Category: ideas

A number of researchers believe that organized war is a product of socialization rather than inborn aggressive tendencies. They cite as evidence the lack of fossil records indicating warfare before the rise of settled agriculture; the existence, even today, of societies which rarely or never engage in organized combat; and the fact that the death rate from war and homicide in Europe is now one-tenth of what it was in the Middle Ages.

“Primates can intuitively recognise some rules of grammar, according to a study of cotton-topped tamarin monkeys (Saguinus oedipus). The findings do not mean primates can communicate using language, but they do suggest that some of the skills required to use language may be linked to very basic memory functions.”

“What does the human brain sound like? Now you can find out thanks to a technique for turning its flickering activity into music. Listening to scans may also give new insights into the differences and similarities between normal and dysfunctional brains.”

“Using ingenious experiments to reveal the brain’s hidden machinations, Wegner and others have found that our brains expend steady, conscious effort to avoid talking about ex-girlfriends on first dates, sending putts off the green, or letting slip the real reason you were late for work. But when our conscious minds are stressed and preoccupied — by, for example, a desire not to screw up — a subconscious process devoted to guarding against the mistake slips through. Unwanted thoughts pop into the forefront of your mind.”

“Why is it that people who set themselves up as moral paragons seem to have the hardest time living up to their own standards? It’s an apparent paradox. After all, even if the beliefs weren’t deeply held, even if those espousing them were utterly cynical, the special vehemence that the public reserves for scolding hypocrites should be deterrence enough.”

The NY Times Room for Debate blog asks four contributors: “How do students know if an M.A. is worth it or not? What degrees might be worth getting, and which are not? How does a student weigh the risks and benefits of taking that intermediate step in higher education?”

“The brain is not an equal opportunities organ, it seems. An imaging study of Chinese and Caucasian people has found that their brains respond less strongly to the pain of strangers whose ethnicity is different when compared with strangers of their own race.”

“Do English, Indonesian, Russian, and Turkish speakers end up attending to, partitioning, and remembering their experiences differently just because they speak different languages?”

“Though much of the time it runs in an orderly and stable way, every now and again it suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise. Neuroscientists have long suspected as much. Only recently, however, have they come up with proof that brains work this way. Now they are trying to work out why. Some believe that near-chaotic states may be crucial to memory, and could explain why some people are smarter than others.”