January 2012
130 posts
The Moral Foundations of Occupy Wall Street -... →
Jonathan Haidt, the man who identified 5 (now 6) moral algorithms in the human brain, care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation, applies this analysis to the OWS movement.
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Humans are hardwired to read books →
’The discovery that our brains are physically changed by the experience of reading is something many of us will understand instinctively, as we think back to the way an extraordinary book had a transformative effect on the way we viewed the world. This transformation only takes place when we lose ourselves in a book, abandoning the emotional and mental chatter of the real world....
December 2011
191 posts
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Happy New Year's Eve
“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.” — Neil Gaiman
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On becoming a philosopher
So many of the important questions in life, if answered thoughtfully, would get an “it depends” in response. Almost nothing is simply black and white, but instead, almost everything is on a continuum. Our individual cultures (western culture vs. mid-eastern culture, for example) also influence our opinions of others, so our values of “good” and “bad” would vary...
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Getting it right in 2012
I begin to realise how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.
My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl
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The Precious Steven Pinker →
Well, each to his or her own tribalism, I suppose. It is pleasant to believe one’s society is more “enlightened” or “rational” than all others, and Pinker has every right to try to prove the point. He would be more convincing, though, if only the central claim of his book were not so entirely dependent upon a statistical fiction.
That is to say, yes, of course modern societies have reduced...
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The Shortest Horror Story
The last man on Earth sat alone
in a room. There was a knock on the door.
“Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very...”
– William James (via commondense)
let’s start a crisis
(via apowersb)
sqrt(cos(x))*cos(200...
Copy and paste the above equation into google.
You can play with the variables, too.
:)
Philosophy, et cetera: Fun / Mind-bending... →
Love this idea. LOVE IT!
Diet Patterns May Keep Brain From Shrinking →
Omega 3’s , B and D. Always those three. Why? Because as we age, our bodies become less able to absorb and utilize these three nutriets. Supplementing (with GOOD supplements) makes a difference. Add some C and E and healthy brains abound.
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Rob Tercek's predictions for 2012
Robert Tercek’s 10 predictions for 2012, plus one! 1. Global Spring Occupy-style movements and Arab-Spring-style movements (spontaneous, leaderless, self-organizing crowds) will continue to emerge rapidly in any corner of the world where the political process moves too slowly. These movements will evolve rapidly in sophistication, and some will achieve significant political results while...
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Questioning Steven Pinker's evo-psych
Violence: the role of society and state Gary G. Nelson Nature 480, 181 (08 December 2011) doi:10.1038/480181a Published online 07 December 2011 I question Steven Pinker’s optimistic prediction of a continuing decline in interpersonal violence, which is based on supposed correlations of mortality data with improved reasoning ability and IQ (Nature 478, 309–311; 2011). Even if we disregard...
Lapidarium notes: Do thoughts have a language of... →
aminotes:
Do thoughts have a language of their own? The language of thought hypothesis The language of thought - drawing by Robert Horvitz
“The mind thinks its thoughts in ‘Mentalese,’ codes them in the local natural language, and then transmits them (say, by speaking them out loud)…
Peace of Mind
“If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It’s very important to be aware of them every time they come up.” - Deepak Chopra
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Smoky mountain pasta sauce? →
Pumpkin Bread →
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Primacy of Consciousness →
revisting some favorites
2247
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How to make your own Sequence Board Game -- Oh... →
Antonio Damasio: The quest to understand... →
Antonio Damasio: The quest to understand consciousness
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Habit Formation Is Enabled By Gateway To Brain... →
“The world is simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and...”
– Henry Miller (via dewdropsoflove)