To the zealot overcome by his piety and to the journeyman of ideas concerned only with his marketable mental skills, the beginning and end of ideas lies in their efficacy with respect to some goal external to intellectual processes.
Author: Richard Hofstadter | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Education | Scholarship, Thought | Inquiry
Unfortunately, we’re just not good at nuance.
Author: Christopher Bader | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
A healthy dose of skepticism is/can be a good thing… as long as we are also applying it to those things we wish/think to be true, and not just those things we choose to be skeptical towards, or in denial of.
Author: Linda Gamble Spadaro | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
When you can give ideas away and retain them at the same time, you can afford to be generous. In contrast, it is less easy to maintain allegiance to any number of contradictory ideas, and especially to act in line with all of them. Thus, if somebody accepts your ideas and therefore has to discard or reject competing ideas, in belief or in action, he … [ Read more ]
Author: Ulf Hannerz | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
Studies show that when people experience uncertainty and lack of control, they are more likely to see patterns or regularities where there are none. These patterns can range from visual illusions (such as seeing faces in the clouds) to seeing causality in random events and forming conspiracy theories. Under these circumstances people are also more likely to turn to ritualized behaviors. This is known as … [ Read more ]
Author: Dimitris Xygalatas | Source: Nautilus | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
When we’re emotionally invested not only in the narrative being bolstered by the truth-teller but in the chosen truth-teller themselves, it becomes even harder to extricate an “objective” version of reality from the version they’re dispensing because the stakes feel so high.
Author: Aja Romano | Source: Vox | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
[Truth depends] on the assumption that certain actors tell the truth, and that these actors have been authorized with the mantle of veracity in their understandings of the world and of themselves.
Author: Sarah Banet-Weiser | Source: Vox | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Thought | Inquiry
The human brain is a prediction machine that evolved to render reality as a composite of sensory input and prior expectation, but by continually and consciously testing our predictions against reality, we get to construct our lived experience — largely the product of how the brain handles its natural prediction errors.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Thought | Inquiry
Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.
Author: François de La Rochefoucauld | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Thought | Inquiry
If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease.
Author: Sent-tsán | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Facts | Bias, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side.
Author: Charlie Munger | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
The history of our species is the history of mistaking our labels and models of things for the things themselves.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Thought | Inquiry, Thought Starters
While we naturally understand that writing is a good way to share ideas with others, we under-appreciate just how much good writing helps us think about an idea ourselves. Writing is not only a means of communication, it enables us to practice reasoning.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing, Thought | Inquiry
It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.
Authors: Augusto Giacoman, Dave Eberhardt | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Action | Accomplishment, Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
People tend to assume that the future will look largely like today. Underestimating the future is a time-honored tradition. Arthur Clark observed, “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” People almost always err by predicting that the future will be too much like the … [ Read more ]
Author: Jonathan Byrnes | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Possibility, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
When we think about events in the distant future, we focus on why they will happen; when we think about events in the near future, we focus on how they will happen.
Author: Jonathan Byrnes | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
When we are selecting something, we focus on the most positive attributes. When we are rejecting something, we focus on the most negative.
Author: Jonathan Byrnes | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Facts | Bias, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
We all instinctively try to simplify the data that we receive, but there are better and worse simplifications. Better simplifications arise from a deeper knowledge of the environment along with a deeper understanding of the organization and its capabilities. That knowledge and understanding develops when people attend to more things, entertain a greater variety of interpretations, differentiate their ideas, argue, listen to one another, work … [ Read more ]
Author: Karl E. Weick | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Information, Intelligence | Knowledge, Thought | Inquiry
Human beings have two fundamental needs above and beyond basic survival:
- Relational needs: to develop and maintain social relationships with others.
- Epistemic needs: to establish the sense of knowing what is real and true in the world.
Both needs are dependent on other people. While we can, of course, have our own version of the truth, feeling alone in our opinions can undermine the extent to which those … [ Read more ]
Author: Maya Rossignac-Milon | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Facts | Bias, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
Motivated ignorance refers to willfully blinding oneself to facts. It’s choosing not to know. In many cases, for many people, knowing the truth is simply too costly, too psychologically painful, too threatening to their core identity. Nescience is therefore incentivized; people actively decide to remain in a state of ignorance. If they are presented with strong arguments against a position they hold, or compelling evidence … [ Read more ]
Author: Peter Wehner | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Facts | Bias, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry