The Insecure Overachiever

Exacerbating this problem, elite professional organizations deliberately set out to identify and recruit “insecure overachievers” — some leading professional organizations explicitly use this terminology, though not in public. Insecure overachievers are exceptionally capable and fiercely ambitious, yet driven by a profound sense of their own inadequacy. This typically stems from childhood, and may result from various factors, such as experience of financial or physical deprivation, or a...

 Humanity vs Ideolog Quote

"If your belief is in disagreement with my humanity, I don't have to be tolerant of that. I don't have to make room for that. There's not room in a big tent for you to negotiate away my humanity and call it your political or ideological leaning." -@MsPackyetti

 Underreported Atheists

The authors of the study, published earlier this year, adopted a novel way to measure atheist identity. Instead of asking about belief in God directly, they provided a list of seemingly innocuous statements and then asked: “How many of these statements are true of you?” Respondents in a control group were given a list of nine statements, such as “I own a dog” and “I am a vegetarian.” The test group received all the same statements plus one that read, “I do not believe in God.”...

 You were never actually accomplishing anything by watchin...

If you ask someone what they accomplish by watching the news, you’ll hear vague notions like, “It’s our civic duty to stay informed!” or “I need to know what’s going on in the world,” or “We can’t just ignore these issues,” none of which answer the question. “Being informed” sounds like an accomplishment, but it implies that any information will do. You can become informed by reading a bus schedule. A month after you’ve quit the news, it’s hard to name anything u...

 Believing in the Afterlife Belittles the Importance of a ...

When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thi...

 The Supercollider Was an Unreasonable Gamble`

Now particle physics in the United States is struggling to survive the d isaster of the Supercond ucting Supercollid er. The Supercollid er was a gigantic particle accelerator project that was canceled in 1 993 after about 3 billion d ollars had alread y been spent on it. The cancellation was a personal traged y for many of my friend s who had d evoted the best years of their lives to the project. But when I speak of the d isaster of the Supercond ucting Supercollid er, I d o not mean the can...

 Apathism

Apatheism (/ˌæpəˈθiːɪzəm/ a portmanteau of apathy and theism/atheism), also known as pragmatic atheism or practical atheism, is acting with apathy, disregard, or lack of interest towards belief or disbelief in a deity. An apatheist is someone who is not interested in accepting or denying any claims that gods exist or do not exist. An apatheist lives as if there are no gods and explains natural phenomena without reference to any deities. The existence of gods is not rejected, but may ...

 The Truth Religion

The Truth was the presumptuous name of the religion, the faith that lay behind the Shrievalty, the Cessoria, in a sense behind the Mercatoria itself. It arose from the belief that what appeared to be real life must in fact - according to some piously invoked statistical certitudes - be a simulation being run within some prodigious computational substrate in a greater and more encompassing reality beyond. This was a thought that had, in some form, crossed the minds of most people and all civil...

 Five Strands of Mathematical Literacy

Recognizing that no term captures completely all aspects of expertise, competence, knowledge, and facility in mathematics, we have chosen mathematical proficiency to capture what we think it means for anyone to learn mathematicssuccessfully. Mathematical proficiency, as we see it, has five strands: • conceptual understanding—comprehension of mathematical concepts, operations, and relations • procedural fluency—skill in carrying out procedures flexibly, accurately, efficiently, and a...

 Einstein on Prayer

January 24, 1936 Dear Phyllis, I will attempt to reply to your question as simply as I can. Here is my answer: Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish. However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect, so that in the end the belief in the e...