6 Posts found for source_day: 21

Cognitive flexibility is a skill that enables us to switch between different concepts, or to adapt behaviour to achieve goals in a novel or changing environment. It is essentially about learning to learn and being able to be flexible about the way you learn. This includes changing strategies for optimal decision-making.

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Cognitive flexibility provides us with the ability to see that what we are doing is … [ Read more ]

Authors: Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Christelle Langley, Victoria Leong | Source: The Conversation (June 21, 2021) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Thought | Inquiry

“Many people say” is what’s known as an argumentum ad populum. If we were a nation of logicians, we would dismiss the argument as dumb.

I think it’s important not to dismiss the president’s reply simply as dumb. We ought to assume that it’s darkly brilliant — if not in intention then certainly in effect. The president is responding to a claim of fact not by … [ Read more ]

Author: Bret Stephens | Source: Time (February 21, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Journalism, News | Media | Publishing, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

How “engagement” made the web a less engaging place

Author: James Somers | Source: The Atlantic (March 21, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, IT | Technology, Journalism, Life & Society

All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of duty, but because duty has no hold on him unless he desires to be

… [ Read more ]

Authors: Bertrand Russell, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (September 21, 2015) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Psychology | Behavior

The founders envisioned electors as people who could prevent an irresponsible demagogue from taking office.

Author: Peter Beinart | Source: The Atlantic (November 21, 2016) | Subjects: Excerpts, History, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

In 1908, Indian revolutionary Taraknath Das wrote to Leo Tolstoy, by then one of the most famous public figures in the world, asking for the author’s support in India’s independence from British colonial rule. On December 14, Tolstoy, who had spent the last twenty years seeking the answers to life’s greatest moral questions, was moved to reply in a long letter, which Das published in … [ Read more ]

Author: Leo Tolstoy | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (August 21, 2014) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Freedom | Liberty, History, Life & Society, Love, Sociology | Anthropology