Category: ideas

“So here comes the Internet’s Third Wave. In its wake jobs will disappear, work will morph, and a lot of money will be made by the companies, consultants, and investment banks that saw it coming. Privacy will disappear, too, and our intimate spaces will become advertising platforms.”

“Stories can be a way for humans to feel that we have control over the world. They allow people to see patterns where there is chaos, meaning where there is randomness. … But why start telling stories in the first place? Their usefulness in understanding others is one reason, but another theory is that storytelling could be an evolutionary mechanism that helped keep our ancestors alive.”

“Maybe the research investment and brain-obsessed media headlines are largely irrelevant to the general public. I looked into this question recently and was surprised by what I found.”

“Our results suggest that people who feel entitled value being different from others. The greater their need for uniqueness, the more they break convention, think divergently, and give creative responses.”

Recent research into the phenomenon called choice overload indicates that “not knowing a lot – and being aware of your own ignorance – can make decisions easier and, as a result, lead to greater happiness.”

Alas, when folks go into the election booth, we – including those of us who like to think we know better – are swayed by factors much more obtuse than actual information. Here are some of the weirdest things that affect people’s voting decisions. (includes video)

“The belief that hidden memories can be ‘recovered’ in therapy should have been exorcised years ago, when a rash of false memories dominated the airwaves, tore families apart, and put people on the stand for crimes they didn’t commit. But the mental health establishment does not always learn from its mistakes – and families are still paying the price.”

“From the standpoint of teachers, parents and the world at large, the problem with people with A.D.H.D. looks like a lack of focus and attention and impulsive behavior. But if you have the “illness,” the real problem is that, to your brain, the world that you live in essentially feels not very interesting.”

“Sometimes one can recapture that fleeting sensation with names – place-names. If I am hiking up a familiar path near my house in Turin and I think, ‘I am climbing a hill in Italy,’ there is a brief whiff of foreign glamour. And, when I arrived in Uzbekistan and was disappointed to find that city people took buses and trams as they do everywhere else, I could revive a touch of fantasy by silently repeating, ‘Streetcars in Samarkand’.”

“People generally don’t like being mean to each other — it’s what psychologists call ‘other-regarding preferences.’ But those preferences can have negative consequences.”