short: The wiring of your cerebral cortex makes compression possible. Compression enables sensory integration. Sensory integration enables abstraction. Abstraction permits your highly complex brain to issue flexible predictions based on the functions of things rather than on their physical form. That is creativity. And you can share these predictio

Abstraction also lets your brain assemble sounds into words, and words into ideas, so you can learn language.

Abstraction gives you the power to recognize things you’ve never encountered before, such as a woman with snakes for hair. You’ve

Okay, your brain can make a big, fat, compressed summary of summaries of summaries. What does this have to do with social reality? Well, compression makes it possible for your brain to think abstractly, and abstraction, together with the rest of the Five Cs, empowers your large, complex brain to create social reality.

particularly challenging way to modify a mind is by moving it to another culture.

Creativity, communication, copying, and cooperation​—​four of the five Cs​—​arose with genetic changes that gave our species a big, complex brain. But large brain size and high complexity are not enough to make and maintain social reality. You also need the fifth C, compression, an intricate ability that humans have to a degree not found in any oth

We also pay the costs of reduced innovation in a global economy, because when people are persistently stressed, they don’t learn as well.

if you’re exposed to verbal nastiness continually for months and months or if you live in an environment that persistently and relentlessly taxes your body budget, words can indeed physically injure your brain. Not because you’re weak or a so-called snowflake, but because you’re a human. Your nervous system is bound up with the behavior of other hu

the eleventh one snaps the bed frame. Simply put, a long period of chronic stress can harm a human brain. Scientific studies are absolutely clear on this point. When you’re on the receiving end of ongoing insults and threats, for example, studies show that you’re more likely to get sick. Scientists don’t understand all the underlying mechanisms yet