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November 11 · Issue #2 · View online
A monthly curation for those of us who
• Think critically.
• Teach young minds how to think critically.
• Communicate critically assessed information to interested audiences.
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This was a good month for articles but a difficult one for me in terms of limiting the list. I try to keep the number to around 15 pieces. This month, there was a surplus of good stuff and it took me quite a bit of effort to cull it down. Here’s the collection for November. Enjoy reading them.
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How to spend your money, according to science
- To prove money can’t buy happiness, people point to millionaires and lottery winners who ruined their lives.
- Psychological studies have shown that learning how to spend your money can improve overall happiness.
- We explore eight money-spending principles that research suggests can bolster life satisfaction.
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Medical News Today: How long is the ideal nap?
The best nap duration varies from person to person, but experts tend to agree that 20 minutes is ideal. Learn more about how long naps should be in this article.
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Change your story, change your life | Lori Gottlieb
Stories help you make sense of your life – but when these narratives are incomplete or misleading, they can keep you stuck instead of providing clarity. In an actionable talk, psychotherapist and advice columnist Lori Gottlieb shows how to break free from the stories you’ve been telling yourself by becoming your own editor and rewriting your narrative from a different point of view.
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How to Be More Creative: a MacArthur Genius Shows You How
5 great ideas to stimulate your creativity
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The cosmic war between monotony and creativity | David Deutsch
Theoretical physicist David Deutsch delivers a mind-bending meditation on the “great monotony” – the idea that nothing novel has appeared in the universe for billions of years – and shows how humanity’s capacity to create explanatory knowledge could be the thing that bucks this trend. “Humans are not playthings of cosmic forces,” he says. “We are users of cosmic forces.”
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Why the world is much smaller than you think
Ever been surprised by meeting a stranger and discovering that you share mutual acquaintances? As this network scientist reports, there’s an explanation for that. Has this happened to you? You strike up a conversation with a complete stranger, only to discover that you share surprising connections.
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How we're helping local reporters turn important stories into national news | Gangadhar Patil
Local reporters are on the front lines of important stories, but their work often goes unnoticed by national and international news outlets. TED Fellow and journalist Gangadhar Patil is working to change that. In this quick talk, he shows how he’s connecting grassroots reporters in India with major news outlets worldwide – and helping elevate and expose stories that might never get covered otherwise.
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Why should you always assume you're wrong? Science.
- The theories we build to navigate the world, both scientifically and in our personal lives, all contain assumptions. They’re a critical part of scientific theory.
- Cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman urges us to always question those assumptions. In this way, by challenging ourselves, we come to a deeper understanding of the task at hand.
- Historically, humans have come to some of our greatest discoveries by simply questioning assumed information.
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Deep learning nails correlation. Causation is another matter.
- Did you know that people with bigger hands have larger vocabularies?
- While that’s actually true, it’s not a causal relationship. This pattern exists because adults tend know more words than kids. It’s a correlation, explains NYU professor Gary Marcus.
- Deep learning struggles with how to perceive causal relationships. If given the data on hand size and vocabulary size, a deep learning system might only be able to see the correlation, but wouldn’t be able to answer the ‘why?’ of it.
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The happiness ruse
How did feeling good become a matter of relentless, competitive work; a never-to-be-attained goal which makes us miserable?
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On Sitting Still in Nature
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How to Keep a Conversation Flowing
The pauses were excruciating. My parents and I stared across the room at my chemistry teacher and his wife. We smiled northern white Protestant smiles. We had nothing to say. I vowed that when I grew up, I would never settle for an awkward conversation.
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These are the hidden biases in mainstream productivity advice
Self-improvement advice often assumes that productivity is something that’s in your control. That’s not always the case.
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Superior IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders
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List of Lists of Lists
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How to deal when things fall apart
Every month more records are being smashed as further evidence piles up proving that the cost of human comfort and luxury is too expensive for the environment to bear. To borrow a metaphor from sports, we keep moving the goalpost and are only now beginning to reckon with the fact that we’re running out of stadium. … what about the emotional cost of our damaged relationship to nature? … we begin our discussion with his most famous invention, solastalgia: “The pain or distress caused by the loss or lack of solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory. It is the lived experience of negative environmental change. It is the homesickness you have when you are still at home.”
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