I love Hidden Brain—and Dr. Nelson, I love Daniel Kahneman’s work too! Perhaps we can counteract our ego-brain by engaging in radically different experiences as an end in themselves.

Thanks for your post, Matt. I can relate to your sister. People in the past have seemed confused when they meet me based on my appearance. A parent of one of my high school friends even said to me “oh, I thought you would be a tall blonde girl.” I was not sure what to think, but what I felt at the time was that she was disappointed that I wasn’t like her daughter.

Interesting points. I think animals teach us so much about the world that we ourselves could not see or understand. I know when I was younger animals taught me remorse, love, kindness, anger, and the ability to supress and express these feelings. Granted I grew up around dogs who had puppies and the attachment was real. But if we think about love and kindness in terms of individuals especially in the classroom, I think it will open up a dialouge between students and teachers alike. I am furever (see what I did there) grateful to my former pets, current pets, and my parents for allowing me to have pets. Of course there was sadness and uncomfortable situations I had to deal with but they helped me grow as a person, and they helped me become confident in expressing my thoughts and feelings in a productive manner. Again, very interesting points.

Thanks, James, I enjoyed reading the topics discussed in your post. I think speaking about inclusivity in a capitalist society is inherently challenging. For example, when it comes to education, the whole education system is designed to give superior service to wealthy neighborhoods since it is funded that way. Other areas, like healthcare, work almost in the same way. Before talking about inclusive education, we may need to first talk about inclusive capitalism or “to make capitalism more equitable, sustainable, and inclusive?”. This reminds me of the Marxist theory according to which the society is composed of bases (e.g., relations of production) and superstructures (e.g., culture, institutions, etc.). It seems to me that a real change in education and healthcare should come from the base: by changing how such primary services are funded.

Thank you for sharing this Ernesto! I think it’s all right to think about safe spaces and wanting to improve the concept. I especially appreciate the attention given in the policy document to keeping the main features of safe spaces, as well as encouraging dialogue. This can be tricky and the policy puts it under “Owning intentions and impacts”: That individuals have to consider how exercising their freedom of expression can affect others negatively. All in all, very interesting idea.

Thank you for your post Kadie! While I was reading your words, I remembered one of my dear white male friends who is studying mechanical engineering. He also believes that engineers need to be taught to think about the whole problem rather than only finding technical solutions, because real-world problems are not usually technical but rather structural. Built on what you say, race and the inequalities related to that, must be considered as a part of the problem and the solutions given by engineers.

I think it is fairly a good assessment that the history of civilization is narrative through the eyes of straight-white-male observers. I can think of so many characters that were marginalized: Harriet Tubman, Alan Turing, Hidden Figures and so on. Re-interpreting history is always difficult because it brings up a sense of guilt to many people ( who might associate themselves with the identities same as the historical oppressors). It is a difficult but necessary discussion.

Thanks patrick for your post! I specifically agree with you when you say race matters! Although, “race” does not really exists, and some people for very clear reasons created this concept, but since it has been internalized in us and has corrupted the structures, we need to acknowledge it so we can move towards, as you put it thoughtfully “diversity, acceptance, understanding, and equity.”

Jack thank you very much for your comment. You put it in a much more well-thought eloquent way by differentiating between humans’ and tech’s world.

Shadi thanks for your comment! you brought up an important point: when we don’t acknowledge our weaknesses (here biases we have towards many groups in our society) we merely encourage an undemocratic way of living! Citizens feel rightful to look down on refugees and immigrants mainly due to the fact that no one blames them (or let them know in the first place) that these are all racist behaviors; in other words they feel socially accepted to act in a racist manner! However, thanks to social media there has been positive movements towards eradicating such awful attitudes. I hope these initiatives continue to grow and cover many other aspects of our civic lives!