Category: ideas

“As a word, ‘sorry’ has entered that puckish pantheon of Terms That Seem to Say a Lot but Actually Say Very Little. … Our assumptions about What Apologies Mean are often completely misaligned with the way we actually use apologies in our day-to-day lives.”

“Currently, the English Wikipedia has more than 50 official policies with a word count close to 150,000 (enough for a thick book). But that’s just the tip of the administrative iceberg. In addition to the policies, there are guidelines and essays—more than 450 devoted solely to proper conduct. You will also find more than 1,200 essays containing comments on the policies and guidelines, advisory notes, and analyses of the community.”

Researchers have found an interesting twist on the famous “trolley problem” (should you kill one person in order to save five?) thought experiment: people answer it differently when it’s posed in a second language rather than in their mother tongue.

“The inner workings of the professionally trained writers in the bunch, the scientists argue, showed some similarities to people who are skilled at other complex actions, like music or sports.”

“The rose-colored glow, no matter how unwarranted, helped people to maintain a healthier mental state. Depression bred objectivity. A lack of objectivity led to a healthier, more adaptive, and more resilient mind-set.”

“For speakers of small languages – particularly those that share media space with bigger languages – the experience of accessing a major event like the World Cup can be comical and frustrating. Sometimes, it can be even a wounding reminder of their own smallness.”

“Sartre’s assertions demanded we accept responsibility for our choices and our world, while embracing the inconceivable unknown.”

“On Thursday, the court upheld the notion that an idea alone can’t be patented, deciding unanimously that merely implementing an idea on a computer isn’t enough to transform it into a patentable invention.”

Maria Konnikova recounts how researchers have found, over and over again, that people with depression have a clearer and more accurate picture of how much control they have in life than optimists do – and that optimists’ positive outlook, deluded though it be, wards off depression and tends to lead to better outcomes in life.

Ever since “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” everyone is either disrupting or being disrupted. There are disruption consultants, disruption conferences, and disruption seminars.