06 JAN 2018 by ideonexus
Review Your Social Media Timeline to Improve Your Sense o...
In an experiment at Cornell, stressed college students randomly assigned to scroll through their own Facebook profiles for five minutes experienced boosts in self-affirmation compared to students who looked at a stranger’s Facebook profile. The researchers believe self-affirmation comes from reminiscing on past meaningful interactions — seeing photos they had been tagged in and comments their friends had left — as well as reflecting on one’s own past posts, where a person chooses how ...Folksonomies: social media self-worth
Folksonomies: social media self-worth
1 
notes
notes18 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
The Gevulot
‘It’s a nice thought.’ He offers her his hand. ‘I am Paul. I got a little lost: all those moving streets. I was hoping you could tell me the way out.’
A trickle of emotion bleeds through his rough visitor’s gevulot: a sense of unease, a weight, a guilt. Xuexue can imagine the old man of the sea sitting on his back. It feels very familiar. And suddenly it is more important to talk to the stranger than to smile at the robot.
‘Sure I can,’ she says. ‘But why don’t you stay ... 1 notes
notesA device that provides privacy protection with anyone you interact with real or virtual.
26 AUG 2012 by ideonexus
Empiricism in Buddhist Spirituality
Both Buddhism and neuroscience converge on a similar point of view: The way it feels isn’t how it is. There is no permanent, constant soul in the background. Even our language about ourselves is to be distrusted (requiring the tortured negation of anatta). In the broadest strokes then, neuroscience and Buddhism agree.
How did Buddhism get so much right? I speak here as an outsider, but it seems to me that Buddhism started with a bit of empiricism. Perhaps the founders of Buddhism were pre-... 1 notes
notesBuddhists recognize the impermanence of human existence, that we are perpetually changing. They discovered this truth, shared with neuroscience, because they gave up the ego of the self.
22 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Science Fiction and Science as a Two-Way Street
Science fiction like Star Trek is not only good fun but it also serves a serious purpose, that of expanding the
human imagination. We may not yet be able to boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before, but at least we can do it in the mind. We can explore how the human spirit might respond to future developments in science and we can speculate on what those developments might be. There is a two-way trade between science fiction and science. Science fiction suggests ideas that scientists...
1 Hawking observes that SF inspires science, but science often turns up things that are stranger than fiction.
03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Alchemy VS Chemistry
He tapped the papers; the advice had been coming down since early winter. He remembered when Amdijefri had brought in the first pages, pages of numerical tables, of directions and diagrams, all drawn in neat but childish style. Steel and the Fragment had spent days trying to understand. Some of the references were obvious. The Visitor’s recipes required silver and gold in quantities that would otherwise finance a war. But what was this “liquid silver”? Tyrathect had recognized it; the M... 1 notes
notesAn alien from a mideval society receiving instructions to build advanced technology from aliens finds their directions full of digressions and careful methodologies to verify chemical compositions, where his alchemists' instructions are much more simple and poetic.
31 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Verbalize Empathy
In front of your children, verbally speculate about other people’s perspectives in everyday situations. You can wonder why the person behind you in line at a grocery is so impatient or what the joke is when a stranger talking on a cell phone laughs. It’s a natural way to practice seeing other people’s points of view—the basis of empathy. 1 notes
notesSpeculate aloud on the the motivations and perspectives of other people in front of your children to give them empathy.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Lack of Evidence-Based Child-Rearing in Society
s any new mother or father knows, nothing so invites advice as a new baby in the house. Other parents. Grandma, the lady next door, a stranger on the street, the family physician, and stacks and stacks of child-care books are happy to give directions about the "correct" way to care for an infant. What most parents do not know is that these various tidbits of advice, and even the consensus "rules" of parenting that have such an aura of credibility, are, for the most part, based on a mix of tra... 1 notes
notesThere are many cultural norms, folk wisdom, and "common sense" ideas about how children should be raised, but there is very little research to prove what actually works.
01 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Aristotle on Chance in Nature
There are some who make chance responsible for this cosmos and all worlds. For they say that by chance there came about a vortex and a motion of separating out and settling into this arrangement of the whole. And this itself is in fact mightily worth 30 wondering at. For they are saying that animals and plants neither are nor come to be by fortune, but that either nature or Intellect or some other such thing is the cause (for what comes into being from each seed is not whatever falls out, but... 1 notes
notesAn ancient perspective on the question of naturalism and creationism.
08 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
It's Easy to Believe Fantastic Things
A credulous mind . . . finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such.Folksonomies: superstition heresay
Folksonomies: superstition heresay
1 notes
notes...and its not uncommon.
