Other winners included a study of why ducklings swim in a straight line formation (the physics prize), research on ritual enemas in Mayan pottery (the art history prize), and developing an algorithm to help gossips decide when to tell the truth and when to lie (the peace prize). - Ars Technica
The groups with blowhards were less neurally aligned than were those with mediators, the study found. Perhaps more surprising, the mediators drove consensus not by pushing their own interpretations, but by encouraging others to take the stage and then adjusting their own beliefs — and brain patterns. - The New York Times
You want to be happy and well, but your messy circumstances bite and gnaw at you relentlessly, distracting you from the habits of thought and action that could help you find enjoyment and remember the meaning in your life. - The Atlantic
It's a soft power wave. "My resigned teenage self could never have imagined that one day, my non-Korean friends would be recapping the latest hit K-dramas before I’d heard of them, or that I’d be shopping for Gotchu hot sauce ... in Brooklyn." - The Guardian (UK)
"For all the madness on display, there are, however, reasons to cautiously celebrate what has become of Paddington. ... Paddington is nearly as old as the queen’s now completed reign." And indeed, he "is the sort of characteristic English creature who values decency, politeness and tolerance of difference." - Irish Times
I knew that if I merely retreated to my “side,” I would only contribute to the problem. With some trepidation, then, I set out to ask twelve scholars what they see as the main challenges facing literary studies and literary criticism today. - The Point
Rituals are highly structured. They require rigidity (they must always be performed the “correct” way), repetition (the same actions performed again and again) and redundancy (they can go on for a long time). In other words, they are predictable. This predictability imposes order on the chaos of everyday life. - Nautilus
Unlike search or social media, whose arrivals the general public encountered and discussed and had opinions about, artificial intelligence remains esoteric—every bit as important and transformative as the other great tech disruptions, but more obscure, tucked largely out of view. - The Atlantic
The paper, published last month in the peer-reviewed AI Magazine, is a fascinating one that tries to think through how artificial intelligence could pose an existential risk to humanity by looking at how reward systems might be artificially constructed. - Vice
British philosophers from the 18th century, who were fixated on impressions and ideas, would have taken successful conversations to be those that moved the relevant cluster of ideas from one conversant’s head to another’s. - Psyche
In practice, physical diseases are treated by physicians working for medical services, and mental illnesses are treated by psychiatrists or psychologists working for separately organised mental health services. These professional tribes follow divergent training and career paths. - The Guardian
“If you have a brain response to anything that is important, how does it differentiate whether it is good or bad? It’s a central problem in the field.” - Scientific American
The modern idea of the self emerged "in a quiet university town called Jena, some 150 miles southwest of Berlin. It was there that, in the 1790s, a small group of rebellious playwrights, poets, and writers revolutionized the way we think of ourselves and the world." - The Atlantic
