Category: ideas

“Because perfectionism, judging by the raft of books and listicles on the subject, is something Americans have generally decided is a negative trait. Much of the research backs this up, even going so far as to suggest that perfectionism can be potentially dangerous, leading to anxiety, depression, and, in extreme cases, possibly suicide.”

“An increasing number of researchers and practitioners have gone from dismissing hallucinated voices as worthless ravings symptomatic of psychosis to listening carefully to what they say. What they have heard has been infinitely varied and surprisingly complex. And the effort to deal with these complexities is leading to entirely new, even inventive forms of treatment.”

“Uncovering the so-called biology of creativity is big business. FMRI scan aficionados tell us which brain areas light up when someone has a novel idea. Brain wave experts propose electrical patterns specific to originality. Even if these observations pan out, they cannot tell us how to interpret a brilliant chess move arising out of a software glitch. If we are forced to expand our notion of creativity to include random electrical firings, what does that tell us about our highly touted imaginative superiority over a mindless machine?”

“The propensity to think creatively tends to be associated with independence and self-direction—qualities generally ascribed to men,” Duke University researchers led by Devon Proudfoot argue in the journal Psychological Science. As a result, they write, “men are often perceived to be more creative than women.”

“In some ways, Facebook’s VCG auction is still a theoretical exercise. How much do advertisers really think about gaming the system? How much do they really understand about the way the auction prevents such gaming? How much do they understand the value of an ad in a particular situation? Such questions can’t necessarily be answered.”

“It is hard enough to judge, in our personal lives, what will make us happier. The difficulties in deducing the consequences of political programmes on our happiness, especially those whose connection to our own life is hard to judge, are significant.”

“The cerebellum helps to understand rhythm, while the center part of the brain knows the difference between a piano and a flute. There isn’t a simple science to the particular genre you like—pop, opera, classical or jazz. “It’s a combination of cultural background, and then looking at musical attributes, like melody, instrumentation, timbre, and text.”

“Given all this controversy [among researchers], you might think people would treat the test as just a curiosity, or at least take it with a grain of salt. Instead, many people use types as a schema for understanding the world. There are blogs that sort Disney characters into MBTI types and YouTube sketch videos that compare types. According to CPP, a company that administrates the MBTI, college and universities worldwide use the test, as do 89 of the Fortune 100 companies.”

“Statements you’ve heard many times are easier to process, and this ease leads people ‘to the sometimes false conclusion that they are more truthful,’ the researchers write. Their key – and disheartening – revelation is that they found examples of this unfortunate dynamic ‘even when participants knew better.'”

“We don’t need an answer to the question of life’s meaning, just as we don’t need a theory of everything. What we need are multifarious descriptions of many things, further descriptions of phenomena that change the aspect under which they are seen, that light them up and let us see them anew.”