To perceive the outside world, our brain combines signals entering our brains through our eyes with what we expect the world to look like based on our past experiences. This means that our perception of the outside world is strongly influenced by what we believe. - Nautilus
When online surveyor YouGov conducted a survey asking over 8,000 US adults, “Do you believe that the Earth is round or flat?,” only 84 percent of respondents felt certain that the Earth is round. - LitHub
As the Blitz and other collective crises have taught us, resilience is not a given and has to be managed with an understanding of peoples’ fears and wishes, including their need for connectedness. - Psyche
Even our most mundane habitual routines actually display a great deal of intelligence. Indeed, they are often intelligently context-sensitive and flexible in such a way as can support and structure our goals and projects. - Psyche
Universal secondary education not only elevated Americans by spreading relevant knowledge and skills to the masses. It also gave rise to a more complex social and cultural transformation, as the adolescent period became pivotal in shaping who we are. - Aeon
Surprisingly, the researchers discovered that new and provocative ideas emerge at the edge of networks, from people with fewer contacts and little obvious pull. - Fast Company
Tyler Cowan: "Why for instance should I be called “Professor Cowen,” but few people would address the person fixing their toilet as “Plumber Jones”?" - Bloomberg
It has become unfashionable to subject pornography, and the market of desire it serves, to ethical critique, largely because of the broader embrace of an ethic of “sex positivity...” - Prospect
"An intergenerational discourse that looks at the next new thing—be it digital technology, the telephone, radio, TV, even way back to Socrates’ time, when he talked about the invention of writing as bringing about the end of memory—and worry." - Nautilus
"An essential but unanswered question in my field is: can the brain changes evoked by treatments – whether drug-based or psychotherapy – explain why only some people get better after each specific form of treatment?" - Psyche
