At once tiny and huge: what is this feeling we call ‘sublime’? “Here we have an account of sublime experience that oscillates between feeling reduced to nothing in comparison with the great spatial and temporal expanse of nature, and then feeling elevated by two thoughts ‘that only philosophy makes clear’. First is the thought that […]
Book Review: Evolutionary Psychopathology “Del Giudice seems to imply that a similar epigenetic mechanism “looks around” at the world during the first few years of life to try to figure out if you’re living in the sort of unpredictable dangerous environment that needs a fast strategy, or the sort of safe, masterable environment that needs […]
The Best Interview Questions We’ve Ever Published “…hiring well to begin with is one of the most powerful antidotes to paralyzing bureaucracy. You want to recruit and onboard people you know you can trust, so you that you don’t have to set up a bunch of newfangled process just to ensure productivity and quality.”
Depression and religion in adolescence “…’a one standard deviation increase in religiosity decreases the probability of being depressed by 11 percent. By comparison, increasing mother’s education from no high school degree to a high school degree or more only decreases the probability of being depressed by about 5 percent.’ And for the most depressed individuals, […]
Vargsamtal – NOWNESS NOWNESS
A Framework for Intelligence and Cortical Function Based on Grid Cells in the Neocortex: A Companion Paper (PDF) “In a pure hierarchical model, these connections would not be necessary. In fact, more than 95% of the synapses in the neocortex are not explained by the pure hierarchical model. Additionally, many AI and deep learning networks […]
Pagans against Genesis “And here we have the central problem: Greek and Roman philosophers criticised the Bible first and foremost because it presented the deity in terms that were utterly unacceptable to them. The biblical God is a passionate God, a capricious God – not the austere, immobile, unchanging God that Greco-Roman philosophers argued for.”
Religion is about emotion regulation, and it’s very good at it “Emotional management is important because life is hard. The Buddha said: ‘All life is suffering’ and most of us past a certain age can only agree. Religion evolved to handle what I call the ‘vulnerability problem’. When we’re sick, we go to the doctor, […]
The Tails Coming Apart As Metaphor For Life “Mediocristan is like the route from Balboa Park to West Oakland, where it doesn’t matter what line you’re on because they’re all going to the same place. Then suddenly you enter Extremistan, where if you took the Red Line you’ll end up in Richmond, and if you […]
10 Day Samadhi (Concentration) Retreat at Spirit Rock “No one wants to experience sadness, but feeling sadness and desiring that the sadness goes away is worse than simply experiencing sadness in the present moment. The Buddha called our reaction to experiences the “second arrow” that hurts us. The first arrow is the experience itself; the […]
Why did the witch trials dwindle? “Where there was more conflict between Catholics and Protestants (in Britain, between Anglicans and Presbyterians), witch trials were widespread; in places where one creed dominated there were fewer. The authors conclude that churches engaged in a sort of “non-price competition”, gaining converts in confessional battlegrounds by advertising their commitment […]
Toddlers Like Winners, But How They Win Matters “…bonobos always prefer a winner — even when that dominance comes from beating others up. “They prefer dominant individuals, no matter how they achieve their dominance,” notes Kiley Hamlin, an associate professor studying developmental psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. “Whereas human babies, […]
Extreme Athleticism Is the New Midlife Crisis “For her dissertation, Christensen conducted a field study of 100 milers as they went through the race. She tracked their emotions and their levels of confidence as they journeyed through the various stages. What she found is that runners who were able to accept their pain and not […]
When will I be me? Why a sense of authenticity takes its time “…these studies suggest that our perceived sense of authenticity is continually changing. We do not think of ourselves as stagnant beings. Moreover, people hold positive expectations that they are constantly moving towards becoming their true self, and they place immense value on […]
Community Plumbing: How the hardware store orders things, neighborhoods, and material worlds. “Yet growing up in that environment impressed upon me that pretty much everything can be made and fixed by regular people. It helped me appreciate how the world hangs together — how a building stands up, how electricity gets to the outlet, how […]
“I once interviewed the Dalai Lama, and I said to the Dalai Lama, ‘Why do Buddhists giggle all the time?’ Because they do. They just see the whole thing as a joke, you know, and they’re wonderful to be around. But he answered a different question, he said, ‘What I like about laughter is that […]
Generating Beginner Heuristics for Simple Texas Hold’em “While developing game playing agents that approximate optimal play has been the focus of much of artificial intelligence games research, the strategies found are rarely ever applicable by humans, requiring a lot of processing power and working memory. […] In this work, we discuss how to generate game […]
“These two types of science roles, simplifier and constructor, are both needed for creating the ecosystem of science. But why should it be that understanding the components (in simplifier fashion) does not open up the complete architecture of all science to us? The reason is that complete comprehension of one level of abstraction does not […]