Category: ideas

“Anatomically at least, our brains differ little from those of the people who painted the walls of the Chauvet cave all those years ago. … Thanks to the latest technologies, though, we can now trace the brain’s evolution in unprecedented detail, from a time before the very first nerve cells right up to the age of cave art and cubism.”

In Europe before the 17th century, most recreation and celebration took place during the day, because the night, of course, was dark and dangerous. Then came the great advances in artificial illumination – most importantly, public street lighting.

“Researchers in the Netherlands present evidence that if certain rules are clearly spelled out, and you note that others have been disregarding them, you’re more likely to break them as well. What’s more, you are also more likely to ignore an entirely different directive.”

“As rats were learning the task their brain activity showed bursts of fast gamma waves. Once the rats mastered the task, their brainwaves slowed to almost a quarter of their initial frequency, becoming beta waves. Graybiel’s team suspects this transition reflects when learning becomes habit.”

Steven Pinker: “Believe it or not, the world of the past was much worse. Violence has been in decline for thousands of years, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in the existence of our species.”

“The point to stress is that the characters [in Don Quixote] can argue about the nature of their perceptions only insofar as we, the readers, have a concept of reality that is independent of their various reports. In fact, the common notion of objective reality that most of us would recognize today … is mutually dependent on” the concept of a fictional narrative.

“At this moment, there’s someone training for your job. He may not be as smart as you are–in fact, he could be quite stupid–but what he lacks in intelligence he makes up for in drive, reliability, consistency, and price. He’s willing to work for longer hours, and he’s capable of doing better work, at a much lower wage. He doesn’t ask for health or retirement benefits, he doesn’t take sick days, and he doesn’t goof off when he’s on the clock.”

You know the utilitarian credo: Jeremy Bentham’s “the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.” A pair of researchers disigned a study “to ask what sort of people actually do have a utilitarian outlook on life. Their answers, just published in Cognition, are not comfortable.”

“In 2000 BCE or 850 CE there was no culturally agreed-upon 1:37 p.m. It simply did not exist and it could not have existed. We invented it and all of the time-behavior that goes with it. Then we used that time to imagine entire new ecosystems of human activity into existence.”

Maria Popova “unpack[s] the verses to explore the scientific wisdom they contain in the context of several studies that offer lab-tested validation for McFerrin’s intuitive insight.”