a bit puzzling: Surely it would be even more possible to organize protests with today's social media. It's easier than ever for great orators to put out content to attract others to their cause. In another part of the world, ISIS is literally taking over territory with recruits from all over the world. Take a moment to think about it, to notice your confusion (at least, if you're as confused as I was): Why is protesting so ineffective?