Category: Articles
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Psychopaths, the Article
Read more: Psychopaths, the ArticleSuffering Souls, from the New Yorker, a ways back (via MindHacks): Psychopaths are as old as Cain, and they are believed to exist in all cultures, although they are more prevalent in individualistic societies in the West. The Yupik Eskimos use the term kunlangeta to describe a man who repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, and takes sexual…
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The Sadness Network
Read more: The Sadness NetworkSlate asks, Is Facebook Making Us Sad? Facebook is, after all, characterized by the very public curation of one’s assets in the form of friends, photos, biographical data, accomplishments, pithy observations, even the books we say we like. Look, we have baked beautiful cookies. We are playing with a new puppy. We are smiling in…
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Journaling for Grief
Read more: Journaling for GriefHelpful tips from Beth S. Patterson (GoodTherapy.org): I often suggest journal writing to my clients who are grieving the death of a loved one or dealing with a difficult life change as a useful way to deal with and befriend the intense emotions that often accompany these experiences. Some say, “oh, I’m not a good…
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Improving Your Cognitive Toolkit
Read more: Improving Your Cognitive ToolkitThe question by the Edge Foundation: “What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?” 163 answers are here. Here’s a sampling: – “Cognitive load” from Nicholas Carr: a limitation in how much information entering our consciousness we can process at any instant; – “The Pareto principle” from Clay Shirky: a reminder that the richest or busiest or…
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Social Animal
Read more: Social AnimalDavid Brooks pays tribute to brain science in a big New Yorker piece. Help comes from the strangest places. We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the inner working of the human mind. Far…