“We’ve seen that technology can do a lot of stuff to support students, but the real driver is: Do they actually want to learn something? If they do, kids will go through a lot of barriers to learn it. Creating the conditions that turn on that drive has become the major function of our work.”
Category: ideas
Understanding the Two Types of Extroversion (Yes, There Seem To Be Two)
“Agentic extraversion is about sensitivity to reward, engagement with goals and achievement, persistence, and taking a leadership position when you have an opportunity to do that. In other words, being comfortable in the limelight. … Affiliative extraversion is also a really great trait – it’s a dimension of social warmth. People who are high on the trait, close social relationships mean a lot to them, … they tend to have a very large group of meaningful friendships.”
The Conflicting Values Of Self-Criticism
“We may not be able to imagine a life in which we don’t spend a large amount of our time criticising ourselves and others; but we should keep in mind the self-love that is always in play. Self-criticism can be our most unpleasant – our most sadomasochistic – way of loving ourselves.”
Why The Internet Isn’t Going To Solve Our Problems
“Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”
The Philosophical Anxiety Behind The Arguments Over #TheDress
“What fascinates us about the dress, I think, isn’t its color: it’s the degree to which our perceptions can diverge. How could the same image appear so different to various people? The dress controversy is compelling because it touches, however unsophisticatedly, on some of the oldest and most difficult questions in philosophy of mind.”
A Beautiful Modernist Techno-Utopia Landed In New York In 1939 And ‘Opened A Whole New World’ [VIDEO]
“It’s hard to imagine what a marvel the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair would have been to its visitors. Still living in the heavy shadow of the stock market crash of 1929, the many people who flocked to the big exhibition found not only bounteous luxuries such as free Coca-Cola and grand spectacles of entertainment, but the unveiling of unthinkable new technologies that promised that a better world lay ahead.”
Children’s Brains Are More Elastic – But Could Neuroscience Help Adults’ Brains Stay Flexible Too?
“The day might be coming when I could actually learn to play as I would had I learned during childhood. I might be able to swallow a pill that restores my brain to a more flexible, receptive state.”
How We See, Or, The Science Of Why No One Agreed On That Damned Viral Dress
“The point is, your brain tries to interpolate a kind of color context for the image, and then spits out an answer for the color of the dress.”
Can God Lie? The Scientific Revolution Changed The Answer To That Question
“‘Can God lie?’ proved an important question for more than 1,000 years because it compelled theologians to consider in the starkest terms the nature of God’s relationship to the world. … These are important questions, but they also proved difficult to answer because the evidence seemed to contradict itself. … Far from being a mere curiosity of the past, concerns about God’s deceptions proved central to the Scientific Revolution and therefore to the modern world.”
Artifical Intelligence Conquers The Video Game Arcade (This Is Actually A Big Deal)
“Whipping humanity’s ass at Fishing Derby may not seem like a particularly noteworthy achievement for artificial intelligence” – think of Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov at chess and Watson walloping Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! – “but according to Zachary Mason, a novelist and computer scientist, it actually is.”