6 Posts Found

Logic is the bedrock of pretty much all human knowledge. As such, philosophers have killed many trees over the centuries, analyzing and determining the principles that define logic and reason. Their ambition has been to determine what we can know to be true and what we cannot know to be true.

What most people don’t realize is that logical fallacies—that is, errors in judgment and reasoning—are … [ Read more ]

Author: Mark Manson | Subjects: Communication, Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy, Thought | Inquiry

Hard as it may be to believe, you can actually win [political] arguments. Here’s how.

1. Forget facts
   Psychologists who study political belief and persuasion think it’s adorable how obsessed argumentative people are with those cute little things called facts. When it comes to winning arguments, truthfulness and details simply don’t matter as much as we think they do.
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   “People think emotionally, and they very often will have

… [ Read more ]

Author: Jesse Singal | Source: The Cut (May 14, 2014) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Communication, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy

“To bother to engage with problematic culture, and problematic people within that culture, is an act of love,” wrote the poet Elizabeth Alexander in contemplating power and possibility. Krista Tippett calls such engagement generous listening. And yet so much of our communication today is defined by a rather ungenerous unwillingness to listen coupled with a compulsion to speak.

The most perennially insightful and helpful remedy for … [ Read more ]

Authors: David Bohm, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (December 5, 2016) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Communication, Culture, Excerpts, Life & Society

One might … say that moving minds — our own as well as those of others — is among the most effortful labor there is.

[…]‌

“When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to … [ Read more ]

Authors: Blaise Pascal, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (May 20, 2015) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Communication, Excerpts

Conservatives are more likely to support issues like immigration and Obamacare if the message is “morally reframed” to suit their values.

Author: Olga Khazan | Source: The Atlantic (February 1, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Communication, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

[The] trend toward rationality and enlightenment was endangered long before the advent of the Internet. As Neil Postman noted in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, the rise of television introduced not just a new medium but a new discourse: a gradual shift from a typographic culture to a photographic one, which in turn meant a shift from rationality to emotions, exposition to entertainment. … [ Read more ]

Author: Hossein Derakhshan | Source: WIRED (October 19, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Communication, Culture, Excerpts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology