Category: ideas

“What is interesting about repugnance is how it shifts over time. My favorite example is life insurance. Until the mid-19th century, this concept was widely held to be repugnant – it meant placing a bet, after all, on the untimely death of a loved one. … [But there’s] something that’s perhaps even more interesting: the opposite of repugnance … ‘transactions that, as a society, we often seek to promote, for reasons other than efficiency or pure political expediency.'”

“Jane Austen heroines may pink endearingly at a subtle breach in manners; millions more glow like a lava lamp in what feels like a public disrobing: the face, suddenly buck-naked.” But researchers have some good news for blushers. “In a series of recent studies, psychologists have found that reddening cheeks soften others’ judgments of bad or clumsy behavior, and help to strengthen social bonds rather [than] strain them.”

“The new neuro-social-sciences are the latest of many attempts to naturalise the human—to make every aspect of our lives and selves comprehensible merely as subjects of scientific explanation. The social consequences of the naturalistic program make it especially important to understand its philosophical limits.”

“Consumer capitalism is also a disappointment at the thing it’s supposed to be good at: the ordinary buying and using of stuff. It’s especially frustrating when the market decides to improve something that customers didn’t want improved. If the consumer marketplace allows useful, effective products to disappear, then what is it good for? Or who is it good for? Not the person who’s buying.”

“[S]ecular rationalists have held one tenet in common: religion belongs to the infancy of the species; the more modern a society becomes, the less room there is for religious belief and practice. … At bottom, the assertion that religion is destined to die out is [itself] a confession of faith.”

A Colorado ecologist “has compiled evidence from around the world that shows how different species of animals appear to have an innate sense of fairness, display empathy and help other animals that are in distress.”

Nicholas Kristof: “The upshot [of recent psychological research] is that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses. … It appears that we start with moral intuitions that our brains then find evidence to support.”

“What happens to our star-crossed lovers? How does their love ebb and flow over time? That’s where the math comes in. By writing equations that summarize how Romeo and Juliet respond to each other’s affections and then solving those equations with calculus, we can predict the course of their affair.” (And then there’s the “three-body problem” …)

“[W]hen you encounter a person whose nose, mouth or eyes are distorted in a way you have never encountered before, you instinctively lock on. Your gaze remains riveted, and your brain stays tuned for further information. … ‘All primates show this [staring] at something very different, something they have not evolved to see. They need to investigate further.'”

“We tend to think of videogames as frivolous activities – something we do to kill time, not to improve productivity. But a new generation of designers is taking a different tack: Like [Stanford professor Byron] Reeves, they’re using the principles of videogame design to transform everyday activities … Give people a competition, and it can transform a dull-but-important task into something exciting.”