Category: ideas

Psychologists believe that the games collectively called “first-person shooters” – Call of Duty, Battlefield, Doom and the like – induce in players (strange as this might seem to anti-violence folks) that state Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”.

Philosopher Michael Stevens posits the existence of a magic black box that could answer any question about the future. Sooner or later, someone would almost certainly open up and take apart the box to figure out how it works – even if it meant the box never worked properly again. What’s behind that urge?

“The period was always the humblest of punctuation marks. Recently, however, it’s started getting angry. I’ve noticed it in my text messages and online chats, where people use the period not simply to conclude a sentence, but to announce ‘I am not happy about the sentence I just concluded.'”

The theory for comics as an age-old language “builds on a growing acceptance that the brain’s language toolkit is a kind of Swiss army knife for many different kinds of expression, such as music or dance.”

“Each text, to be written by an academic or expert, will run to 15,000 words and include as many as 60 illustrations. And they’re all going to be free, readable online or downloadable as e-books.”

In a new co-written autobiography, Davi Kopenawa, a shaman and spokesman for the indigenous Amazon group discusses his own life and his views about the white outsiders who first attacked and pushed his people, then celebrated them and made them into an international cause.

“How can so many people, in the name of skepticism, promote so many absurdities? The answer is that people who suspect conspiracies aren’t really skeptics. Like the rest of us, they’re selective doubters. They favor a worldview, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn’t about God, values, freedom, or equality. It’s about the omnipotence of elites.”

“New research released this week has found that even people with phenomenal memory are susceptible to having ‘false memories’, suggesting that ‘memory distortions are basic and widespread in humans, and it may be unlikely that anyone is immune’.”

“Newly published research suggests brain stimulation can heighten aesthetic appreciation. A team of European researchers report electronically stimulating a specific section of the brain can increase viewers’ appreciation of representational paintings and photographs.”