The year 2011 proved to be a challenging year.\u00a0 A number of serious health issues in close family members took center stage.\u00a0 The frequency of my posts declined in part due to these important distractions but other factors also played a major role.\u00a0 Although I published fewer articles, the number of visits to my blog increased substantially.<\/p>\n
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Over the course of the year, I had 18,305 hits at my website by 15,167 unique visitors, accounting for over 25,000 page views.\u00a0 I had visitors from every state in the Union and visits from people from 140 nations around the world.\u00a0 Visitors from the United States accounted for the vast majority of those hits, but the UK, Canada, and Australia also brought in a large contingent of visitors.<\/p>\n
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One article in particular far outpaced all other posts.\u00a0 My post on Brain Waves and Other Brain Measures<\/a> accounted for as many visits as the next three most popular posts combined.\u00a0 Of my posts published in 2011, only four made it to this year’s top ten list.\u00a0 The other six were published in 2010.\u00a0 Of those six from 2010, four were also on the top ten list last year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Great interest persisted in my post entitled Nonmoral Nature: It is what it is<\/a>.\u00a0 This review of Stephen Jay Gould’s most famous article sustained a number two ranking for a second straight year.\u00a0 I had also reviewed in 2010 a very popular New York Time’s<\/a> article by Steven Pinker entitled The Moral Instinct<\/a>.\u00a0 This article moved up a notch this year, ultimately ranking number three.\u00a0 My critical article on the Implicit Associations Test<\/a> ranked number four this year, versus a number six ranking last year.\u00a0 And my Hedgehog versus the Fox<\/a> mindset piece ranked number ten this year, compared to a number seven ranking last year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So here is the Top Ten list for 2011.<\/p>\n It’s interesting to me that this list includes the very foundational issues that have driven me in my quest.\u00a0 And each was posted with great personal satisfaction.\u00a0\u00a0 This encompassing cross section of my work is, in fact, a good starting point for those who are new to my blog.\u00a0 There are several popular 2011 posts that ranked outside the top ten but ranked highly relative to other posts published in 2011.\u00a0 These other posts include:<\/p>\n One article I published late in 2011 has attracted significant attention. \u00a0 I believe that it is perhaps one of the most important posts I’ve written.\u00a0 As I was writing this retrospective, Conspicuous Consumption and the Peacock’s Tail<\/a> was far outpacing all other posts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The most emotional and personally relevant articles pertained to significant problems in healthcare in the United States and my wife’s battle with breast cancer.\u00a0 These articles include: (a) What not to say to someone with cancer: And what helps<\/a>; (b) Up and Ever Onward: My Wife’s Battle With Cancer<\/a>; (c) Cancer, Aging, & Healthcare: America, We Have a Problem<\/a>; (d) We’re Number 37! USA USA USA!<\/a>; and (e) Tears of Strength in Cancer’s Wake<\/a>.\u00a0 The latter pertains to perhaps the proudest parental moment of my life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Another very important issue that I wrote a fair amount about includes the pernicious affect of poverty on child development.\u00a0 Clicking here<\/a> takes you to a page that lists all of the articles on this topic.\u00a0 Knowing the information in this series should motivate us, as a society, to truly evaluate our current political and economic policies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One of my favorite articles tackled my long standing curiosity about the geology of the place I live<\/a>.\u00a0 The article itself did not get a lot of attention, but I sure loved writing it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This two-year journey, thus far has resulted in perhaps unparalleled personal and intellectual growth.\u00a0 It has changed the way I look at life, the world around me, and my fellow human beings. \u00a0 It is my sincerest hope that those who have seen fit to read some of my material have experienced shifts of perception or at least a modicum of enlightenment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The bottom line:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The human brain, no matter how remarkable, is flawed in two fundamental ways.\u00a0 First, the proclivities toward patternicity (pareidolia<\/a>), hyperactive agency detection, and superstition<\/a>, although once adaptive mechanisms, now lead to many errors of thought.\u00a0 Since the age of enlightenment, when human kind developed the scientific method, we have exponentially expanded our knowledge base regarding the workings of the world and the universe.\u00a0 These leaps of knowledge have rendered those error prone proclivities unessential for survival.\u00a0 Regardless, they have remained a dominant cognitive force.\u00a0 Although our intuition and rapid cognitions have sustained us, and in some ways still do, the subsequent everyday illusions impede us in important ways.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Secondly, we are prone to a multitude of cognitive biases<\/a> that diminish and narrow our capacity to truly understand the world. Time after time I have written of the dangers of ideology with regard to its capacity to blindfold its disciples.\u00a0 Often those blindfolds are absolutely essential to sustain the ideology.\u00a0 And this is dangerous when truths and facts are denied or innocents are subjugated or brutalized.\u00a0 As I discussed in Spinoza\u2019s Conjecture<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cWe all look at the world through our personal lenses of experience.\u00a0 Our experiences shape our understanding of the world, and ultimately our understanding of [it], then filters what we take in.\u00a0 The end result is that we may reject or ignore new and important information simply because it does not conform to our previously held beliefs. Because of these innate tendencies, we must make additional effort in order to discover the truth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The year 2011 proved to be a challenging year.\u00a0 A number of serious health issues in close family members took center stage.\u00a0 The frequency of my posts declined in part due to these important distractions but other factors also played a major role.\u00a0 Although I published fewer articles, the number of visits to my blog … <\/p>\n\n
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