Category: ideas

Most people have a tendency to overestimate the chances of experiencing a positive (like getting a promotion), and underestimate the likelihood of experiencing a negative event (like getting robbed or sick). Typically a benign — even beneficial — human quirk, the “optimism bias” could be contributing to the spread of coronavirus according to behavioral psychologists. – Big Think

Futurists are predicting that the pandemic has accelerated the permanent decline of everything from watching movies in traditional theaters to standing in line at theme parks. But as we approach what is looking more and more like a second lockdown, this one timed alongside a cold, dark winter here in the upper Midwest, are those in-home screens going to dominate everything again? Is Big Tech going to once again take home all the spoils? Are we all going to let that happen? – Chicago Tribune

In deciding whether to compromise your ideals, or whether to take a stand, you might ask yourself: ‘Will this compromise undermine projects that I’ve committed to, through which I’m actively trying to make the world a better place?’ (In which case: stand by your principles.) ‘Or are my ideals and principles simply idle, such that a moral compromise wouldn’t affect any projects actively in train?’ (In which case: act so as to promote the lesser of two evils.) – Psyche

An older person might be extremely passionate, but lacking conviction that he’ll ever be any good; or a septegenarian might maintain fire in her belly, but find her passion waning. – Fast Company

Swarm intelligence in people occurs when all the members of a group come together to create a synergy that magnifies their individual capabilities. It’s the kind of unselfish behavior that one sees on the battlefield, when soldiers know that they depend on one another for their lives. Swarm intelligence is more instinctual than coöperation, in which people work deliberately together to achieve a common goal; it’s an emotional and reactive behavior, not a plan that can be written out on a flowchart. – The New Yorker

The idea of history as “something that equally comprises past and future as states of a continuous subject, so that we may speak of history as such” (as the philosopher Eckart Förster puts it), emerged only in the second half of the 18th century. – Chronicle of Higher Education

Despite all efforts to try to talk them out of the notion, working-class parents were adamant that an academic education was the best kind of education and that it should be made available to all. – Los Angeles Review of Books

The “crisis” cannot be adequately described either by the number of openings on the academic job market, or the number of Great Books on university syllabuses. The health of the humanities should be measured instead by whether our society provides ample opportunities for its citizens to ask the fundamental questions about the good life and the just society. By that yardstick, it seems, the humanities are healthier than the doomsayers might lead us to believe. – The New York Times

“Amid these advances in quality of life across the income scale, average happiness is decreasing in the U.S. The General Social Survey, which has been measuring social trends among Americans every one or two years since 1972, shows a long-term, gradual decline in happiness—and rise in unhappiness—from 1988 to the present.” – The Atlantic

Don’t forget to look at your shelves for ideas. – The New York Times