“A strange new light can be just as frightening as the dark.”
Aztec moral philosophy has profound differences from the Greek tradition
“While Plato and Aristotle were concerned with character-centred virtue ethics, the Aztec approach is perhaps better described as socially-centred virtue ethics. If the Aztecs were right, then ‘Western’ philosophers have been too focused on individuals, too reliant on assessments of character, and too optimistic about the individual’s ability to correct her own vices. Instead, according to the Aztecs, we should look around to our family and friends, as well as our ordinary rituals or routines, if we hope to lead a better, more worthwhile existence.”
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, we hypothesize that Western Christianity, beginning around 500 CE, gradually implemented a set of policies about marriage and the family—the Marriage and Family Program (MFP),—that was a critical contributor to the eventual dissolution of the intensive kin-based institutions of Europe.
By 1500 CE, this left many regions of Western Europe dominated by independent, monogamous, nuclear families—a peculiar configuration called the European Marriage Pattern. This two-part theory implies that the Church, through the MFP, inadvertently contributed to what psychologists have termed WEIRD psychology.”
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 close. That attention and comfort minimises how bad or stressful an injury feels, a phenomenon known as social buffering.
[…]
That’s the drawback to showing you’re hurting: the signs that attract friends can also draw foes. More subtle expressions of pain, like facial expressions, could be a way around this conundrum. Grimacing gets the message across to those close by, without being immediately obvious to a predator lurking in the bushes. Indeed, many of the animals that show pain on their face, like rabbits, mice or sheep, are vulnerable prey animals.”
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 back and whether or not they even deserve it. And if we live in a culture where people do that, we’ll be a very healthy culture.”
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 effort and reward becomes inverted.
Pursuing happiness takes you further away from it. Attempts at greater emotional control only remove us from it. The desire for greater freedom is often what causes us to feel trapped. The need to be loved and accepted prevents us from loving and accepting ourselves.”
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 finally stop trying to summon that feeling. You feel sad, and possibly terrified, but mostly you feel relief.”
Essay on Corporations and Platforms
“But what if the nature of the economic puzzles that corporations evolved to solve have shifted? Thanks to software, the internet and artificial intelligence, the expenses that Coase identified can now be reduced just as well with tools from outside the company as they can from within it. Finding freelance workers via online marketplaces can be less costly, less risky and quicker than recruiting full-time employees. Collaboration tools are opening up space for manager-free forms of work. And contracting costs are likely to fall markedly thanks to the advent of blockchain protocols – algorithms that replace trusted third parties, and instead automatically verify transactions using a huge digital ledger, spread across multiple computers. As a result of these innovations, a new way of working is emerging: a series of interactions that are open, skills-based and software-optimised. Where once we had the ‘corporation’, instead we are witnessing the ascendancy of the ‘platform’. The question is: should we see this as a promise, or a threat?
[…]
Recall that in closed platforms, as network effects increase, rents are subtracted and channelled to the shareholders or capital owners. But the users are not partaking in the spoils of their own participation. By contrast, in a tokenised platform, the value created by users’ transactions boosts the value of the tokens they own. Users can extract the maximum gain from their participation via token appreciation, rather than having the economic value of network effects skimmed off by remote shareholders.”
To get a grip on altruism, see humans as molecules
“In semiconductors, changes in the microscopic structure of a metal can affect how much electricity must be applied to ‘activate’ it, such that the amount of current passing through jumps from zero to a particular number. Similarly, a recent paper in Nature written by my colleagues predicted how large a financial reward (the electricity) is required for altruism to ‘turn on’ and spread through a group (the semiconductor). Some networks require a reward of $1.05, for example, and are pretty great conductors of altruism; some demand $100 or more, and are very difficult to activate.”
Inference of ecological and social drivers of human brain-size evolution
“Our model predicts the evolution of adult Homo sapiens-sized brains and bodies when individuals face a combination of 60% ecological, 30% cooperative and 10% between-group competitive challenges, and suggests that between-individual competition has been unimportant for driving human brain-size evolution. Moreover, our model indicates that brain expansion in Homo was driven by ecological rather than social challenges, and was perhaps strongly promoted by culture.”
Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis
“THEREFORE, WE REJECT “America first” as a theological heresy for followers of Christ. While we share a patriotic love for our country, we reject xenophobic or ethnic nationalism that places one nation over others as a political goal. We reject domination rather than stewardship of the earth’s resources, toward genuine global development that brings human flourishing for all of God’s children. Serving our own communities is essential, but the global connections between us are undeniable. Global poverty, environmental damage, violent conflict, weapons of mass destruction, and deadly diseases in some places ultimately affect all places, and we need wise political leadership to deal with each of these.
WE ARE DEEPLY CONCERNED for the soul of our nation, but also for our churches and the integrity of our faith. The present crisis calls us to go deeper—deeper into our relationship to God; deeper into our relationships with each other, especially across racial, ethnic, and national lines; deeper into our relationships with the most vulnerable, who are at greatest risk.”
Kerr and Draymond’s Relationship Nearly Destroyed Warriors; Now It Fuels Them
“There’s so many times in life people try to change you,” Green says. “And sometimes, although someone may think they’re changing you for the better, it could be for the worse. And where [Kerr] helped me was, he didn’t try to change me. His whole thing to me was: How do you channel it? How do you channel your aggression, your passion? How do you use it, get it to where it’s always working for you, or never against you?”
[…]
“Like, No. 1, that person isn’t a pushover,” [Green] says. “I’d rather not deal with someone that’s a pushover. Because I know in life, sometimes you need to be told no. Sometimes you need to be told you’re wrong. And someone that’s just going to agree with me on everything I say or do, never tell me I’m wrong, they’re not good for my life. They’re usually there to get something out of you that they want. And when you kind of see that (strength) out of somebody, you know it’s not about what they want. Because if it was about what they want, you wouldn’t be there. That means a lot to me.”
Ancient Wisdom Reveals 7 Rituals That Will Make You Happy
- Life isn’t the problem. Your interpretations are.
- Step back.
- Accept.
- The mind requires training.
- Feeling is the only way through.
- Focus on the present.
- People are ridiculous. Love them anyway.
Tweet by Reuters
Brooklyn-based inventor creates wacky contraption to serve himself a piece of cake pic.twitter.com/iZv5OJPDfs
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 20, 2018
Tweet by allafarce
Trust data
Not too much
Mostly orders of magnitude— Dave Guarino (@allafarce) April 13, 2018
Tweet by xain_hs
not sure who wrote this but it's helpful pic.twitter.com/KsN0B4LXQm
— Xain (@xain_hs) April 2, 2018
Tweet by CyrilMorong
Why do employers pay extra money to people who study a bunch of subjects in college that they don’t actually need you to know? Signaling. Interesting article about economics professor Bryan Caplan https://t.co/fuMPEAELJb
— Cyril Morong (@CyrilMorong) April 27, 2018
Tweet by MaxCRoser
1950 on the left:
Global life expectancy was 46 years.
In Africa the average was 36
In India 35 years2015 on the right:
Global life expectancy is 71 years.
In Africa it is 61 (same as Japan in 1950)
In India it is 68 (close to the healthiest country in 1950 – Norway with 72) pic.twitter.com/7mtheYLsXK— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) April 24, 2018
Tweet by slaught_m
"Ehrman rejects the idea that Constantine’s conversion made much difference; the empire, he writes, would most likely have turned Christian in time without him." https://t.co/ARSrUWSKZO
— Maggie Slaughter (@slaught_m) February 14, 2018
Tweet by DinaPomeranz
Most of the increase in the global population is currently happening due to growing life expectancy, rather than growing number of children:https://t.co/bJogMy3bpr pic.twitter.com/vgjaBMMqU8
— Dina D. Pomeranz (@DinaPomeranz) February 8, 2018