“Consider the following statements: ‘War continues.’ ‘No sign of peace.’ Does our brain treat these two sentences differently, despite their identical meaning? A new study suggests it does. British researchers showed that we are better at detecting words that carry negative meaning than those that are positive.”
Category: ideas
All (Metaphorical) Roads Lead (From America) To Rome
Heard too many comparisons of an overstretched U.S. to the overstretched late Roman Empire? Well, observers (American and otherwise) have been comparing the country to Rome for well over two centuries.
A Fact Is A Fact Is A…?
“Mesofacts are the facts that change neither too quickly nor too slowly, that lie in this difficult-to-comprehend middle, or meso-, scale. Often, we learn these in school when young and hold onto them, even after they change.”
Altruism: Harder Than It Looks
A guy who had trouble giving away umbrellas in a rainstorm “was one of a dozen people in San Francisco who had been given $100 by a startup charity that is trying to get strangers to start doing nice things for other strangers. … Most folks, it turns out, aren’t prepared for it. ‘What’s the catch?’ a man asked.”
Does Higher IQ Correlate With Godless Liberalism?
“More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.”
A Suggestion For The Godless: Give Art And Culture Up For Lent
Will Self: “That’s right, give it up for Lent: all pictures and drawings, music and books, television, film and radio. Eschew newspapers, and magazines; look not upon the glittery face of the worldwide web. Instead, stride out into the world protected only by the flimsy raiment of your own reason, guided solely by the light of your own conscience, and warmed by your own imagination alone.”
How We Slip Up When Dieting Or Trying To Quit Smoking
“New research suggests that you may have succumbed to a cognitive distortion called restraint bias. Bolstered by an inflated sense of impulse control, we overexpose ourselves to temptation and fall prey to impulsiveness.”
The Sound Of Silence: Our Brains Really Hear It
“While we characterize silence as the absence of sound, the brain hears it as loud and clear as any other noise. In fact, according to a recent study from the University of Oregon, some areas of the brain respond solely to sound termination.”
The Limits Of Secular Reason In Public Life
Stanley Fish: “It is not … that secular reason can’t do the job (of identifying ultimate meanings and values) we need religion to do; it’s worse; secular reason can’t do its own self-assigned job – of describing the world in ways that allow us to move forward in our projects – without importing, but not acknowledging, the very perspectives it pushes away in disdain.”
Our Brains Really Can Get Too Full
“Scientists have known that newly acquired, short-term memories are often fleeting. But a new study in flies suggests that kind of forgetfulness doesn’t just happen. Rather, an active process of erasing memories may in some ways be as important as the ability to lay down new memories.”