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POPSGenerosity: Open Yale Courses website - 318 Videos! The Yale Courses channel provides entry into the core of the University--its classrooms and academic programs--including complete sets of lectures from the Open Yale Courses initiative. Complementary syllabi, transcripts, and other resources may also be accessed from the Open Yale Courses website listed below.
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POPSHow the city hurts your brain One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the urban roil
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POPSOur Rights Taken Away By Corporations
"He went on to specify how this could happen: direct seed movement by birds, by wind, especially on the prairies, by floods, and through cross-pollination by bees). It doesn’t actually matter how the genetically modified organisms get into an organic farmer’s field or into the fields of a conventional farmer like myself: once there, those seeds and plants become Monsanto’s property.” It was a very startling decision. The judge also ruled that we were not allowed to use our seeds or plants again and that all the seeds and plants that we had developed over 50 years became the property of Monsanto. The judge also ruled that all the profit from my 1998 canola crop was payable to Monsanto. The judge further ruled that even from the land that had no contamination, all profit would be payable to Monsanto because there was a probability that our seed contained some of Monsanto’s GMOs. The really worrying thing is how we can lose our rights and freedoms. The contract from Monsanto, take
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POPSQuantum Theory May Explain Wishful Thinking The intriguing title hides an interesting application of mathematical tools used in quantum mechanics to model decision making under condition of uncertainty. Pothos and Busemeyer hope that further research on quantum probability models of human cognition could help answer fundamental questions about the nature of how we think. For example, what does it mean to be rational? Another example is Schrodinger’s equation, which predicts a periodic oscillation between choices after a minimum length of time. This oscillation matches with electroencephalography signals and may explain why the longer you debate on a decision, the more you fluctuate. Overall, if our brains use quantum principles, and quantum computation is known to be fundamentally faster than classical computation in computers, then perhaps quantum principles can even help explain the success of human cognition.
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POPSWhy so many minds think alike? You're in a room with 10 other people who seem to agree on something, but you hold the opposite view. Do you say something? Or do you just go along with the others?
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POPSThe image you have of your own face, is highly cartoonish. Our visual cortexes are wired to quickly recognize faces and then quickly substract massive amounts of detail from them, zeroing in on their essential message: Is this person happy? Angry? Fearful? Individual faces may vary greatly, but a smirk on one is like a smirk on another. Smirks are conceptual, not pictorial. Our brains are like cartoonists - and cartoonists are like our brain, simplifying and exaggerating, subordinating facial detail to abstract comic concepts.
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POPSThe myth of the self "WHAT is the self? One answer is that it is the diamond in the rough that is you, the unique, immutable and indestructible jewel that makes each person who they are, the being amidst the becoming, the unfluxable within the flux.Kant called it the Transcendental Ego, which stands behind experience as the condition of its possibility. An alternative view endorsed by Buddha, Heraclitus, John Locke, David Hume and William James is that the self does not exist."
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POPSTHE SYNCHRONIZATION OF BRAINS JAMSHED BHARUCHA Professor of Psychology, Provost, Senior Vice President, Tufts University "An understanding of how brains synchronize " or fail to do so " will be a game-changing scientific development." Highly recommended, go read it all
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POPSHow to morph into another person Your face is a major component of your self-identity, but when you look into a mirror, how do you know that the person you are seeing is really you? Is it because the person in the reflection looks just like you? Or because the reflection moves when you move? Or perhaps because you see the face in the reflection being touched when you reach up to touch yours
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POPSIDF:"Bet you got raped!""1 shot, 2 kills""Better use Durex" Every child murder and rapist needs one. Durex? No, bullets and his owner designed T-shirt depicting how masterful a boastful killer he really is. Zionist snipers with small minds, smaller dicks and big guns, supplied free gratis by the USA. Dead children only rate one notch. Arab virgins rate 5 notches.
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POPSDiscover Your Character Strengths ... 6 virtues and 24 strengths. The core virtues are those identified by philosophers, religious thinkers and others as being central to a 'good character' - these are the six main headings in the list below. The 24 character strengths, meanwhile, are those characteristics of individuals that contribute towards these virtues. These are listed under the virtue to which they contribute
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POPSThe Story of Power Power tends to be viewed in one of two ways, both extreme. The first is totemic and tactical The other is epic and amorphous
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POPSThe Question of Freedom at the Open Video Conference "Benkler argued that Open Video was indicative of an “open democracy for everyone, everywhere, all the time.” Open Video Culture, he said, would usher in the possibility for “anyone to express oneself, be creative and innovative.” Benkler also claimed that because “millions of people are now looking at problems” we will thus find millions of, “distributed solutions.” In this “free” culture, he continued, “human creativity would move to the core.” Aside from the seemingly naïve conflation of terms, exactly which society, which “everyone,” and which economic system did Benkler have in mind?" A very important read
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