The Origins of WEIRD Psychology “First, we hypothesize that, in adapting to the social worlds created by intensive kin-based institutions, human psychology shifts in ways that foster greater conformity, obedience and sensitivity to relational contexts but less individualism, analytic thinking and cooperation with strangers. Second, to account for part of the variation in kinship intensity, […]
Monthly Archives: June 2018
Animal pain is about communication, not just feeling
2018.06.15 – 10:44
Animal pain is about communication, not just feeling “Yet there’s plenty of evidence that the non-human urge to display pain has profound and intrinsic communicative value. Take the cries of lambs or rat pups, which will fetch their mothers to groom and lick them. Or the way squeaking and writhing mice will draw a cagemate […]
Mr. Rogers and Why Kind Men Freak Us Out
2018.06.07 – 21:26
Mr. Rogers and Why Kind Men Freak Us Out “The idea that Fred talked about the most was the idea of grace. The idea of grace in the Bible is the undeserved goodness bestowed upon you by God — meaning that God, or anyone, should be kind and good to people, whether or not you get anything […]
Why the Best Things in Life Are All Backwards
2018.06.07 – 20:57
Why the Best Things in Life Are All Backwards “Effort and reward have a linear relationship when the action is mindless and simple. Effort and reward have a diminishing returns relationship when the action is complex and multivariate. But when the action becomes purely psychological—an experience that exists solely within our own consciousness—the relationship between […]
The Hole in my Soul
2018.06.03 – 07:13
The Hole in my Soul “It must be maddening to see his baby brothers so blithely unconcerned about the unending torment that awaits. But that’s how you know you’re an atheist: when the stories have no power. It’s like leaving a relationship. You realize the love is gone, or maybe never was there, and you […]