Moral Psychology Moral psychology is going through a renaissance, and we are living through the new synthesis in ethics that E. O. Wilson called for in 1975. We’re sure to disagree on many points today, but I think that we here all agree on a number of things. We all agree that to understand morality, … Read more
Modeling the Future Psychologist David Gilbert argues that economic decisions are inherently affective forecasts, and that it’s up to individuals to decide how they use them. Gilbert is interested in learning how people can become better affective forecasters, but not because he believes they should be. Economists believe that people engage in economic transactions in … Read more
Nassim Taleb Edited by John Brockman from Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction. In 2006, Nassim Taleb used FNMA and bank risk managers as his prime perpetrators. He claims that those who are putting society at risk are “no true statisticians,” merely people using statistics in a self-serving manner. The subprime crisis … Read more
The squat is the only exercise that allows direct training of the complex movement pattern known as hip drive. The term posterior chain refers to the muscles that produce hip extension – the straightening out of the hip joint from its flexed (or bent) position in the bottom of the squat. The full squat is … Read more
Curiosity as a Virtue “The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.” Edmund Burke Curiosity for me is an overwhelming sensation. It’s a sudden burst of energy, an old acquaintance, a dear friend. If it leaves me, so will my purpose in life. When people describe their attitudes towards … Read more
Mike Merzenich sutured a monkey’s fingers together so that it didn’t need as much cortex to represent two separate individual digits, and pretty soon the cortical regions that were representing those two digits shrank, making that part of the cortex available to use for other things. When the sutures were removed, the cortical regions soon … Read more
It isn’t clear either how to deal with Monsters. Do you flirt with them and derive small amounts of benefit from them over long periods of time, or do we completely starve the Monster? So how do we fight with the Monster within us? We struggle to contain it. We repress it and try to … Read more
There was an interesting story that I read about recently. It was meant to convey a lesson to take home. Let’s call this story ‘The old man and the broken engine’. It goes something like this. There was an old mechanic who was called to fix a broken engine on a ship. The old man … Read more
Below are 3 common ways the Bible is taken out of context. Historical Context is Ignored On social media, an apparent contradiction in the Bible was circulated. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus was crucified on the “third hour” (Mark 15:25). But the Gospel of John says Pilate sentenced Jesus to crucifixion on “about the sixth hour” … Read more
In Lifespan, Sinclair insists that aging is not a law of nature but a choice. There doesn’t have to be an upward limit to the human lifespan. Why do we Age? In any case, why do we age? If you don’t know, that’s okay. Many biologists don’t either. Doctors who specialize in aging (gerontologists) often … Read more