Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
—Niels Bohr

Even a scientist experienced in extrapolating from accumulated data in experiments finds that using the past to project forward to the future is a higher order hindrance.

Difficult enough in his day, it's made especially so when conditions are rapidly changing all across the globe. No doubt that rapid change is the contemporary situation. Hence, we all must act today without knowing the future.

We Brights have a lens through which we envision what may come. It is our worldview. As defined by Wallace (Culture and Personality, 1970), a worldview is “the very skeleton of concrete cognitive assumptions” on which the flesh of our conduct is hung.

A Bright's ethics and actions are based on a naturalistic worldview, free of supernatural and mystical elements.  What each of us does now, in the face of current conditions, hinges very much on it.

Perhaps our actions can be fortified when those concrete cognitive assumptions we have are closely examined.

Q: Are atheists just a tiny segment of the population, as so many widely-cited polls (e.g., Gallup, Pew) suggest?  Or do they actually constitute something more like 20% to 35% of the U.S. population?

It’s hard to tell the actual prevalence of atheists.

There’s such a heavy stigma against disbelief, that the single digit percentages reported in telephone polls are hardly surprising. Stigma leads to people being hesitant to divulge their lack of belief over the phone to a stranger. Two University of Kentucky psychology researchers have tried an indirect measurement method to get around the reluctance.

Their study was described May 16 in phys.org as “Atheism might be more common than assumed...but it's complicated.” The actual study "How many atheists are there?" (appearing in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science) found atheists to be a severely underreported portion of the electorate.

Description: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-atheism-common-assumedbut-complicated.html
Abstract: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550617707015

"Luster" contributor Leyden Marks is taking another look at how schools educate youngsters. This time his attention goes to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance routine.

His gripe departs from the usual one that fixates so many Brights (the 1954 wording change adding “under God” to the text). This protest (What Does the Pledge of Allegiance Teach?) comes from quite a different direction.

In the age of Brexit and Trumpism, it’s fairly obvious that the political Right are resurgent, but is there also trouble brewing on the Left?  In Canada and the United States, several controversies have boiled over into the news.  In February there was conflict at the home of the American free speech movement to prevent a controversial presenter. In Canada an academic philosopher endured much condemnation for his contentions with respect to gender norms.  More recently, activists at Evergreen College demanded the firing of an evolutionary biologist for an email he sent.

How should one think about the clash of worldviews unfolding in a world in which technology enables the most extreme views to come to prominence, and which evinces legacies of Marxism and post-modernism? 

If interested in the conflicts, you can learn more and weigh in at the forums.  Participation requires only a brief registration. Hope to see you there.

It’s been a year since the Bulletin mentioned a small project that The Brights’ Net has for several years conducted. It’s a little project to “embrighten” prison cells.

The “A Little Brightness” newsletter is mailed to interested prisoners in 46 different states. Although some ALB subscribers were imprisoned for violent offences, a great many appear to have been incarcerated with lengthy sentences for prior years’ illegal drug use.

Central to the prisoner project is Joel, a volunteer Bright in Texas. He edits/truncates content of monthly Brights’ Bulletins (considering the unavailability of Internet to prisoners) and then supplements it with added material intended to address prisoner interest. The final “A Little Brightness” newsletter requires just a one-ounce stamp. BC handles duplication and dissemination to a mailing list of incarcerated subscribers that Joel maintains. Here’s how each prisoner gets on the subscription list:

A [generally very polite] postal request for information arrives at Brights Central (California) from someone who, despite incarceration, has “heard about the Brights”. Kelly will respond with BC’s introductory information about The Brights' Net and a enclose a sample ALB (the latest).

She then passes along the original letter to Joel, who maintains a P.O. Box specifically for the purpose of communicating directly with interested prisoners. Joel mails his own “welcome” and the prisoner is on the subscriber list to receive subsequent issues.

Financially, this little project gets a morsel of help from Joel’s corporate employer, who values any employee’s contributions to 501(c)(3) nonprofits and annually credits up to 50 hours of his time, verifying the work before sending $500 to BC. Duplication and postage as well as processing require more than that, of course. If you like this project, you can request that a donation to The Brights’ Net be earmarked accordingly to help continue sending “A Little Brightness” to prisoners.

These little tales from nature by a Danish Bright might interest you if you find animal behavior fascinating. They aren’t your classical Aesop fables, but some aspects of these wee stories may remind you of them. (Available in both Danish and English languages)

This month’s quite tiny story tells about how a very large animal handles his mating choices. A male elephant “phones in to the hotline” with his particular issue. If you want to check out the peer-reviewed scientific article from which it is drawn, the link to the abstract and its fascinating pictures is provided at the story’s ending.

Enjoy the "Bright-Moral-Animal-Hotline"!