“Neuroscientists increasingly describe our behaviour as the result of a chain of cause-and-effect, in which one physical brain state or pattern of neural activity inexorably leads to the next, culminating in a particular action or decision.” If everyone believed and accepted this idea, wouldn’t most people become liars and cheats? Dan Jones considers.
Category: ideas
Trusting Your Gut: Our Brains Are Shaped By Our Intestinal Bacteria
“People may advise you to listen to your gut instincts: now research suggests that your gut may have more impact on your thoughts than you ever realized … [N]ormal gut flora, the bacteria that inhabit our intestines, have a significant impact on brain development and subsequent adult behavior.”
Why Do Some People Get More Work Done At Starbucks?
“As is, the coffee shop is my most frequent outside-the-home-office haunt. It’s much the same for my friends who telecommute. I’ve surveyed them recently to see if there’s any agreement as to why it’s often better to work from Starbucks and its analogues than home or the office. There are three competing theories. …”
The Science Of Why Some People Refuse To Believe Science
“[An] array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. … It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.”
The Problem With Research Studies Of Happiness
“[R]esearchers often measure different things and then talk about them as though they were interchangeable measures of the same thing. We can measure how happy someone is in the moment or how satisfied they are with their lives, and while both are interesting, they are not the same.”
Obfuscation – It’s The Key To Learning
“Impediments to easy understanding – hard-to-read fonts, hard-to-follow lectures and lessons that are all too soon forgotten – may be the key to really learning something.”
Scientists Work On Unraveling Our Physiological Responses To Music
“Research is showing, for example, that our brains understand music not only as emotional diversion, but also as a form of motion and activity. The same areas of the brain that activate when we swing a golf club or sign our name also engage when we hear expressive moments in music.”
Sympathy for Pharaoh (A Passover Meditation)
“Towards the beginning of the story, Pharaoh hardens his own heart (or it ‘is hardened’ in the passive voice). Following the sixth plague, however, Pharaoh seems to lose his nerve and God steps in, hardening his heart for him. ‘And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh,’ Exodus 9:12 reads.” If God hardened Pharoah’s heart, was it fair to drown him in the Red Sea?
Study: Our Language Evolution Was Complicated
“Language seems to have evolved along varied, complicated paths, guided less by neurological settings than cultural circumstance. If our minds do shape the evolution of language, it’s likely at levels deeper and more nuanced than many researchers anticipated.”
A Controversial Idea: The Reason We Do Good
“The puzzle of altruism is more than just a technical curiosity for evolutionary theorists. It amounts to a high-stakes inquiry into the nature of good.”