Space Colonists as Selfish Fools

Human beings live in ideas. That they were condemning their descendants to death and extinction did not occur to them, or if it did they repressed the thought, ignored it, and forged on anyway. They did not care as much about their descendants as they did about their ideas, their enthusiasms. Is this narcissism? Solipsism? Idiocy (from the Greek word idios, for self)? Would Turing acknowledge it as proof of human behavior? Well, perhaps. They drove Turing to suicide too. No. No. It was not...

 Social Media Distorts Socialization Through Gamification

The problem with social media isn't that we aren't sure how much privacy we want to have or how long the things we say should stick around. The problem is that social media is a gamification of social interaction, and it causes us to behave in ways that we normally wouldn't. In normal life, people don't take turns loudly stating their political opinions to a room of people and then looking to see how many people agree with them. They also don't have product placements or subtle advertising i...

 Negative Attention is Better Than No Attention at All

To give and receive attention is a fundamental human need. In the 13th century, King Frederick II of Sicily wanted to find out what language children would naturally grow up to speak if they were never spoken to. He took babies from their mothers at birth and placed them in the care of nurses who were strictly forbidden to either speak to or touch them. The babies, as it turned out, didn’t grow up to speak any language, as they all died of attention deprivation within a fortnight of the sta...

 Distracted and Obsessed with Politics

My Dear Wormwood, Be sure that the patient remains completely fixated on politics. Arguments, political gossip, and obsessing on the faults of people they have never met serves as an excellent distraction from advancing in personal virtue, character, and the things the patient can control. Make sure to keep the patient in a constant state of angst, frustration and general disdain towards the rest of the human race in order to avoid any kind of charity or inner peace from further developing. ...

 The Majority Illusion in Social Networks

Social behaviors are often contagious, spreading through a population as individuals imitate the decisions and choices of others. A variety of global phenomena, from innovation adoption to the emergence of social norms and political movements, arise as a result of people following a simple local rule, such as copy what others are doing. However, individuals often lack global knowledge of the behaviors of others and must estimate them from the observations of their friends' behaviors. In some ...

 Happiness as a Psychiatric Disorder

It is perhaps premature to attempt an exact definition of happiness. However, despite the fact that formal diagnostic criteria have yet to be agreed, it seems likely that happiness has affective, cognitive and behavioural components. Thus, happiness is usually characterised by a positive mood, sometimes described as 'elation' or 'joy', although this may be relatively absent in the milder happy states, sometimes termed 'contentment'. Argyle, in his review of the relevant empirical literature, ...

 Sexual Selection to Explain Human Intelligence

Even if the survivalist theory could take us from the world of natural history to our capacities for invention, commerce, and knowledge, it cannot account for the more ornamental and enjoyable aspects of human culture: art, music, sports, drama, comedy, and political ideals. At this point the survivalist theories usually point out that along the transverse lies the Central Park Learning Center. Perhaps the ornamental frosting on culture's cake arose through a general human ability to learn ne...