Category: ideas

“Before science had the means to explore that realm, we had to make do with stories that became enshrined in myth and folklore. Those stories aren’t banished as science advances; they are simply reinvented.”

“Innovation” is no substitute for a robust technology policy. It must frame its arguments around big themes of equality and justice. Of course, those goals are buried somewhere in its information agenda.

“It’s hard to get empirical data on a concept as subjective as the location of the self – if the self can be pinpointed at all – but one new study … suggests we conceive of the self as located in the upper chest.”

“Most of us – though unfortunately not all of us – are now aware that Onion articles aren’t real, but the proliferation of online parody and fake news has created an environment where many people are simply accepting fake news as fact. … So why do people believe this crap?” One new study suggests an explanation.

Whereas some coastal cities will double down on sea defences, others are beginning to explore a solution that welcomes approaching tides. What if our cities themselves were to take to the seas?””

“It seems that playing computer games designed to work your powers of perception, memory and attention can lead to significant and lasting improvement in one’s ability to play those very games. But the benefits don’t transfer. You may perform the relevant tasks like a 20-year-old, but you’ll still have the mind of a 60-year-old.”

“When physicists translated a 13th-century Latin text into modern equations, they discovered that the English theologian who wrote it had unwittingly predicted the idea of the multiverse in 1225. While the work probably won’t advance current models, it does show that some of the philosophical conundrums posed by cosmology are surprisingly pervasive.”

“Our active pursuit of our own doppelgängers, though, would strike many throughout history as odd, if not suicidal: Encountering your match has long been considered a harbinger of death, or at least very bad luck. We all have a double in the world, the mythology goes, and most of us will never meet that person. But if we do, the universe only has space for one.”

“What can we do to give our lives a moreness that will help withstand the eons of time that will soon cover us over, blotting out the fact that we ever existed at all? Really, why did we bother to show up for our existence in the first place? The Greek speakers were as obsessed with this question as we are.”

Duh? “People can get caught in a negative spiral in which they have unrealistic expectations of how happy material goods will make them. When their experience falls short of those expectations, their instinct is to seek out something new to purchase, putting them in an endless loop of anticipation and disappointment that does not leave room for gratitude.”