The Benefits of Bilingualism. The Social Sciences’ ‘Physics Envy’ Karl Popper is an idiot. - Politics, Philosophy, and Religion. What do you guys think of this view taken to it's extreme as in Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis: I found this interesting: We discuss the nature of reality in the ontological context of Penrose’s math-matter-mind triangle. The triangle suggests the circularity of the widespread view that math arises from the mind, the mind arises out of matter, and that matter can be explained in terms of math. Non-physicists should be wary of any claim that modern physics leads us to any particular resolution of this circularity, since even the sample of three theoretical physicists writing this paper hold three divergent views.
Some physicists believe that current physics has already found the basic framework for a complete description of reality, and only has to fill in the details. Einstein-era reading vs. today’s: Is workplace ‘efficiency’ why we curl up with ‘American Idol’? “Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits,” Albert Einstein said in a quotation I picked up from by jan on freedom . “Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” Einstein lived in a different age from ours, that’s for sure. I’m more worried that my students’ lives are so frantic and busy—like mine—that they hardly have time to read and reflect.
I have to schedule the time in my calendar. Reading as a task. Indeed, people who manage to find time for reading may be the most industrious among us. Seriously, though, I have a big sense that the so-called reading crisis has less to do with television and the Internet than it does with our frantic American sense of having to get things done. Or, given the realities of workplace “efficiency”—a code for fewer people doing more work—it’s not just the frantic sense; it’s the frantic of having to get stuff done. In a related vein, yes, Prof. The Art of Rejection - Manage Your Career. By Melissa Girard and Cristina Stanciu "The art of losing isn't hard to master," Elizabeth Bishop writes in her poem "One Art.
" "Lose something every day," she advises, "Then practice losing farther, losing faster. " As academics, we want desperately for Bishop to be right. Against all evidence to the contrary, we persist in believing that it's possible to inure oneself to the losses and rejections that are an inescapable part of academic life. Facing a career filled with rejections, some minor and some monumental, we tell ourselves and our students, "Don't worry. That is the advice every job candidate has received from well-meaning job-placement directors, advisers, friends, and family. As veterans of the academic job market, we have endured countless rejections. Right now those of us in English, foreign languages, and allied fields are entering the season of rejection. Let's start with an incomplete list of the ways in which we have been rejected. The stages of rejection. Accuracy. Philosophy and Metaphysics Discussion Forum Topic List.
Thought Experiments: Deep Thought Provoking Questions and Thought Experiments to Boost your Creativity! Home- IQ Tests - Creativity - Genius - Brainstorming - Self-Help - BLOG Thought experiments are simple creative ways you can begin to unleash the genius within and boost your brain power to new levels of creativity and excellence. Albert Einstein is probably the most famous person to have used thought experiments, but plenty of other great thinkers, scientists, philosophers, artists and geniuses have employed the thought experiment technique to access their most brilliant ideas. Thought experiments are possibly the most daring and original thing you can do with your mind. Become an Instant Genius Discover secret 'brain hacks' to activate your hidden genius! Www.Instant-Genius.com Here's how Wikipedia defines a thought experiment: A thought experiment basically involves visualizing a situation and performing some kind of experimental action and seeing what happens.
For example, Albert Einstein imagined what it would be like to ride across the universe on a photon beam of light. What If... What Sherlock Holmes can teach you about deductive reasoning and how it'll change your life. Do you feel like a dick in private? Are your ideas and thinking skills underdeveloped? Well, you don’t have to feel like that - instead learn the secrets of the world’s most famous private dick, Sherlock Holmes! Sherlock Holmes can turn you into a dynamic detective able to solve any mystery and discover the answer to any problem. <A HREF=" Widgets</A> For over a hundred years, the Sherlock Holmes detective stories have entertained us, from the original penny comic stories, to the books and films that followed. Loads of actors have had a bash at playing the aquiline, pipe-smoking detective. So let’s draw on that. "...go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone.
" Throughout the many Sherlock Holmes stories, there are 4 main steps followed for solving mysteries. 1. You must become as detached as possible. 2. Should i take philosophy for my senior year if my weakness is writing? : philosophy. Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical. Text Only (Note: The content of this site is a parody. It is not to be taken literally.
Help with understanding the humor.) What Is NT? Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity. Neurotypical individuals often assume that their experience of the world is either the only one, or the only correct one.
NT is believed to be genetic in origin. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Normal Disorders: 666.00 Neurotypic Disorder How Common Is It? Tragically, as many as 9625 out of every 10,000 individuals may be neurotypical. Are There Any Treatments For NT? There is no known cure for Neurotypical Syndrome. However, many NTs have learned to compensate for their disabilities and interact normally with autistic persons. Could I be NT? Take the Online NT Screening Test. Papers and Abstracts Riviera N. About This Site This site is an expression of autistic outrage. My brain is a jewel. -muskie.
Psychological manipulation. Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics.[1] By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative, abusive, devious, and deceptive. Social influence is not necessarily negative. For example, doctors can try to persuade patients to change unhealthy habits. Social influence is generally perceived to be harmless when it respects the right of the influenced to accept or reject and is not unduly coercive. Depending on the context and motivations, social influence may constitute underhanded manipulation.
Requirements for successful manipulation[edit] According to psychology author George K. Consequently, the manipulation is likely to be accomplished through covert aggressive (relational aggressive or passive aggressive) means.[2] How manipulators control their victims[edit] According to Braiker[edit] Human Evolution: Are Humans Still Evolving? Recognizing Spatial Intelligence. Ninety years ago, Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman began an ambitious search for the brightest kids in California, administering IQ tests to several thousand of children across the state. Those scoring above an IQ of 135 (approximately the top 1 percent of scores) were tracked for further study. There were two young boys, Luis Alvarez and William Shockley, who were among the many who took Terman’s tests but missed the cutoff score. Despite their exclusion from a study of young “geniuses,” both went on to study physics, earn PhDs, and win the Nobel prize.
How could these two minds, both with great potential for scientific innovation, slip under the radar of IQ tests? Spatial ability, defined by a capacity for mentally generating, rotating, and transforming visual images, is one of the three specific cognitive abilities most important for developing expertise in learning and work settings. The first source of data reviewed by Wai was a massive longitudinal study, Project Talent. Wasted potential in human intelligence : StonerPhilosophy. Redirecting the charitable impulse. By Ian Pollock Being an extremely didactic dialogue, in which the rules of polite conversation are flouted for the sake of philosophy and truth. All characters are fictional; no interlocutors were traumatized in the making of this dialogue. Mia: So, what did you get up to this weekend? Gallant: I spent Saturday playing a basketball tournament for Balls For The Cure. Mia: Cool, I assume that’s a fundraiser? What for? Gallant: Testicular cancer.
Mia: Sorry to hear about your uncle. Gallant: Because that’s what my uncle died of. Mia: Right, I know. Gallant: Obviously. Mia: And it’s terrible that he’s dead. Gallant: That is the disease that took him away from us! Mia: No, not really. Gallant: Well, we do! Mia: Indeed it has... so has flying debris. Gallant: You don’t understand. Mia: Okay, fair enough. Gallant: I don’t speak Latin, but thanks. Mia: Or you could think about the fact that the bad thing is that he died, not that he died of any one specific disease. Gallant: I guess. Mia: Bye! Why Interacting with a Woman Can Leave Men "Cognitively Impaired" Movies and television shows are full of scenes where a man tries unsuccessfully to interact with a pretty woman. In many cases, the potential suitor ends up acting foolishly despite his best attempts to impress.
It seems like his brain isn’t working quite properly and according to new findings, it may not be. Researchers have begun to explore the cognitive impairment that men experience before and after interacting with women. A 2009 study demonstrated that after a short interaction with an attractive woman, men experienced a decline in mental performance. A more recent study suggests that this cognitive impairment takes hold even w hen men simply anticipate interacting with a woman who they know very little about. Sanne Nauts and her colleagues at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands ran two experiments using men and women university students as participants.
The results may also have to do with social expectations. Tools for Living - The Chronicle Review. By Scott Carlson A friend of mine who works at Saint John's University and the College of Saint Benedict, in Minnesota, recently told me a story: Her book group read Anna Lappé's Diet for a Hot Planet, one of many recent books to focus on the vulnerabilities of the industrial food system and the threats posed by climate change.
The book's treatment of the topic held few surprises, and the solutions offered were equally well-worn and deceptively simple: Buy fruits, vegetables, and meats locally, and cook them at home. My friend's big surprise came when the students in the group started talking about the solutions—and found themselves stuck: "Almost all the students said they didn't know how to cook," she told me, "and even the young, single adult employees in the group admitted they lacked both the know-how and motivation. " I can't help being reminded of that story when in my daily work as a Chronicle writer I hear the chorus of complaints about the state of higher education. Reclaiming a Sense of the Sacred - The Chronicle Review.
By Marilynne Robinson Over the years of writing and teaching, I have tried to free myself of constraints I felt, limits to the range of exploration I could make, to the kind of intuition I could credit. I realized gradually that my own religion, and religion in general, could and should disrupt these constraints, which amount to a small and narrow definition of what human beings are and how human life is to be understood. And I have often wished my students would find religious standards present in the culture that would express a real love for human life and encourage them also to break out of these same constraints.
For the educated among us, moldy theories we learned as sophomores, memorized for the test and never consciously thought of again, exert an authority that would embarrass us if we stopped to consider them. I was educated at a center of behaviorist psychology and spent a certain amount of time pestering rats. I should probably have tried raising the stakes. How to think Philosophically. Philosophy requires a certain kind of thinking To do philosophy one must think philosophically. This is not as simple as it first seems. It requires you to train yourself to think in a way that is specific to philosophy, rather than, say, science. Like everything in philosophy, there is no unique right way, but there are some things you can practice to give yourself a good start.
Asking the right questions Thinking philosophically requires you to ask the right questions. You probably wouldn’t ask questions like: ‘how can we stop the violence in my community?’ You probably wouldn’t ask questions like: ‘what is the speed of gravity?’ You probably wouldn’t ask questions like: ‘what hobbies, activities, things I own, etc. makes me the person I am?’ It is this sort of questioning that pushes the boundaries of philosophy. Physicalism: A False View of the World. Best 20th/21st Century Philosophy Articles: Philosophy Forums. Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed.
Our minds set up many traps for us. Unless we’re aware of them, these traps can seriously hinder our ability to think rationally, leading us to bad reasoning and making stupid decisions. Features of our minds that are meant to help us may, eventually, get us into trouble. Here are the first 5 of the most harmful of these traps and how to avoid each one of them. 1. The Anchoring Trap: Over-Relying on First Thoughts “Is the population of Turkey greater than 35 million? Lesson: Your starting point can heavily bias your thinking: initial impressions, ideas, estimates or data “anchor” subsequent thoughts. This trap is particularly dangerous as it’s deliberately used in many occasions, such as by experienced salesmen, who will show you a higher-priced item first, “anchoring” that price in your mind, for example. What can you do about it? Always view a problem from different perspectives. 2.
Consider the status quo as just another alternative. 3. Be OK with making mistakes. 4. 5. What's Wrong With Meritocracy? Meritocracy means that those who deserve to, succeed, and those who succeed are those who deserve to. What could possibly be fairer than that? While it seems easy to agree that a functioning and successful society should endorse meritocracy to some extent, a society based on merit alone would not only be impossible to achieve - it's a conception of ideal justice after all - but also likely become more awful the more it resembled that ideal. What is a meritocracy? It would seem to require the interaction of 3 distinct components - personal endowments (such as native intelligence, rude health, social opportunities, etc); personal moral character (those virtues such as self-discipline, effort, ambition that we want to 'reward'); and a socio-economic structure that reflects some agreed standards of merit so that people who do 'good work' (scientists and doctors, perhaps?)
Are encouraged and rewarded. Note immediately that these components are harder to separate than one would like. Does good grades mean your clever? Bad grades mean your dumb? X-Phi's New Take on Old Problems - Room for Debate. People Are Getting Dumber, and It's No Joke - Room for Debate. Can We Use Fiction to Teach Nonfiction? - Brainstorm. In a New Generation of College Students, Many Opt for the Life Examined. The Rise of the New Groupthink. Solitude and Leadership. Physics and the Immortality of the Soul | Guest Blog.
Science/Nature | 'Fidelity gene' found in voles. Philosophy by Another Name.