Category: ideas

“It’s not clear whether a prodigy’s brain is any different from the brain of other children, in part because there have been no studies comparing the brains of prodigies with those of average people.”

Jesse Bering: “We W.E.I.R.D. people (the anthropologist Joe Henrich’s apt acronym for ‘Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic’) often assume a false obviousness along these lines of harm and consent that, interestingly enough, simply isn’t there. Scientists have found that since we would be harmed by a certain sex act, we presume others would be harmed as well.”

Prompted by press reports that the Dallas Zoo is sending one of its male gorillas to South Carolina because he’s mistreating his female companions, Barbara J. King (author of When Animals Grieve) considers the question.

“A new British study finds people with narcissistic tendencies are more likely than others to think of themselves as creative, and to engage in creative activities. If your opinion of yourself is unusually high, there’s a good chance you long to share your brilliance with the rest of the world.”

“At a time when nearly half of marriages end unceremoniously in divorce, and relationships are too often disposable, widowhood offers a get-out-of-jail-free card – a chance to start over without the stigma of failure. There is an innocence in it, a sense of blameless rebirth.”

Aside from Ben Franklin’s advice for “air baths” (that is, being naked) and the three-martini lunch (that was a bygone era, friends), what’s the best advice out there – and how well does it work?

Anytime at all – seriously.

The then-undergraduate guys who founded Reddit had a rather different plan in mind when they first looked for start-up funding.

Recent studies “indicate that not only does looking someone in the eye not convince them, it may actually harm your case. Eye contact, especially if someone is predisposed to disagree with you and you’re pushing them to look you back, is not persuasive at all. (This might be helpful to understand as we navigate out of the government shutdown …)”

Utopist cyber thinker Stewart Brand is famous for coining the phrase “information wants to be free.” When knowledge is embodied in people, the phrase is even more powerful: “talent wants to be free”.