“The implication is that being ‘scientific’ means completely digesting and testing every idea before deciding whether it’s right or wrong. But sometimes we have to make fast decisions based on prejudice, or we’ll never get anything done. Is that OK, or does it fundamentally undermine what we’re trying to achieve?”
Category: ideas
What Makes That Video Go Viral? It Could Be Completely Random
“The answer may have little to do with the quality of the information. What goes viral may be completely arbitrary, according to a controversial new study of online social networks.”
How Very Young Children Remember – And How We Remember When We Were Very Young Children
“For a few reasons – nascent neural structures, the lack of knowledge to make sense of early experiences, the lack of language to represent those experiences – it may be impossible for any part of our lives before, say, 24 months to stick around into adulthood.” But what makes us recall the earliest memories that do stick? The key may be in how our parents talked to us.
We’re Lonelier And More Alone (Is Facebook Making It Worse?)
“Loneliness and being alone are not the same thing, but both are on the rise. We meet fewer people. We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy. The decrease in confidants–that is, in quality social connections–has been dramatic over the past 25 years.”
Street Walking: Figuring Out What Pedestrians Do, And Why
For instance, “the way walking speeds are slower at midday than before or after work; the way people don’t like to maintain the same walking speed as a stranger next to them; the way tourists walk in inappropriately spread out groups” (New Yorkers’ pet peeve); “crosswalk bulge” and “minimizing dissatisfaction.”
Political Differences Begin In The Brain (So There’s Probably No Bridging Them)
One example: “Tough-on-crime, pro-military conservatives have a more pronounced startle reflex after hearing a sudden loud noise. They also show stronger skin responses when shown threatening images and look at them more rapidly and for longer.” Says one leading researcher, “One of the things we’re trying to get people to realise is that those who disagree with them politically really do experience the world in a different fashion.”
The Key Weakness Science Shares With Religion
Stanley Fish: “[With] respect to a single demand – the demand that the methodological procedures of an enterprise be tethered to the world of fact in a manner unmediated by assumptions – science and religion are in the same condition of not being able to meet it (as are history, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology and all the rest).”
Buddhism And Existentialism, Twin Consolations In The Face Of Death
“For existentialists and Buddhists, though in different ways, the relationship between the self and death seems more like the Late Night relationship between David Letterman and Paul Shaffer. One will be present if the other is too. You can be a full-fledged self, existentialists say, only if your death is ever present in your life. If you can manage to make your self disappear, Buddhists say, then death will as well.”
We Are Explanation-Seeking Animals
“So uncomfortable is it for us if something doesn’t have a cause that we strive to determine one, one way or the other, even absent the necessary evidence.” According to some researchers, the process of seeking – or making up – explanations for things is crucial to human cognition.
The Problem Of The Stein Siblings, And The Problem Of Modernism
Leo Stein might have had questionable artistic taste from time to time, but Gertrude Stein’s apparent collaboration during WWII give many of us pause.