Category: ideas

“All the analysis and theory in the world must finally bow before the incommunicable experience of reading literature.”

“A bunch of publications will go out of business and a bunch of others will survive the transition and a few will become app content GIANTS with news teams filing to Facebook and their very own Vine stars and thriving Snapchat channels and a Viber bureau and embedded Yakkers and hundreds of people uploading videos in every direction and brands and brands and brands and brands and brands, the end.”

“Perhaps the most radical suggestion we can make about ourselves is not that we are not different. Or even that we are. But that we are both.”

“As much as I love the Star Trek character of Mr. Spock (which Gene Roddenberry actually modeled after his – mistaken – understanding of Stoicism), those are two of a number of misconceptions about what it means to be a Stoic. In reality, practicing Stoicism is not really that different from, say, practicing Buddhism (or even certain forms of modern Christianity).”

“Their memories were vivid, clear – and wrong. There was no relationship at all between confidence and accuracy.” Maria Konnikova explores how this happens in the brain.

“Today, the unicorn is a decidedly more magical, gentle creature, running around on rainbows and inspiring millions with regular appearances in My Little Pony and the occasional acid trip and in North Korea, apparently. I’d recommend against heading over to Pyongyang to find one, though. Maybe just stick to the acid.”

Across four studies, Americans offered “substantial and consistent overestimates of class mobility, overestimating the amount of income mobility and educational access by a wide margin.”

“We’re entering a ‘second machine age,’ where the accelerating rate of change brought on by digital technologies could leave millions of medium-and-low skilled workers behind.”

It’s all about the neurotransmitters – endogenous cannabinoid neu-rotransmitters.