Uncontrollable Urges and Irrational People

Irrational beliefs, urges to drink and drinking among alcoholics.

The relationship of various irrational beliefs to alcohol dependence, urges to drink, anxiety and drinking after treatment was investigated for 63 male alcoholics, using Jones' Irrational Beliefs Test (IBT). Alcohol dependence was most strongly associated with problem avoidance. Urges to drink, anxiety and difficulty during alcohol-related role-plays were strongly correlated with problem avoida...

Why People Are Irrational about Politics

Perhaps the most striking feature of the subject of politics is how prone it is to disagreement—only religion and morality rival politics as a source of disagreement. There are three main features of political disagreements I want to point out: (i) They are very widespread. It isn’t just a few people disagreeing about a few issues; rather, any two randomly-chosen people are likely to disagree a...

Gore Urges Action

Rational and Irrational Bubbles

Learning from the Uncontrollable

It was 1974, and at the age of 25, I was working on the control of the cell cycle in fission yeast, one year into my post-doc with Murdoch Mitchison in Edinburgh. Hugely impressed by papers from Lee Hartwell, which described the isolation of cell division cycle (cdc) mutants in budding yeast, I started isolating cdcmutants in the rod-shaped fission yeast. These mutants could not divide but coul...