Half-cool, half-creepy (or maybe wholly creepy): “The problem, in both cases, is that we project the focus of our attention onto others. Because we’re fixated on our coffee stain (or whatever we happen to be self-conscious about), we assume others must be, too. But when nothing in particular draws our attention to ourselves, we neglect the fact that we may nevertheless be an object of other people’s interest.”
Category: ideas
The Power Of A Collective Story In Times Of Repression And Fear
A chilling, inspiring tale from Communist Poland. “In that courtroom, in a split-second during Jaromar’s speech, my classmates and I connected in the mutual understanding of something profound, something that gave us power.”
What’s It Like To Play Call Of Duty As A Muslim?
It’s … weird. “Does this game want us to consider ourselves, the soldiers, as conquerors? Or sufferers? And what of the casualties? There are minimal depictions of civilians getting killed (except a notable sequence involving a bombing raid from afar), so the game left me with the feeling that I was a hero for having killed all those brown men. I, after all, endured.”
The Illusion Of Knowledge – Do Individuals Know Less Than Our Ancestors?
“Humans rarely think for themselves. Rather, we think in groups. Just as it takes a tribe to raise a child, it also takes a tribe to invent a tool, solve a conflict or cure a disease. No individual knows everything it takes to build a cathedral, an atom bomb or an aircraft. What gave Homo sapiens an edge over all other animals and turned us into the masters of the planet was not our individual rationality, but our unparalleled ability to think together in large groups.”
How Wikipedia Found Its Way Toward A Definition Of Happiness: 6,000 Edits By 3,000 Users
“In this way, Wikipedia understands something that most philosophers after Socrates didn’t – definitions are not static, and cannot be perfected and finalized. They must be constantly challenged, updated, reverted, and discussed. Wikipedia is like a Socratic dialogue on a massive scale.” Nikhil Sonnad did a deep dive into the 14 years of edits (some of them pretty ugly) that led to the impressive entry the site has now.
The Human Brain Is A Sort Of Time Machine
Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano argues our brains are “constantly tracking the passage of time, whether it’s circadian rhythms that tell us when to go to sleep, or microsecond calculations that allow us to the hear the difference between ‘They gave her cat-food’ and ‘They gave her cat food.’ In an interview with Science of Us, Buonomano spoke about planning for the future as a basic human activity, the limits of be-here-now mindfulness, and the inherent incompatibility between physicists’ and neuroscientists’ understanding of the nature of time.’
A Museum Built For Failure (You’ll Learn Something)
“The purpose of the museum is to show that innovation requires failure,” Dr. West said as he introduced some of the exhibits in a video posted this month on the YouTube channel of Fredrik Skavlan, a Scandinavian talk show host. “If you are afraid of failure, then we can’t innovate.” He said he started the museum “to encourage organizations to be better at learning from failures — not just ignoring them and pretending they never happened.”
Uh-Oh – Has Science Gotten Too Complex For Humans To Comprehend?
“The twin challenges of too much quantity and too little quality are rooted in the finite neurological capacity of the human mind. Scientists are deriving hypotheses from a smaller and smaller fraction of our collective knowledge and consequently, more and more, asking the wrong questions, or asking ones that have already been answered. Also, human creativity seems to depend increasingly on the stochasticity of previous experiences – particular life events that allow a researcher to notice something others do not. Although chance has always been a factor in scientific discovery, it is currently playing a much larger role than it should.”
Why It’s Essential That Computer Scientists Study The Humanities
“Universities should start with broader training for computer science students. I contacted eight of the top undergraduate programs in computer science, and found that most do not require students to take a course on ethical and social issues in computer science (although some offer optional courses). Such courses are hard to teach well. Computer scientists often don’t take them seriously, are uncomfortable with non-quantitative thinking, are overconfident because they’re mathematically brilliant, or are convinced that utilitarianism is the answer to everything. But universities need to try.”
Richard Florida: The Rise Of Creative Inequality
The clustering of talent and economic assets in cities is benefiting “the already privileged, leaving 66 percent of the population behind,” Florida says. “Left unchecked, this clustering force generates a lopsided, extremely unequal kind of urbanism in which a relative handful of superstar cities, and a few elite neighborhoods within them, benefit while many other places stagnate or fall behind.”