Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality.
Bessel van der Kolk • The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
we had wondered how mentalising ability affected our appreciation of jokes.
Robin Dunbar • Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships
stories have the power to make us connect; stories make us human.
John Yorke • Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them
As Jonathan Gottschall says in The Storytelling Animal, ‘We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.’
Louise Willder • Blurb Your Enthusiasm: A Cracking Compendium of Book Blurbs, Writing Tips, Literary Folklore and Publishing Secrets
He’d be nothing. He wouldn’t even be 571. The real authorities could turn him into anything at all.
Richard Powers • The Overstory: A Novel
This is a “rich get richer” sort of model in which the more a word is used in the past, the more likely it is that it will attract more use in the future.
Jessica C. Flack • Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)
documentary titled Singularity or Bust, Hugo de Garis,
Mo Gawdat • Scary Smart: Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World
We’re wired to find selfless behaviour heroic and selfish deeds evil. Selflessness is thought to be the universal basis of all human morality.
Will Storr • The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better
Ben-Nun Bloom indicates that popular measures of values and morality have a common genetic basis.