The source of problems is blindspots. There is something hidden from us that, if we knew, would change how we thought and acted. One of the best ways to reveal blindspots is simply to lengthen your time horizon. A lot of good advice simply boils down to thinking longer term.
Author: Shane Parrish | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
Conspiracy theories have always been useful to extremist movements [because they] work on a very us-versus-them logic. They posit an in-group of people who is among a small, privileged set to know this information, and an out group which is either willfully blind or actively plotting against them. And that structure has been very useful over time to weaponize against marginalized groups that people want … [ Read more ]
Author: Kelly Weill | Source: The Messenger | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
Conspiracy movements… all rely on discarding a certain trust in institutions and establishing new voices as credible.
Author: Kelly Weill | Source: The Messenger | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
The nature of illusion is that it’s designed to make you feel good. About yourself, about your country, about where you’re going – in that sense it functions like a drug. Those who question that illusion are challenged not so much for the veracity of what they say, but for puncturing those feelings.
Author: Chris Hedges | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.
Author: Haruki Murakami | Subjects: Communication, Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Relationships, Thought | Inquiry
You don’t need to be an expert to think that experts are right, but you do need to be an expert to think that they are wrong.
Author: Fallacy Man | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
You can’t replace reading with other sources of information like videos, because you need to read in order to write well, and you need to write in order to think well.
Author: Paul Graham | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing, Thought | Inquiry
The nature of illusion is that it’s designed to make you feel good. About yourself, about your country, about where you’re going – in that sense it functions like a drug. Those who question that illusion are challenged not so much for the veracity of what they say, but for puncturing those feelings.
Author: Chris Hedges | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
Perceptions of insignificance can drive a process of seeking out groups, endorsing their ideologies and engaging in behaviors consistent with these.
Author: Jake Womick | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
The seeker after the truth… is not he who studies the writings of the ancients and… puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and … [ Read more ]
Author: Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Math & Science, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. And that is I say “I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it. I think that only when I reach that stage … [ Read more ]
Author: Charlie Munger | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to keep going. Grounds for despair, anger, and sadness are, of course, all around. But the healthy mind knows how to bracket negativity in the name of endurance. It clings to evidence of what is still good and kind. It remembers to appreciate… It refuses to let … [ Read more ]
Author: Alain de Botton | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
A well-functioning mind recognizes the futility and cruelty of constantly finding fault with its own nature… [It] can quieten its own buzzing preoccupations in order, at times, to focus on the world beyond itself.
Author: Alain de Botton | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
A mind in a healthy state is, in the background, continually performing a near-miraculous set of maneuvers that underpin our moods of clear-sightedness and purpose… A healthy mind is an editing mind, an organ that manages to sieve, from thousands of stray, dramatic, disconcerting, or horrifying thoughts, those particular ideas and sensations that actively need to be entertained in order for us to direct our … [ Read more ]
Author: Alain de Botton | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Thought | Inquiry
Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator [that] asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that.
Author: Alexandra Horowitz | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
The one-hundred percenter, who will tolerate no ambiguities, no equivocations, no reservations, and no criticism, considers his kind of committedness an evidence of toughness and masculinity.
Author: Richard Hofstadter | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
Intellect is always on the move against something: some oppression, fraud, illusion, dogma, or interest is constantly falling under the scrutiny of the intellectual class and becoming the object of exposure, indignation, or ridicule.
Author: Richard Hofstadter | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Thought | Inquiry
In a certain sense the suspicious Tories and militant philistines are right: intellect is dangerous. Left free, there is nothing it will not reconsider, analyze, throw into question.
Author: Richard Hofstadter | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Thought | Inquiry
In the United States the play of the mind is perhaps the only form of play that is not looked upon with the most tender indulgence.
Author: Richard Hofstadter | Subjects: America, Education | Scholarship, International, Thought | Inquiry
It is a part of the intellectual’s tragedy that the things he most values about himself and his work are quite unlike those society values in him.
Author: Richard Hofstadter | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Thought | Inquiry