HopeForCynics

• http://wiki.keithl.com/HopeForCynics

Hope For Cynics

The Surprising Science of Human Goodness

• Jamil Zaki . 2024 . 149 ZAK . Beaverton Library

• Dr. Zaki is professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab

This book is difficult to read in brief snatches. The author full-names many people once, then mentions them by first name many pages later. Not all are indexed ... who is "Megan?" See partial table below.

• Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the couch and clutch, feeling lucky.
• It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.
• -- Rebecca Solnit

• p001 Introduction

• p001 Emile Bruneau died 2020 age 47

• p001 Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab at U. Penn. Annenberg School for Communication (cannot find)
• p003 Emile's mother schizophrenic, but "She never let any of the darkness touch me"
• p004 Cynicism ... is a seductive worldview, dark and simple. Too simple, really to explain much of anything.

• p004 General Social Survey began in 1972

• p005 In 1972, 50% agreed that "most people can be trusted", only 33% agreed in 2018.
• p005 52% trusted president in 1970s, 23% in 2022. Newspapers 39% to 18%. Public schools 58% to 28%
• p007 Media's product is cynicism.
• p008 Nietzche called hope "the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment"
• p009 Cynicism is a lack of faith in people, skepticism is a lack of faith in our assumptions.

• Section I: UNLEARNING CYNICISM

• p015 Chapter 1. Signs and Symptoms

• p015 Mycroft Holmes more talented, but "no ambition and no energy" and a disdain for humanity

• p016 Mycroft Holmes co-founded Diogenes Club

• p018 "big-C Cynicism" opposite of misanthrophistoryy and "small-c cynicism"

• p017 the real Diogenes helped people and would despise the Diogenes Club.

• p017 Three statement test:
  • (1) No one cares much what happens to you.
  • (2) Most people dislike helping others.
  • (3) Most people are honest chiefly through fear of getting caught.

• p018 Cook and Medley: Worse teachers agreed with these statements. They are a "cynicism detector".

• p020 adolescent cynics more likely depressed, drink and divorce in and after college
  • cynics earn less, more heart disease, die sooner
• p020 Finland 58% trust, France 18% trust
• p021 High trust nations grow GDP faster
• p025 Dining out, bring Tupperware rather than single use plastic from restaurants (?)

• p025 autarkeia self-sufficiency

• p026 Self-Reliance 1841 essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson

• p026 Stanford's Geoff Cohen

• p027 people who affirm their values become more open to contradictory infomation
• p028 Zaki was jealous of others, birth of daughters overwhelmed worries about social status

• p029 Chapter 2. The Surprising Wisdom of Hope

• p030 valorize: enhance value
• p030 cynics wise less often, poor at identifying liars

• p031 the cynical genius illusion

• p031 real wisdom when people know what they don't know. Think more like a skeptical scientist, less like a accusing lawyer

• p032 cynics prone to conspiracy theories, skeptics less prone
• p032 Author is suspicious skeptic - low faith in people, high faith in data

• p035 The Fall of the Cabal

• p039 Skepticism bedrock of Emile Bruneau's career as a scientist

• p042 Q promised arrests of politicians and stars, failed, Megan left QAnon and repaired her life

• p043 Landon challenged Zaki to defend his cynicism like a scientific hypothesis, experiment with hopeful cynicism
• p043 now secure with Landon, still insecure with parents
• p044 Cynicism house arrest, not self defense
• p045 shared "Stanford imposter" feelings with colleagues, who also opened up

• p046 Chapter 3. Preexisting Conditions

• p046 Brazilian cutthroat lake village and cooperative ocean village; latter required big collaboration, trust resulted

• p049 During COVID, British citizens locked down, funerals forbidden, while Boris Johnson partied

• p051 donating to charity for a tax break rated more selfish than people who do nothing.

• p052 Anne Lembke Counting something "increases risk of addiction"

  • is this innumerate prejudice? Those with poor counting skills dislike activities involving those skills.
• p053 Arrival of Facebook on campus increases depression, anxiety, exhaustion, eating disorders

• p053 Tinder modeled in slot machines

• p054 apps make users a profitable product

• p060 Luddite Club use flip phones

• p061 2018 experiment paid 2743 Facebook users to stop for 4 weeks reduced depression by 25% to 40%.

• p063 Local trust; 30% believe "most people" can be trusted, 65% trust neighbors

• p065 Chapter 4. Hell Isn't Other People

• p069 spreading stories - negative stories multiply, positive stories disappear

• p069 Each negative word in an Upworthy headline increases views by 2%

• p070 Crime decreased 50% (hooray), wrong-axis graph shows it decreasing 90%

• p072 Trabian Shorters hometown Pontiac MI

• p072 scholarship to Cranbrook school "just 10 minutes away"

  • 6 miles away, 12 minutes by car no traffic, 36 minutes by bus, 2 hours on foot

• p073 deficit-framed charity replaced by asset framing

• p073 when person improves, 65% assume true self emerged. When person goes bad, 70% believe true self disappeared.
• p074 Exposure to media literacy message encouraged skepticism about "bad news"

• p075 Grameen Bank 99% repayment rate

  • Grameen America 20+ cities, 3 in California, none in OR/WA/ID

• p076 Fixes column in NYT from 2010 to 2021, led to Solutions Journalism Network ... seems to have evaporated

• p076 reasons to be cheerful

• p076 WORTH: Women Overcoming Recidivism Through Hard Work, York Correctional Institution in Connecticut, age 18 to 25

• p076 TeleHelp Ukraine

• p077 Solutions Journalism Network

• p077 Solutions Story Tracker

• p079 Chapter 5. Escaping the Cynicism Trap

• p079 1999 Boston Globe exposé, "too many firefighter time-off injuries" to "time-off ban", working through pain, no raises in years
  • led to picketing mayor's events,"ugly scenes"
• p080 draconian 15 day limit on rarely-used sick days; firefighters responded by MANY taking 15 days, doubling total

• p084 Robert Axelrod Tit-for-Tat simple AI algorithm

• p085 Generous Tit-for-tat escapes prisoner's dilemma

• p089 rugby more cooperative than US football; no blocking, "in support"

• p091 Emile Bruneau coached Stanford women's soccer, taught players to "read the field" and trust each other
• p091 Loud trust, clearly giving others a chance to show virtue
• p092 Kennedy unilateral atmospheric nuclear test ban, Khrushchev rebroadcast the speech in the Soviet Union, then declared the USSR would stop producing nuclear bombers

• Section II: REDISCOVERING ONE ANOTHER

• p097 Chapter 6. The (Social) Water is Just Fine

• p097 hikikomori self-isolating recluses

• p100 Scientists asked reluctant commuters to talk with strangers, 75% assumed it would be dreadful. Many said it was the best 10 minutes of their day.
• p100 deeper conversations feared beforehand, but more fulfilling
• p101 default introverts performing extroversion were happier
• p102 Stanford students self-report warm interactions with others, but believed "average" peers were unfriendly
• p103 during pandemic, burnout spiked among essential workers, parents, and others

• p103 occupational burnout expert Christina Maslach

• p104 disconnection: self-focus leads to depression

• p105 Seamless food delivery app:

  • "Over 8 billion people in New York City, and we help you avoid them all"
• p105 After 7mo self-isolation, Atsushi Watanabe (p097) learns of mother's search for hikikomori cure, checks into rehabilitaton clinic

• p105 Naikan self-reflection

• p106 witnessed unfairness, but met many working to improve it
• p107 conversation scavenger hunt, expectation 50% rejection, but 80% 0f strangers welcomed a chat

• p107 social prescribing reduced patient loneliness, and reduced medical visits by almost 50%

• p108 author's self experiment - two days of "encounter counting"
• p110 Atsushi Watanabe (p97, 105) spends week in 0.9x1.8m concrete "home" in art gallery, chisels out to press circus

• p111 kintsugi broken pottery repaired with decorative lacquer

• p113 During COVID, farmer suicide rates grew. Coffee Break Project fostered connection: "Do you look after your neighbors as close as your crop or herd?"

• p114 Chapter 7. Building Cultures of Trust

• p115 Jack Welch Homo Economicus

  • p115 Jack Welch "Manager of the Century" Fortune Magazine 1999

  • Homo economicus term coined by the French Catholic economist Claudio Jannet in 1878, not Keynes

• p116 Many academics missed Keyne's joke. ??? "Keyne's joke" citation needed

• p116 J.D. Rockefeller "The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest ...

• p118 hospice company "productivity points", 1.0 for visiting dying patient, 1.75 for attending patient's funeral
  • presumably more future hospice customers at the funeral; advertising

• p119 Ballmer's Microsoft, "management by character assassination"

• p123 Brooklyn's Lincoln middle school

  • VADIR Violent or Disruptive Incident Reporting

• p123 Satya Nadella Microsoft CEO since 2014, Chair since 2021

• p125 new businesses, market cap increased 10x. cooperative advantage

• p125 restorative justice resolve pain, encourage responsibility

• p126 suspension rates dropped 15% in first year, school shed "persistently dangerous" label
• p129 2023 more than 2/3rds of Americans support unions, up from less than half in 2009

• p130 Chapter 8. The Fault in Our Fault Lines

• p130 Operation RYaN

  • Yuri Andropov paranoia, searching for (hallucinatory) signs of a US nuclear first strike

• p131 Oath Keepers January 6 insurrection

  • led by Stewart Rhodes, sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2022,

  • Rhodes sentence commuted by Trump the day he took office on January 20, 2025.
• p131 69% of 3022 Americans believed national rule of law under direct threat
• p131 tribal cynicism, the belief that people on the other side are stupid, evil, or both.
• p136 tweets with conflict words (i.e. fight war punish) went viral more often

• p138-9 Andrés Casas behavioral research with Emil Bruneau now Neuropaz initiative

• p142 Hallelujah Leonard Cohen

• p143 neuropaz Behavioral Science, Technology, and Communication for Peace

• p144 Both Democrats and Republicans prefer a painful dental procedure to talking with rivals.
• p145 29 minute zoom calls with "rivals", most common experience rating 100 very positive
• p145 Disagreeing better:
  • 1 Good disagreers ask questions instead of making statements.
  • 2 They work to get underneath people's opinions to their stories.
  • 3 When they spot common ground, good disagreers name it.
  • 4 When they are unsure about something, they say so rather than pretend to be confident.

• Section III: THE FUTURE OF HOPE

• p151 Chapter 9. Building the World We Want

• p153 Robert Putnam 2020 The Upswing WCCLS 302.54 PUT

• p154 Ronald Reagan's example welfare queen Linda Taylor

• p154 Cheaters rare, only 14 fraudsters per 10,000 SNAP recipients

• p155 21% of US welfare recipients are black, whites estimate 37%, hence lower support for programs

• p155 David Hume men are knaves, govern them using their self-interest

• p157 Disabled West Oakland black William Goodwin developed degenerative nerve condition, accommodations triggered co-worker suspicion, laid off for rejecting a low-success risky surgery, struggled years for long-term disability
• p160 countless hours spent hunting for a tiny percentage of cheaters
• p161 Homeowner tax breaks dwarf housing assistance to poor by 4 to 1, more public aid for homeowners than homeless

• p165 Foundations for Social Change Vancouver BC, fifty $7500 grants to unhoused spent wisely on food, clothes, rent. Recipents found stable housing and used fewer public services.

• p168 Chapter 10. The Optimism of Activism

• p171 Hannah Arendt "The aim of totalitarian education has never been to install convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any"

• p173 myth of Sisyphus Emile said "His story only becomes a tragedy if he doesn't like pushing the boulder -- or if he is fixated on the summit."

• p183 Loretta Ross alternative: "calling in": calling out with love.

• p185 Chapter 11. Our Common Fate

• p185 "Over the last several years, I've become a climate doomer."

• p191 Indiana University Elinor Ostrom repulsed by Garrett Hardin 1976 "Tragedy of the Commons"

  • Ostrom won 2009 Nobel Economics Prize proving Hardin wrong.

• p200 Epilogue

• p205 Acknowledgements

• p209 Appendix A: A Practical Guide to Hopeful Skepticism

• p213 Appendix B: Evaluating the Evidence

• p217 Chapter Claim Ratings

• p225 Notes

• p263 Index

• p263 Emile Bruneau

• PARTIAL index by FIRST NAME FIRST MENTION

I read books episodically, often a few pages at a time, marking them with sticky notes. I am easily confused by FIRST names popping up in narratives many pages (and sometimes a week of interruptions) after reading the first mention of a name.

This was the start of a list to help me connect those isolated first names. After page 100 or so, I color-sticky-noted all first mentions of a name, making subsequent searches easier. This web page was written in my office, but I often read books on buses, in the bathtub, occasionally perched in a tree, locations with inadequate internet access.

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