Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Hale-Evans, Ron (2006-02-06), Mind Performance Hacks, O'Reilly Media, Inc., Retrieved on 2013-12-29Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: self-help Memes
29 DEC 2013
Douglas Engelbart's Idea of Small Changes
I'm reminded of Douglas Engelbart's classic paper "Augmenting Human itellect,"2 on his belief in the power of computers. He wrote this in 1962, way before the PC, and argued that it's better to improve and facilitate the tiny things we do every day than it is to attempt to replace entire human jobs with monolithic machines. A novel-writing machine, if one were invented, just automates the process of writing novels, and it's limited to novels. But making a small improvement to a pencil, for ex... 1 
notes
notesMake a change to novel-writing and you've affected a small, specific domain, but improve the pencil, and you've impacted a wide range of domains.
29 DEC 2013
Video Games Reduce Attentional Blink
Our visual processing abilities are by no means hardwired and fixed from birth. There are limits, but the brain's nothing if not plastic. With practice, we can improve the attentional mechanisms that sort and edit visual infor¬ mation. One activity that requires you to practice lots of the skills involved 1 visual attention is playing video games.
So, what is the effect of playing lots of video games? Shawn Green anc Daphne Bavelier from the University of Rochester, New York, have research... 1 notes
notesPlaying games improves the brain's ability to recognize new things entering the environment.
29 DEC 2013
Glucose and Oxygent Improve Memory Formation
Increasing glucose and oxygen supplies to the brain seems to allow iniformation to be committed more accurately and fully to memory; in other words, you learn better. This means when you come to recall it at a later stage, you will undoubtedly do better, because the information there is clearer and more comprehensive. The reverse does not seem to be true, however. If you first encoded something without the aid of extra oxygen and glucose, suddenly making more oxygen and glucose available when... 1 notes
notesNot memory retrieval, but well-timed breathing exercises and soda can improve the retention of learning.
29 DEC 2013
Chemical Cognitive Enhancers
Pharmaceutical amphetamines (such as Adderall and Ritalin)
These drugs have been used withouit a prescription, for their tirednessreducing and concentration-enhancing effects, by about 5% of students in U.S. colleges, according to a recent study, with some colleges reporting rates as high as 25%.
Modafinil
Modafinil is a nonamphetamine stimulant, marketed to help people with narcolepsy stay awake. It has been reported as popular with otherwise healthy individuals who are using it to mai... 1 notes
notesDrugs to improve cognition.
29 DEC 2013
Language is Important in Direction
The room is made i.^ up of four curtains, used to create four walls in a rectangle, defined by two types of information: geometric (two short walls and two long walls) and color information (one red wall).
Now, think about the corners. If you are using only geometric information, pairs of corners are identical. There are two corners with a short wall on the ft and a long wall on the right, and two corners the other way around. If you are using only color information, there are also two pair... 1 notes
notesDeprived of the language centers of the brain, subjects are unable to determine their location in a test.
29 DEC 2013
Artificial Languages
Here are six well-known constructed languaiages that can help you think and express yourself in novel ways.
Esperanto. Esperanto is the most widely spoken conlang on Earth, with an estimated 2 million speakers, putting it on par with Lithuanian, Icelandic, and Hebrew. 1 It was designed in 1887 by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof as a kind of neutral, universal second language that would allow native speakers of all languages to meet one another on even ground, with none having an intrinsic fluency advanta...Folksonomies: language linguistics
Folksonomies: language linguistics
1 notes
notesTools for thinking in different ways.
29 DEC 2013
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The controversial Sapir-Whorf hypothesis^ states that there is a direct relationship between the categories that are available in a language and the way the speakers of that language think and act. While if it were true that Ianguage completely determined thought, people would never have any thoughts that they could not express (and we know that's not true), there have nevertheless been some suggestive experiments in this area. For exampie, it was recently shown that one Amazonian tribe witho...Folksonomies: language hypothesis
Folksonomies: language hypothesis
1 The idea that restrictions in language restrict our ability to think.
29 DEC 2013
E-Prime Communication
Alfred KSCorzybski, the founder of the discipline of general semantics, thought that the verb "to be" could lead to confused thought, confused action, and even fascism. Because so much of fascism consists of vilification of the memy, and because so much of vilification of the enemy consists of calling hem subhuman, identifying them with the forces of evil, and so on, fascists might find it hard to write propaganda without "to be.
Korzybski considered the use of "to be" as an aipciliary verb...
1 Eliminate "to be" verbs and further clarify your statements. A good cognitive tool for detecting propaganda.
29 DEC 2013
Emotional ABCs
The ABC model of emotion, widespread in contemporary psychotherapy, holds that it is not an activating (A) event, such as rejection by a friend or lover, that causes you emotional consequences (C) such as depression; rather, the linchpin is your invisible beliefs (B) about the event that come in between A and C. Fortunately, it's often easier to intentionally change beliefs than emotions.
Since at least the time of the ancient Stoics, some have believed that our circumstances don't control ...Folksonomies: emotions emotional maturity
Folksonomies: emotions emotional maturity
ABC model of emotion relates to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in recognizing how our beliefs affect our emotional responses.
29 DEC 2013
Memetic Sex
There are many similarities between genes and memes. Just as genes transmitted during sexual intercourse in the biosphere, so are ideas trans¬ mitted during social intercourse in the mental realm, or ideosphere.
[...]
The memetic realm also hahas some important differences from the genetic realm. Memes combine, recombine, mutate, and reproduce much more flexly and rapidly than genes do. This is one way that genetic sex does not map completely to memetic sex. For example, the memetic count...Many of the concepts in genes apply to ideas, including cross-breeding, safe-sex, inbreeding, and species.
29 DEC 2013
Making Forced Connections
The basic process for making forced connections, as outlined by Koberg and Bagnall, is simple and sound.
List possible features of the object you are trying to creatcte, one le feature per column. For example, the features might include cololor, size, anc shape.
2. In the column under each feature variable, list as many values for that variable as you can. For example, under color you might list all the colors of the rainbow, as well as black, white, gold, and silver.
3. Finally, random...Folksonomies: ideas creativity
Folksonomies: ideas creativity
A technique for coming up with new ideas. This could be done with the mxplx rand() function, using it to find random memes and then forcing onseself to find connections between the ideas.
