ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

IDEAS

Just How Do You Determine What’s Cultural Appropriation?

Scholarly consensus regarding cultural appropriation has long accepted that the lines between cultural appreciation and appropriation may be difficult to clearly determine in real time, and especially within the contemporary social media-driven zeitgeist. - The Conversation

Don’t Be So Quick To Call It A Cult

If we accept that cult members have some degree of volition, the job of distinguishing cults from other belief-based organizations becomes a good deal more difficult. - The New Yorker

How To Think About The “Big Data” Economy

Policy makers, economists, techies, lawyers, business leaders, and consumers should borrow an idea from cultural anthropology and consider the concept of “barter.” - Harvard Business Review

Our Loftiest Ideas Are Rooted In Practical Needs

Unlike ideas of air, food and water that allow us to think about the everyday resources we need to survive, the venerable notions of knowledge, truth or justice don’t obviously cater to practical needs. - Aeon

Is The Idea of “Toxic” Masculinity Counter-Productive?

"In today’s context, it is unclear why we are talking about boys and girls as though these are fixed identities to which masculinity and femininity naturally attach, unless to speak in these terms promotes a form of gender moralism, or gender dogma." - Psyche

Why Is Creativity Going Down?

Studies suggest that bored people score higher on creativity tests. As our distractions have multiplied, our minds have less opportunity to wander. Thus... - Medium

Creativity Scores Are Going Down

"A researcher at the University of William and Mary analyzed 300,000 Torrance Test scores since the '50s. She found that creativity scores began to nosedive in 1990. - Inc

Study: Why We See Faces In Inanimate Objects

Face pareidolia – seeing faces in random objects or patterns of light and shadow – is an everyday phenomenon. Once considered a symptom of psychosis, it arises from an error in visual perception. - The Guardian

How Do We Determine Good Taste?

The very notion of taste contains within itself two ideas in constant tension. - Claremont Review

Resolving The Differences Between Conscious Choice And Intention

The decisions that I am aware of speak for me, the conscious agent, who I am and how I impact the world, either locally or, perhaps for some folks, in a more profound global way. These practical decisions about what to do are intentions I form. - 3 Quarks Daily

John McWhorter: What’s Wrong With The Language Police

Apparently, we must retire victim, survivor, trigger warning, and African-American too. We must do so, that is, if we seek to ignore some linguistic fundamentals while also engaging in distinctly callow sociological calisthenics. - The Atlantic

How Is It That Gamers Are Better At Detecting Fraud Than Scientists Are?

Does it strike you as odd that so many people tuned in to hear about a doctored speedrun of a children’s video game, while barely a ripple was made—even among scientists—by the discovery of more than 80 fake scientific papers? - The Atlantic

Martha Nussbaum And The Striving In Structures

For her entire career, Nussbaum, now seventy-four, has blazed a trail for women in philosophy, a field that historically has not welcomed female thinkers. - New York Review of Books

Why We Need Distrust In Our Civic Discourse

Sometimes distrust is not only appropriate but is also a way to initiate the conversation that’s needed for civic friendship. Distrust, in a democracy, can actually be a good thing. - Psyche

Memory Champ: Trick Your Brain To Remember

This technique of linking images with places is called the memory palace, and it’s particularly useful for remembering the order of certain elements. - Wired

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