A pair of eyes on the wall may be all that’s needed to keep people more honest.
An interesting post on peak oil and how everyone sees a mirror of sorts in it, with their post-peak vision basically being a form of wishful thinking based on their personal worldview.
Beware of female van drivers at the supermarket checkout.
Most of us don’t see ourselves in mirrors as we truly are.
Scientific study shows that when battles are waged over values and ideologies, you can’t bribe or reason your way to peace.
Why are you so terribly disappointing?
In this era of reaching for your phone whenever your mind is left to wander, being inured to boredom is practically a superpower.
A study found that, when confronted with boredom in an experimental setting, many people chose to give themselves unpleasant electric shocks simply to distract from their own thoughts, or lack thereof.
I endorse the idea of diving headfirst into boredom, it's quite liberating.
There's a persistent belief in the tech world, particularly in AI, that the human brain is basically a computer and that once we figure out how it stores and processes information, we'll be able to upload our consciousness to the cloud.
This has always seemed quite reductive to me. As Douglas Rushkoff would say, "What about the squishy bits?"
Anyway, this fascinating article by a senior research psychologist describes how the brain changes in response to experiences rather than simply storing data in a specific group of neurons.
The average IQ was increasing year over year until about 2010, when it started declining. One popular hypothesis is the simultaneous decline of print and the increase in short-form and video content that decreases deep thinking.
A really significant feature of books is that if you make a case in print, you have to make it logically add up. You can’t just assert things in the way you can on TikTok or on YouTube… print privileges a whole way of thinking and a whole way of processing the world that is logical, that is more rational, that is more dense information, that is more intellectually challenging.
