Category: ideas

“Most people see the benefits of empathy as too obvious to require justification. This is a mistake.” Continuing the post-Sontag genre of “Against [Whatever]”, Paul Bloom hosts a forum featuring, among others, Sam Harris, Peter Singer, Marianne LaFrance, Barbara H. Fried, and Simon Baron-Cohen.

The idea that “great art comes from great pain” has long-standing roots in public opinion, rumored to date back to ancient philosophers and poets, but our modern idea of the tortured genius likely stems from a glamorization of mental illness that took hold during the Romantic Era.

“How did we come to care so much about creativity? The language surrounding it, of unleashing, unlocking, awakening, developing, flowing, and so on, makes it sound like an organic and primordial part of ourselves which we must set free—something with which it’s natural to be preoccupied.”

“But what does it mean to believe in evil? How do our attitudes about its existence shape our worldviews? While researchers stampeded over one another to understand evil behavior in the wake of the 20th century’s seemingly endless bloodletting … much less research has been done into how the idea of evil itself colors our understanding of the world and its inhabitants.”

“Our objective in presenting dangerous ideas is not that these ideas be promoted or adopted, but simply that they be encountered and, thus, assessed on their merits. … We believe that ideas of all kinds are best exposed to the light of reason and discernment.”

“It has a collection of roughly 7,000 books it obtained from another recently-closed polytechnic university — though administrators still have to figure out what to do with the paper books.”

“Interfaces will migrate away from our handheld devices to hard surfaces like walls, countertops or even products themselves, making it possible to access information through gestures or spoken commands.”

Let those who have not finished the 1,104-page book cast the first toy.

“Knowing whether or not to trust someone is so critically important that we can tell whether a face is trustworthy before we even consciously know it’s there.”

“No matter how much a culture congratulates itself on being science-minded, we wrestle with a deep-seated tendency towards magical thinking – in this case, sympathetic magic, the idea that one can exert magical influence through contact or kinship.”