philosophy
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Embrace the swings
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1 min read
We need the yin and the yang, excitement and disappointment, anxiety and relief, work and play, optimism and pessimism, drunk and consciousness. It is in the forced escape of one or the other that makes it worse. But the habit of no habits is a self-inflicted curse. Talk is cheap, including the words to ourselves. An overactive…
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How design controls behavior
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1 min read
Design dictates behavior. Put a feature front and center like Instagram or Facebook Stories and it’s nearly impossible not to click. Keep a smartphone around while you’re doing work or eating and you’ll fight the urge to pick it up. Listen to enough conspiracy theories and you’re bound to think that they’re true regardless of…
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The irrationality stick
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1 min read
Irrationality runs rampant, pervading every human that dare unthink its power. Call it karma. Call it branding. Call it exuberance. Absurdity’s long-term effect attrits the reality of facts. What is progress in a sea of lies? The perception of truth arises from the visceral to keep the falsities at bay. But like any other placebo,…
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Winning a coin toss
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2 min read
“There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street today, and another tomorrow, and so on, day after day. He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it…
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Embracing uncertainty
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1 min read
Bored when you know too much. Anxious when you know too little. The good news is that you can’t control the universe. Acknowledging your powerlessness should set you free instead of trying to float onto absolutes. Writes Lifehacker Darius Foroux: Lighten up. Relax your muscles. Get rid of that tense face. Don’t worry. And have…
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Inside the head
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1 min read
Mute/unmute Blind to our blindness Freedom within the cube Our sensory perception tells us how we should interpret the world, which is often a series of paradoxes. It’s the bits in the brain that make the world a reality, not the external stimuli itself. “If you could perceive reality as it really is, you would…
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The running conversation in your head
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1 min read
The mind is perpetually stuck in the future, worried about tomorrow instead of tomorrow’s yesterday. It’s as if we’re running toward an elusive finish line, lured by the temptation of retirement. Hold up…why do we move so fast? Skimming and skipping produce a race to the bottom. We expect the algorithms and Google shortcuts to…
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Raising the level of consciousness
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1 min read
You can’t program a robot to be bored. It runs on doing. You can’t depend on a robot to pursue a half-baked idea when it doesn’t know what stretches tastes. At the same time, a robot can multiply randomness. Using AI, It can think of thousands of possibilities at once. It is the ultimate prompt…
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Staying connected
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1 min read
Details often allude the inattentive. Our attention sticks to the future, trying to manage unforeseeable events while simultaneously harping on the past. In other words, the present is filled with more than one single mind and instead replaced with a collection of fragments. But we can advance human intuition with a slight tweak in focus.…
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Confident in your own curiosity
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1 min read
Filled with doubts, new ideas nevertheless take shape around secure curiosity. Instead of resisting the fear, we dance with it and set the brain roaming on possibilities. You don’t need to know how exactly things are going to play out when you’re effortfully learning. Doubt only adds fuel to churning pessimism. “The cure for boredom…
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One small change
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1 min read
Sometimes it is one small change that makes all the difference. And seeking it makes our aspirations feel alive. The alternative is adopting other people’s anxiety, locked into a cohesive occupied mind like a flock of sheep. When you go for it, you should expect to fail but learn a lot too. Escaping the treadmill…
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See it to believe it
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1 min read
We mistakenly believe that we find ourselves through our material possessions. But experiences are what put the bones in the goose. The rest (clothing, tattoos) are just acts of signaling. We mistakenly believe that speeding up leads to better thoughts. However, hastiness leads to impulsiveness and myopia. It takes patience to link things together. Information…