Debbie Foster
@dafinor
Debbie Foster
@dafinor
Could it be that quantum computers really compute across time
The take-home point of this and the rest of Bem’s studies is that our behavior seems to be conditioned not only by what we have learned or been exposed to in the past but also, to some small but significant extent, by what we will learn or be exposed to in the future.
Poker is all about comfort with uncertainty, after all. Only I didn’t quite realize it wasn’t just uncertainty about the outcome of the cards. It’s uncertainty about the “right” thing to do. The only certain thing is your thinking.
In the past, phrasal templates existed only as particularly catchy turns of phrase. They were still structures for words to spread, but the internet took them to a completely new level through meme culture, building our humor out of easily combined patterns of mutual references.
Tellingly, these patterns are called meme templates . Whenever an image
... See moreThe inner Iran, which I'd excavated through poems, had given me some of the most intimate depictions I'd encountered of how to make contact with the divine; poets really could be the unacknowledged legislators of the world in a culture where taxi drivers recite mystical verses and ayatollahs speak in double-edged stanzas.
But poetry is the form that
... See moreTwo tracks opened in my mind. One track held the world I knew to be real—the solid ground below me, the air in my lungs, the sun that rose in the morning. And on the other track, moving in the opposite direction, was a new reality, one I had never considered. On this track inexplicable things appeared, impossible things, ones that terrified me.
... See moreIn some cultures, the mind is a private space, while in others, it is open to outside influences--loved ones, elders, and the divine--in important ways that shape how inner voices are received or even heard.
She was finding, the older she got, the more she had thoughts that were not entirely catastrophic in nature. She didn't put much stock in them, yet, but it was a pleasant change of pace. She could have so much fun, if she tried. She was going to try.
But the simple truth was that he didn’t know how it happened. He couldn’t explain it. His brain did it without his permission, the way his heart pumped blood or his lungs infused cells with oxygen. It latched on to patterns and sequences without his consent or, at times, his awareness and filled his head with a deluge of numbers and images. When he
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