“Do you sympathize when they encounter adversity and cheer them on when they overcome it? Can you share in the bitter, bursting fruits of their outrage even when you find it mystifying? Then you are being a Good Friend. Really, I promise. You are exemplary.”
Category: ideas
Is Death Actually Different From Life? [VIDEO]
“Some of our greatest thinkers have explored the question, and the more we learn, the harder it is to conclude there’s anything special or distinct about ‘life.'”
Twitter-Inspired Summer Reading For Everyone Who Wonders About The True History Of Charleston
“#Charlestonsyllabus was conceived by Chad Williams (@Dr_ChadWilliams), Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis University. With the help of Kidada Williams (@KidadaEWilliams), the hashtag started trending on the evening of June 19, 2015. … These readings provide valuable information about the history of racial violence in this country and contextualize the history of race relations in South Carolina and the United States in general.”
Coming: Facial Recognition Software For All (Now Anyone Will Be Able To ID You The Street)
The lack of consensus means face recognition is moving into creepy territory. One example is California-based company Face First, which is rolling out a system for retailers that it says will “boost sales by recognising high-value customers each time they shop” and send “alerts when known litigious individuals enter any of your locations”.
Why Do People Commit Violence? Not Depravity, But Morality
“Across practices, across cultures, and throughout historical periods, when people support and engage in violence, their primary motivations are moral. By ‘moral’, I mean that people are violent because they feel they must be; because they feel that their violence is obligatory. They know that they are harming fully human beings. Nonetheless, they believe they should.
Do Corporations Have Minds?
“Not really. But we often think and talk about them as though they do, and that is cause for concern.”
Anxiety Is Even Worse For You Than You Were Afraid It Was
“Anxiety, this research shows, uniquely interferes with ‘perspective-taking’ – that is, people’s capacity to put themselves in others’ shoes.The idea that anxiety impairs perspective-taking is important because it is just this sort of nervousness that crops up when an empathic connection is most sorely needed.”
Can Your Brain Fill Up With Too Much Stuff?
“Each day you accumulate fresh memories—kissing new people, acquiring different phone numbers and (possibly) competing in pi-memorizing championships (we would root for you). With all those new adventures stacking up, you might start worrying that your brain is growing full. But, wait—is that how it works? Can your brain run out of space, like a hard drive? It depends on what kind of memory you’re talking about.”
Why We Cling To The Culture Of Our Youth
“Baby boomers pursue perpetual youth into retirement. Gen-Xers hold fast to their skateboards, their Pixies T-shirts and their Beastie Boys CDs. Nobody wants to be an adult anymore, and every so often someone writes an article blaming Hollywood, attachment parenting, global capitalism or the welfare state for this catastrophe.”
Distraction – And Why We Drive Ourselves To It
“Ever since the Enlightenment, Western societies have been obsessed with autonomy, and in the past few hundred years we have put autonomy at the center of our lives, economically, politically, and technologically … Unfortunately, we’ve taken things too far: we’re now addicted to liberation, and we regard any situation – a movie, a conversation, a one-block walk down a city street – as a kind of prison. Distraction is a way of asserting control; it’s autonomy run amok.”