“Could it be that those who chiefly experience the world around them by car simply don’t think the same as those who get around by foot? In other words, do sidewalks actually produce Democrats?”
Category: ideas
We Built This Civilization On … Hops?
“We needed something that, on occasion, would let us break free from our biological herd imperative — or at least let us suppress our angst when we did. We needed beer.”
Replacing NY’s Pay Phones With 10-Foot Tall Touchscreens
“Physically, the NYFi attempts to combine multiple pieces of street infrastructure — payphones, Metro card kiosks, and bus ticket dispensers — to help reduce the amount of clutter on the street and reinforce the Apple-inspired minimalist feel.”
How Is A Triangle Like A Soccer Game?
” What makes a game exciting is precisely the variability that unfolds from the same set of rules. Math and sports are expressions of our controlled creativity. The beauty of a play comes from the unexpected use of this creativity within the patterns allowed by the rules.
A Passionate Scientific Split That Was To Play Out In Public: Denied
“The tone of the dustup between Mr. Albert and Mr. Krauss — summed up by one blogger as ‘an ongoing cosmological street fight’ that had broken out ‘broad media daylight’ — would have certainly left those who saw both men’s names on early publicity material anticipating something closer to a wrestling match than dispassionate scholarly discussion.”
‘Brain Porn’ In The Media
“When writing about anything pertaining to psychology or human nature, people love nothing more than a brain image lit up like a Christmas tree. These omnipresent images have been mockingly termed ‘brain porn’, defined by journalist Alissa Quart as a ‘willingness to accept seemingly neuroscientific explanations for nearly everything'” – especially when it comes to mental health problems such as addiction and depression.
Of Morality And Neurology – What We Know (And Don’t)
“Those inclined toward the sentimental in their appreciation of morality would do well by mastering the empirical.”
Mary And The Zombies: Can Science Explain Consciousness?
“We know that our experiences – of seeing red, feeling pain, falling in love and so forth – depend on physical systems like the brain that science can, in principle, exhaustively explain. But it’s hard to make sense of the idea that experiences themselves could be physical. No doubt experiences correlate with objective physical facts, but, as subjective phenomena, how could they be such facts?”
Here’s What Happens When A Philosopher Watches Too Much Reality TV
“I just had a dream the other night that, as a public philosopher, I was hosting a new show. Then, I realized that if it was a hit, I could have a huge new empire of reality TV shows on my hands. Here’s what I mean.” Tom Morris pitches his ideas for The Real Philosophers of Boston, Semantic Survivor: Plato’s Cave Version, and Top Sage, among other shows.
People Who Can’t Feel Fear (And What We Can Learn From Them)
Studies of subjects who, due to damage to the amygdala, simply don’t experience terror are helping researchers figure out just how that almond-shaped bundle of neurons (a/k/a “the lizard brain”) works.