Category: ideas

“In recent years, a great deal of attention has been paid to the potential of video games for good–President Obama has even appointed an expert adviser who is fashioning the first national policy initiative on video games’ role in education, health, the environment, and numerous other areas. But a vital component of games in the public interest has remained largely overlooked: intergenerational gameplay.”

“TED is no longer a responsible curator of ideas ‘worth spreading.’ Instead it has become something ludicrous, and a little sinister. Today TED is an insatiable kingpin of international meme laundering – a place where ideas, regardless of their quality, go to seek celebrity … [where] books become talks, talks become memes, memes become projects, projects become talks, talks become books – and so it goes ad infinitum.”

According to researchers, “visualizing a successful outcome, under certain conditions, can make people less likely to achieve it.”

“We naturally attribute beliefs and intentions and emotions to people we interact with. That is, we develop a ‘theory’–though not necessarily a theory we’re consciously aware of–about what’s going on in their minds. (An inability to do this is thought to play a role in autism.) And this ‘theory’ in turn shapes our interpretation of things people say. The ‘ToM network’ is a brain region–or, really, a network of different brain regions–that seems to play an important role in the construction of these theories.”

“Science especially suffers from an unfun reputation: an emotionless discipline practiced by exacting, white-coated brainiacs. Given that recasting the serious with the silly is a classic comedy formula, combined with the number of science teachers eager for ways to reach intimidated students and the general dearth of high-level thinking on YouTube, there’s an underserved audience of science-minded viewers.”

“First, not all men are created equal; there are few Ryan Goslings and many Kevin Redmons. The weaker among us quickly learned the futility of direct competition, and turned to ‘alternative reproductive strategies’ to spread our genes. (I may not be a dreamboat, baby, but I’ll bring you coffee in bed.) Second, females make choices.”

“Perhaps we ought to renegotiate the social contracts around spoiling. It used to be that the onus was entirely on the one who might spoil to protect any privileged story information he or she might possess. Now, as stories begin to be told more asynchronously, I think we are beginning to live in a world in which those of us who wait to hear a story must accept that we’re taking on more of a risk of having that story accidentally spoiled. It’s on us, at least somewhat. More so than ever, at the very least. And I also think we can begin to forgive those storytellers who are more geared toward instant delivery of the news.”

“Self-deception isn’t just lying or faking, but is deeper and more complicated, says [a UBC researcher] … It involves strong psychological forces that keep us from acknowledging a threatening truth about ourselves.”

Zach Weiner walks us through the logic involved – and (until the very end) just about convinces one that it might work.

“Millions of people fervently believe in an afterlife. John Martin Fischer, a philosopher at the University of California at Riverside, is not one of them. But Mr. Fischer does see the subject as ripe for academic research, and on Tuesday the John Templeton Foundation awarded him a windfall to make that happen – $5-million for a multidisciplinary investigation of human immortality.”