“You know your thoughts and feelings affect your body language – but this works the other way around, too. Happiness causes us to smile, of course, but smiling also causes us to feel happy. Experimental research suggests that this concept also applies to the virtual space, and that the physical traits of your avatar can change the way you behave in real life.”
Category: ideas
Where Physics Crossed Into Metaphysics (Was Einstein Wrong?)
Astrophysicist Adam Frank looks at a famous debate between Albert Einstein and philosopher Henri Bergson in which Einstein declared, “The time of the philosophers does not exist.”
Psychologists Say Grit Is Key To Predicting Your Success (But Maybe Not In Education)
“The results suggest grit isn’t that important for academic achievement, at least when other personality traits are included in the analysis—though that doesn’t necessarily mean teaching grit is without value.”
Winter Depression And Mental Sluggishness May Not Be Real Things: Researchers
“A pair of new studies” – one of them quite large – “challenge many of the popular assumptions about the psychological effects of wintertime, suggesting that we should look at the season in a new, brighter light.”
New Insights Into How Our Brains Mark Time
“Over the last few years, a handful of researchers have compiled growing evidence that the same cells that monitor an individual’s location in space also mark the passage of time.”
As Bad As The News Is These Days, Our World Is Better Than It Was Even A Century Ago, Let Alone A Millennium
“The 20th century marked an inflection point – the beginning of humanity’s transition from its ancient crises of ignorance to its modern crises of invention. Our science is now so penetrating, our systems are so robust, that we are mostly endangered by our own creations. … Most people around you now do not want to kill you to get your phone, torture you until you profess their religion, or prey on your credulity until you join a racist gang. Some may – but not many.”
The Art Of Genius – An Uneven, Messy Quality
“Thanks to the diversity of human experience and human talents, we know that genius isn’t a monolithic quality that appears in identical form everywhere we find it. Einstein’s genius was different from Curie’s, and scientific genius is different from musical genius. Celebrity, on the other hand, tends to follow more predictable patterns.”
Is This Why Americans Don’t Trust Experts? (An Experiment)
“It turns out that hearing from experts on both sides of an issue distorts our perception of consensus — even when we have all the information we need to correct that misperception.”
Despite Constant Phones And Cameras, Celebrities Are Wielding The Power Of Secrets
“The stars have gained an extra advantage lately because the financially challenged tabloids have less money these days to pay sources. Meanwhile, the stars get to both circumvent the media and to float an image of utter transparency through their promiscuous use of social media. In fact, that may only obscure them further.”
How Did This Group Shoot A Mindbendingly Great Music Video In Zero Gravity?
“The new video is but the latest reminder that OK Go is a band, yes, but also something more. Ross says the band sees itself a kind of freewheeling creative factory, where catchy songs exist alongside viral videos, and things like collaborations with airlines and experiments like OK Go working to encode its latest album, Hungry Ghosts—from which ‘Upside Down & Inside Out’ is taken—onto strands of DNA.”