These days, you can super-quickly gauge a person by inquiring about their opinion on: Covid-19 vaccines climate change religion (especially Islam) UBI (Universal Basic Income) equality of outcome (especially gender issues) body fat over 30% Superb predictive power, eh? +
Why would you want to improve yourself, others and the world? — To experience less pain and suffering… especially when you interact with reality. If all is great in your life and you’re content with everything, then don’t improve, stay the same. But even the greatest, +
Instagram is a great tool to get to know people. Open a profile and: Scroll through their posts — sample their taste (or lack thereof), attention to detail (feet cut off, random branches in the frame, etc.) Pay attention to the number of selfies — +
There’s this idea that only women “test” their men. Nah. Men test their women as well. And it’s OK to test early, test often. Even testing to failure. Like we do in engineering. But what’s really important is the quality of those tests. Because the +
Strong is an active capacity to interact, rebound and grow in adversity (emotional, intellectual, physical). Strong is seeking out adventure and challenge, people that disagree with you, mentors that pinpoint your fallacies, nature that humbles your invincibility. Strong is giving your best to build new +
It’s real simple. The brain is an organ which, like any other organ in the body, maintains an acceptable state of balance to remain alive. Your consciousness is a (small) part of this organ’s activity. To keep the brain in balance, the consciousness creates stories +
“I wanted to feel safe. So I went to a safe college, my parents told me it’s for my job security. I didn’t go alpine climbing. I didn’t travel to India. I never rode in a helicopter. I never sailed offshore on a sail yacht. +
Just to be clear. As a civilisation, we knew about the current viral pandemic, the 2008 crisis, terrorist attacks beforehand… and we know perfectly well about the next climate-change related disasters. Have we done anything to avert “the situation”? Nah, not really. Very similar to +
The people most alarmed about the coronavirus seem to be people accustomed to thinking exponentially — people in tech, finance, and science. People least alarmed are those used to thinking about problems linearly. The problem isn’t the virus itself. It’s the under-provisioned healthcare systems and +
Work? 35 hours a week, with counselling and coaching. Travel? Only to pre-approved and reviewed AirBnBs. Sex? Only with inclusive, body-positive people who’ll repeat how gorgeous you are. Not too physical, though. Heart rate below 90 BPM. Drugs? Only comfortable to use, safe to buy, +
The UK General Election shows us, yet again, and unlike in the EU Referendum, without any remaining doubt, that the populations most at risk vote for their own masochistic downfall. The people who stand to lose the most from the complete dismantlement of government health +
A team at the University of Virginia’s Department of Psychology meta-analysed 11 studies, and “found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much +
We view death countless times on screens, daily. People exploding, shot, bleeding-out, run-over, cut to pieces in so many “creative” ways. And yet, how many of us think about the inescapable fact that at some point in the future, possibly very near future, we’ll be +
People love cyclic and regenerating universes — reincarnation, royal / superhero families of father to son, extreme quantum fluctuation initiating a new Big Bang, etc. — because they appeal to our sense of narrative. They also appeal to our intuition for causality seen in most phenomena +
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are platforms run by multi-billion-dollar companies with near infinite resources, best research and development teams, top neuroscientists and unscrupulous user interface designers. Huge companies working to make your experience on social media as sticky and addictive as possible. To take over +
For all practical purposes, we, as a species, already possess all the information needed for health, beauty, self-realization, spiritual growth, social harmony… And yet, how many of us are healthy / happy / grown-up / self-realized? Less than 0,05%? Why? Is it lack of access +
Remember the “married people are happier on average than singles” stat? Well, it could be that the direction of causation is actually reversed: happiness _causes_ marriage. Higher levels of serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin bring about and maintain a marriage. ;) +
Sitting down, closing your eyes and focusing on your breath is… relaxation. Which is fine. The point of meditation is to move beyond the confines of the illusory separate self into a stabilized state of maximum awareness (and eventually enlightenment) where you experience the cessation +
That “live in the present moment” thing? Well, you know what, it’ll become a “dead in the past forever” thing in 100 years max. Ignore human-scale time at your own risk. Oh, and the “God only knows the Plan” thing… that’s so you follow someone +
The night sky represents the myriad of opportunities you’ll never realize, trillions of galaxies, each containing millions of stars and dozens of places to go and see. A stark reminder of our limits. Speed of light vs speed of life. +
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