Stuff to bring up at a dinner party
Rationality can sometimes (not always) be self-defeating. If you are feeling joy, you can easily talk yourself out of it. You can change your mood by reasoning your way into misery. But if you are feeling miserable, good luck trying to talk yourself out of it. It’s not so easy to change your mood by reasoning your way into happiness. It’s not... See more
They too must serve masters who hold the purse strings. And their great intellectual powers can make the master feel insecure, as if he were only there to supply the funds—an ugly, ignoble job. The producer of a great work wants to feel he is more than just the provider of financing. He wants to appear creative and powerful, and also more important... See more
Innovation Inspired by Nature — AskNature
asknature.org
We are social creatures, and almost everything puzzling and paradoxical about our species is downstream of this fact.
We evaluate almost every action, habit, and preference not just by its immediate effects but by its reputational impact.
To put the point another way: Nobody expects a computer simulation of a hurricane to generate real wind and real rain. In the same way, a computer model of the brain may only ever simulate consciousness, but never give rise to it.
The 1 percent rule of social media goes like this: 1 percent of people create new content, 9 percent engage with it—likes, comments, shares—and the other 90 percent just lurk. They scroll, they watch, but you’d never know they’re there.
Most people don’t post much. The only people who post all the time are the ones who... See more
Rob Hendersonsubstack.com