Category: ideas

The forecast of Facebook’s impending doom was made by comparing the growth curve of epidemics to those of online social networks. Scientists argue that, like bubonic plague, Facebook will eventually die out.

Is it an illness? (Sometimes.) A bad habit? A natural response to unnatural conditions? ‘The price tag on human freedom”? Louis Menand explores the subject – which is, he says, “a mess.”

The key, says a team of NYU researchers, is a difference in how liberals and conservatives think about others sharing their particular beliefs.

“It has been jarring to learn in recent years that a reproducible result may actually be the rarest of birds. Replication, the ability of another lab to reproduce a finding, is the gold standard of science, reassurance that you have discovered something true. But that is getting harder all the time.”

“Certain artworks, albeit unfamiliar, may be so well-matched to an individual’s unique makeup that they obtain access to the neural substrates concerned with the self—access which other external stimuli do not get,” writes a research team.

“Research findings could well suggest that there is something biological in our need for art – an art instinct. After all, all societies seem to have produced art across human history. We have to account for that, why it is so. But caution is required when interpreting these results and applying them.”

“According to the graph, it all came down to a specific ratio of positive emotions to negative emotions. If your ratio was greater than 2.9013 positive emotions to 1 negative emotion you were flourishing in life. If your ratio was less than that number you were languishing.”

It’s hardly a fair fight, audio vs. cat video, but it’s the one that’s fought on Facebook every day. “People will watch a bad video more than [they will listen to] good audio.”

“Just about all of the ‘compromises’ that Braff says he’d have been forced to make [without the Kickstarter] would have made Wish I Was Here a better film.”

“Nashville doesn’t need great density or a large population. It requires a critical mass of talent from all over the world. Nashville is the Horta of wayward musicians.”