actually a very simple yet efficient article, go read all of it. I am not sure about ‘foolproof’ but its a good start. Our minds set up many traps for us. Unless we’re aware of them, these traps can seriously hinder our ability to think rationally, leading us to bad reasoning and making stupid decisions. Features of our minds that are meant to help us may, eventually, get us into trouble. |
1. The Anchoring Trap: Over-Relying on First Thoughts |
What can you do about it? |
| Always view a problem from different perspectives. |
| Think on your own before consulting others. |
| Seek information from a wide variety of sources. |
2. The Status Quo Trap: Keeping on Keeping On |
What can you do about it? |
| Consider the status quo as just another alternative. |
| Avoid exaggerating switching costs. |
3. The Sunk Cost Trap: Protecting Earlier Choices |
What can you do about it? |
| Be OK with making mistakes. |
| Listen to people who were not involved in the earlier decisions. |
4. The Confirmation Trap: Seeing What You Want to See |
Of course we must agree first on what ” unconditional” means, but it seems that neuroscientists lately have decided somehow to conquer the territory traditionally reserved for philosophers. As I see it, it is high time for serious philosophers to reclaim their place. Unconditionality is not a neurological term and thus to my eyes is meaningless in this particular context. I definitely agree with the writers of brainethics, this is the kind of science one should be skeptical of. (…) distinct from the empathy and compassion constructs. Empathy is commonly defined as an affective response that stems from the apprehension of another’s emotional state (e.g., sadness, happiness, pain), and which is comparable to what the other person is feeling (Eisenberg, 2000). This affective response is not unconditional and does not involve feelings of love. Compassion refers to an awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the desire to alleviate that suffering (Steffen and Masters, 2005). In contrast to compassion, unconditional love is not specifically associated with suffering. |
Briefly put, although we enjoy the quirky side of neuroscience, and how it can be used to explore human nature, we at BrainEthics are also sceptical at the level at which quirky science turns into flaky science. |
I work with a few of these and the results are apparent, quite important actually Put your cortex through its paces with these software games |
Michael Merzenich, neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, is ruthless as he describes how my 37-year-old brain is going to turn to mush over the years to come. |
“You’re going to slowly decline in operating speed,” he says. “Your brain will become noisier and noisier in its processing.” And I will have more and more trouble figuring out exactly what it was I just heard or saw. The villain: age-related cognitive decline, which Merzenich says is a combination of physical changes and something called negative brain plasticity—the cerebral equivalent of what has happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biceps. |
A way to combat negative brain plasticity is to train regularly using any of an increasingly wide range of software products designed expressly for the purpose, says Merzenich, who founded Posit Science, which makes one such package. Read more at www.sciam.com |
Marcelo Gleiser, Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy at Dartmouth College, is a theoretical physicist who has worked on a diverse set of topics: cosmology, particle physics, phase transitions, condensed matter physics and biophysics.
an interesting take on the concept of reality and existence, notice the last statement: “In this case, and in a paradoxical way, the theories that we construct to amplify our view of physical reality will actually limit what we can know about nature.” Here are some thoughts on something that has been bothering me for a while. How do we know the world is the way it is? Easy, a pragmatic person would say, just look and measure. We see a tree, a chair, a table; we hear the wind, music, people talking. We feel heat and cold against our skin. Once our brains integrate this sensorial information, we have a conception of what is real that allows us to function in the world. We know where to go, what to eat, what not to touch; we enjoy a good meal, a nice hug. But what happens when we go beyond our senses, using tools to extend our conception of reality? We don’t see galaxies with the naked eye (well, maybe Andromeda on a moonless, dry night) and much less a carbon atom. How do we know they are there, that they exist? Read more at blogs.discovermagazine.com |
a fascinating and important read, go there and read all of it When you change your attitude about something, do you know why? Psychologists have argued that the inner workings of our minds are largely hidden away from us. One aspect of this is the surprising finding that people are often unaware when they have changed their attitudes. |
So, these are the bare facts:
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| Objectively, the discussion changed people’s minds about the issue. Some people’s opinions did a complete U-turn. |
| Despite this no one actually experienced the discussion as changing their mind, rather people claimed it only reinforced their previous opinion. |
| People were plain wrong about their opinions before the discussion, sometimes dramatically, and it had nothing to do with forgetting. Remember that control participants could recall their previous attitudes correctly. |
As a result, when people were asked to recall their attitudes before the discussion they simply accessed their current attitude and then assumed it had been the same all along. Read more at www.spring.org.uk |
Retailers are making breakthroughs in understanding their customers’ minds. Here is what they know about you |
| IT MAY have occurred to you, during the course of a dismal trawl round a supermarket indistinguishable from every other supermarket you have ever been into, to wonder why they are all the same. The answer is more sinister than depressing. It is not because the companies that operate them lack imagination. It is because they are all versed in the science of persuading people to buy things”a science that, thanks to technological advances, is beginning to unlock the innermost secrets of the consumer’s mind. |
| In the Sainsbury’s in Hatch Warren, Basingstoke, south-west of London, it takes a while for the mind to get into a shopping mode. This is why the area immediately inside the entrance of a supermarket is known as the “decompression zone”. |
Along with lack of motivation, such factors as vagueness, uncertainty and lack of clarity are among the key reasons of our bad habits, discouragement and procrastination. For those who are determined to fight with these problems and look for positive changes in their life, I would like to offer a strategy created by Dr. Brian Tracy, an experienced time management specialist, lecturer and business coach, who wrote several books of special techniques and recommendations for those who suffer from chronic procrastination and lack of personal effectiveness. He argues that everyone who wants to be successful in this world has to define own goals and aspirations. This can be done in the following 7 steps: |
| Step 3. Estimate an optimistic deadline and a pessimistic deadline for your goals |
| Step 4. Think about everything you need to do, learn or accomplish in order to achieve your goals |
New research from Indiana University has found evidence that how we look for things, such as our car keys or umbrella, could be related to how we search for more abstract needs, such as words in memory or solutions to problems.
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“Common underlying search mechanisms may exist that drive our behavior in many different domains,” said IU cognitive scientist Peter Todd. “If how people search in space is similar to how they search in their minds, it’s a very exciting prospect to try to find the deep, underlying roots of human behavior that may be common to varied domains.”
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| “We asked the question — are the same mechanisms that let simpler organisms search in space for food related to how we search for things in our mind, for concepts or ideas,” Todd said. “Our conclusion is that they seem to be linked at some level, which is what our priming experiment suggests.”
See more at www.physorg.com |
| The human brain lacks conspicuous characteristics”such as relative or absolute size”that might account for humans’ superior intellect. |
| Researchers have found some clues to humanity’s aptitude on a smaller scale, such as more neurons in our brain’s outermost layer. |
| Human intelligence may be best likened to an upgrade of the cognitive capacities of nonhuman primates rather than an exceptionally advanced form of cognition. |
As far as we know, no dog can compose music, no dolphin can speak in rhymes, and no parrot can solve equations with two unknowns. Only humans can perform such intellectual feats, presumably because we are smarter than all other animal species”at least by our own definition of intelligence. Of course, intelligence must emerge from the workings of the three-pound mass of wetware packed inside our skulls |
| Thus, researchers have tried to identify unique features of the human brain that could account for our superior intellectual abilitiesSee more at www.sciam.com |
Mind Ball, by NovelQuest, is essentially a “two person game controlled by players’ brain waves.” Video after the break.
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To win at Mindball, however, you need to produce theta waves (4-8 Hz) which are associated with drowsiness and alpha waves (8-12 Hz) which are associated with being relaxed. |
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