Mind Hacks – Page 2 – Neuroscience and psychology news and views. The world’s stupidest drugs law, the Psychoactive Drugs Act, has come into effect in the UK last week and it claims to prohibit the creation and supply of all psychoactive substances not already covered by pre-existing drugs laws. Apart from taking us further down the futile road of prohibition it is premised on something that’s scientifically impossible – testing if a seized drug is psychoactive from looking at its chemical structure.
The government claimed that they had ‘solved’ this problem and they’ve just released their forensic strategy document which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t actually solve it. What it does do, however, is worthy of attention as it likely raises a whole new set of problems. Your brain has many, many different forms of receptors, so the government has defined a list that will supposedly indicate whether a substance is ‘psychoactive’ based on whether a substance binds to and activates one of the following: The Lagrangian: 2015: The Year in Insight. Titles made of words make sense for art made of words.
They are little bits of writing that are used either to describe the essence of a piece or to give an initial platform from which the reader is meant to approach the piece. But why are they also associated with every other form of art? Music, film, theater, and visual art all buy into this lexical convention. Titles function as handles or file names. They are compact, portable signs for the signified piece of art. People want to discuss and write about art. First Movement Classical composers typically resist imposing an interpretive or affective framework on the listener by giving formulaic, utilitarian titles like "Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor.
" "The Great Leap Forward Poured Down Upon Us One Day Like a Mighty Storm, Suddenly and Furiously Blinding Our Senses. " Is this a case of poetry pairing with music, the excessive capitalization reflecting the names of Ridiculous Communist Reform Programs like The Great Leap Forward? The View from Hell: Trying to See Through: A Unified Theory of Nerddom. This was written in 2012! You may be interested in Weaponized Sacredness on egregores, preference falsification, and preference cascades.
There is a single characteristic, I argue, that defines and unites the cognitive community that you and I share if you are reading this (the community of nerds). These days we often identify as rationalists, skeptics, or atheists, interested in cognition and cognitive biases; we are likely to eat LSD at Burning Man. We read analytic philosophy, science fiction, and LessWrong. Lucid Dream Intelligence and social awkwardness partially explain many of the patterns of our community, but neither is the characteristic I have in mind. With effort, over time, you can get in the habit of performing "reality checks" during waking life: trying to push your fingers through solid surfaces, perhaps, or to breathe with airways closed.
Dreams demonstrate that our brains (and even rat brains) are capable of creating complex, immersive, fully convincing simulations. Essays. Write Those Words So A Blind Man Can See 'Em: Storytelling Resources For Copywriters and Marketers. Here are storytelling resources for copywriters and marketers. If you have any good things to add, post a comment below and I'll put it on the list. (Post title inspired by this post by Brian McLeod.) updated 05/26/15 Articles/Links Periodic Table of Storytelling Elements Simple Keys To Effective Plot Structure - Storymastery.com From Rick Duris: "...Kevin Costner's eulogy for Whitney Houston. From Miss Lizzie: "...a memo from Jeffrey Katzenberg to his execs at Disney, after the flop that was Dick Tracey...Not everything's relevant to copywriting of course, but Katzenberg makes some great points about the importance of story, a central idea and even marketing and testing.
" David Mamet memo on dramatic writing The Five Key Turning Points of All Successful Movie Scripts by Michael Hague An Interview With Robert McKee Quirky Secret of Marketing Successfully Crash Course in Storytelling The Big Sales Copy Tip… Who Are You? The Savvy Copywriter. Crash Course in Storytelling. How many awful commercials do you see where a group of ethnically diverse “friends” is standing around a party having some wooden, unbelievable discussion about the benefits of Product X? You probably can’t remember because a) there are so many of them and b) they’re all so, so forgettable. It’s a shame, because even if a company doesn’t have the budget of a Google or a Red Bull, that doesn’t excuse them for not trying. A great commercial script is free. Story is free. See, marketing is storytelling at its core. It’s taking a reader or a user or a viewer on a journey—one that identifies a problem in his or her life and offers a helpful solution.
Great marketing evokes an emotional response in people and makes them connect with your brand in a profound way. That said, how many marketers do you think really put in the effort to understand story? Masters of the craft like the Coen Brothers or Cormac McCarthy have spent decades studying and honing their skills as storytellers. Structure Matters. Memetic engineering. Memetic engineering is a term developed and coined by Leveious Rolando, John Sokol, and Gibran Burchett while they researched and observed the behavior of people after being purposely exposed (knowingly and unknowingly) to certain memetic themes. The term is based on Richard Dawkins' theory of memes. The process of developing memes, through meme-splicing and memetic synthesis, with the intent of altering the behavior of others in society or humanity.The process of creating and developing theories or ideologies based on an analytical study of societies, cultures, their ways of thinking and the evolution of their minds.The process of modifying human beliefs, thought patterns, etc.
Definition[edit] According to the above theory, typical memetic engineers include scientists, engineers, industrial designers, ad-men, artists, publicists, political activists, and religious missionaries. Origins of memetic engineering[edit] Applied memetic engineering[edit] Examples[edit] See also[edit] 27 Best Copywriting Formulas: How to Tell a Captivating Story Online. You’ve heard it said that storytelling is an essential element to drawing the reader into your content and driving more engagement. So how can you add this element to the blogposts you write?
Can you fit a captivating story into a social media update, even one that’s 140 characters long? Here’s the great news: There’s a formula for that. Many storytellers and copywriters have tested out the best intros and segues to draw readers to a piece of content. Their copywriting formulas just plain work—in blogpost intros, in social updates, in emails, and anywhere else you might happen to write online.
Here are 27 of the best ones I’ve heard. 27 Copywriting Formulas That Grab Readers’ Attention Why might you trot out a copywriting formula each time you need compelling copy? I think one of my favorite perspectives on it, from someone who knows copywriting better than anyone, comes from Copyblogger’s Demian Farnworth. This is what it means to be an efficient writer: keeping your tools handy. 1. 2. 3.