1. Professor Brian Wansink of Cornell estimates that we make two hundred food decisions a day.
2. So the question of what we like to eat confronts us more so than what we like to wear, read etc.
3. The what we like to eat conundrum presents two options: try something new or pick a favourite.
4. Which, as the psychologist Paul Rozen observes, depends on where we want pleasure to occur.
5. As in it would depend on whether we want our pleasure to occur before, during or after the meal.
6. Anticipated pleasure is greater if we pick a favourite; for we've already had it at some point before.
7. Remembering pleasure is greater if we try something new; for it creates new memories and favourites.
8. So liking circles around anticipation and memory; what we look forward becomes what we've had before.
9. Hence, the past and future feed thoughts, reflecting Blaise Pascal's maxim: 'The present is never our end.'
10. The present, expressed as living in the moment, is ambiguous for we're unsure how long makes a moment
11. But neither anticipation or memory is a reliable solution to answer how much we will like, or liked something.
12. For instance, eating a favourite meal every day for a while can alter the worth of how much that meal is liked.
13. Or the meals we ate during childhood may no longer be as desirable to the evolved palates of our old age.
14. Or a meal we didn't like at the time of having it may be liked later as we distort our perception when recalled.
15. Which suggests, as observed by the writer Tom Vanderbilt, that the key to liking may be the fact that it's chosen.
16. Which builds on the behavioural bias of cognitive dissonance: our tendency to avoid post-decision choice malaise.
17. So much that we increase our liking for what we've chosen, while increasing our dislike for what we've not chosen.
18. In other words, as Vanderbilt articulates, as much preferences influence choices, choices influence preferences.
19. Hence, a reliable solution to the conundrum of what we like to eat is simply what we choose to eat; liking follows.
19 points on why liking is simply a matter of choosing
22 points on why all humour theories miss the point
1. Although everyone understands humour, it's hard to explain what it is.
2. Or rather impossible, as observed by actual comedians and comedy writers.
3. Despite which, there have been a number of academic attempts to theorise humour.
4. For that which is inexplicable has tended to attract more enthusiasm than that which can.
5. So for 2000 years, it's been assumed that all forms of humour may have a common ingredient.
6. The search for this ingredient was occupied mainly by philosophers, and psychologists thereafter.
7. Superiority theory, the oldest, by Plato, holds humour as that which comes from the misfortune of others.
8. Relief theory, made famous by Sigmund Freud, holds humour as that which releases tensions and inhibitions.
9. Incongruity theory, by Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, holds humour as the result of a sudden shift in perspective.
10. Resolution of incongruity theory, its variant, holds humour as an unexpected solution from a shift in perspective.
11. Benign violations theory, by Thomas Veatch, holds humour as harmless violations of social, moral, physical norms.
12. Play theory, by Max Eastman, holds humour as a kind of pleasure that's drawn from playful presentations of pain.
13. Conflict theory, by Karl Marx, holds humour as that which acts as an expression of conflict, struggle or friction.
14. Ambivalence theory, by Louis Joubert, holds humour as that which is an inside battle between opposing emotions.
15. Dispositional theory, by Dolf Zillmann and Joanne Cantor, holds humour as that which is derived from antipathy.
16. Gesalt theory, by Max Wertheimer, holds humour as that which comes via tweaked meaning that change meaning.
17. Piagetian theory, by Jean Piaget, holds humour as that which derives pleasure from taking things out of place.
18. Configurational theory, by Paul Schiller, holds humour as that which arises from interpretations, not what it is.
19. But most theories are versions of incongruity theory, which is the most plausible account on what makes humour.
20. Since humour perpetuates unresolvable gaps in reason, gaps in theorist resolutions can be framed as deliberate.
21. By this antilogic, as the cartoonist Ben Juers notes, all theories prank the writer/reader, while missing the point.
22. Or as E. B. White puts, 'Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Nobody cares and the frog dies in the process.'
27 points on why we're all just acting out our lives
1. Animals like elephants, chimps, dolphins, magpies etc. are known to pass the 'mirror test'.
2. If you draw a spot on their foreheads and put them in front of a mirror they'll try to rub it off.
3. So scientists have recognised that they're self-aware, just as children are as early as 18 months.
4. So animals and children share a sense of basic self, recognising what's happening in the moment.
5. Cognitive scientists call this reflection 'episodic memory': the memory of undergoing experiences.
6. There's another kind of reflection that develops a little later in humans, and perhaps never in animals.
7. Cognitive scientists call this 'autobiographical memory': the memory of linking present with past experiences.
8. Like humans can not only imagine what happened before, but imagine by putting their current self in the past.
9. So whenever they access their autobiographical memory, they can put themselves into a mental time machine.
10. The issue with having an autobiographical memory is that it keeps supplying life episodes to fashionise our self.
11. Which means it's up to each of us to create and construct our life story with an assorted choice of life episodes.
12. So the mission of every rational individual is to build out a self, which philosophers call the constitution of self.
13. And philosophical observations on what it means to live well lead people to two goals: meaning and happiness.
14. At the same time, psychological evidence concludes that aspects of meaning and happiness can be in conflict.
15. Like activities increasing meaning can reduce happiness; activities increasing happiness can reduce meaning.
16. For instance, raising children has shown to reduce happiness, but people do so because it gives them meaning.
17. So happiness and meaning are two distinct aspects that stretch our lives, although neither dominates the other.
18. Meaning and happiness-filled episodes are created and supplied into our autobiographical memory to create life.
19. Or life story, which we're burdened to constitute/build, that clarifies the maxim: to live well is to live narratively.
20. If Nietzsche wrote, 'We want to be poets of our lives,' the neurologist Oliver Sacks concurs, we live in narratives.
21. There are two fundamental life narratives, as articulated by the philosopher Jim Holt: 'Nietzschean' or 'Platonist'.
22. The Nietzschean way is to make life as one wills, of individuality or originality; one that's organised on newness.
23. The Platonist way is to make life not on newness, but on goodness; one that's organised on some objective value.
24. The Nietzschean way relates to happy, episodic types who have no interest in the past, except it forms their now.
25. The Platonist way relates to meaningful, autobiographical types who seek worthwhile projects for societal good.
26. Both have their arguments; one prioritises happiness, other meaningfulness; one is ephemeral, other is enduring.
27. But the truth remains, that the poetry of our lives is orchestrated by two narratives whether we realise it or not.
26 points on the creative department of thinking
1. Throughout history, humans have wondered about our mysterious faculty for creative thinking.
2. The belief being that conscious rationality is our supreme intelligence doing all that hard thinking.
3. But the role of some inner creative beast in influencing thought has been debated since before Socrates.
4. Empedocles, a pre-Socratic philosopher, brought a tradition of incubation; a creative healing process.
5. Dionysus was made the Greek god who enabled creativity through escape; from the confines of our selves.
6. For Socrates, a sort of inner madness was a divine form that stirred up creativity, imagination and wits.
7. Aristotle thought creativity came from black bile, a body fluid he also linked to melancholy and depression.
8. The roman poet Virgil introduced the concept that creativity comes from abandoning conscious striving.
9. Medieval monks found a model for creative thinking on the interplay between rumination and concentration.
10. The model reflects the process of thinkers from saints to playwrights, poets to scientists, dancers to artists.
11. Thomas Aquinas prayed immediately after sleep, to draw out what to write or dictate the following day.
12. Shakespeare found drama in the space between unconscious imagination and consciously controlled artistry.
13. John Milton drew out so much magic from his incubation chamber that he christened it the 'faculty of fancy.'
14. Thomas Edison slept holding steel balls and scribbled ideas immediately when woken by the dropping balls.
15. The dancer Ghislaine Boddington took naps in her studio and danced on waking up, to feel them in movement.
16. The painter Max Ernst called incubation a chance encounter of remote realities in a place unfit for neither.
17. The social psychologist Graham Wallas famously articulated the four phases of the creative process in 1926.
18. He called stage one preparation; the initial phase marked by part-research and part-entering the frame of mind.
19. He called stage two incubation; the phase of unconscious processing, between rumination and concentration.
20. He called stage three illumination; where the train of association ends, preceded by several unsuccessful trains.
21. He called stage four verification; the phase where the idea is finally validated and given shape and form to.
22. Wallas recognised what creative thinkers knew; that unconscious incubation is the mother chamber of thought.
23. It is useful to recognise, as noted by the psychologist Julian Jaynes, that consciousness is not the seat of reason.
24. Or that, as noted by the cognitive psychologist John Kilhlstrom, consciousness is not needed for complex thinking.
25. But that thoughts, from reasoning to complex, creative thinking, are constructed in the chamber of unconscious.
26. Which the mind scientist Guy Claxton describes as the mind inside the mind, off limits to conscious observers.
19 points on the usefulness of useless pursuits
1. From a practical point of view, pure intellectual life is seen as a useless pursuit.
2. One marked by a sense of self-indulgence, self-satisfaction and useless knowledge.
3. Yet historically, it is the pursuit of useless knowledge that's been the true source of utility.
4. Take the Scottish mathematician James Clerk Maxwell and his passion for abstract equations.
5. Maxwell went on to publish a full treatise on the mathematics of electricity and magnetism.
6. This led to the German physicist Heinrich Hertz's detection of wireless electromagnetic waves.
7. Yet it was the Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi who's seen as the inventor of wireless transmission.
8. Maxwell and Hertz could not invent a thing, but their so-called useless knowledge opened the way.
9. Work that was seized by a technician who turned abstraction into a new medium of communication: a utility.
10. Maxwell and Hertz were geniuses without thought of use; Marconi, a technician with no thought but use.
11. Similarly, early work on electric induction was done by the physicists Hans Ørsted and André-Marie Ampère.
12. Yet Michael Faraday became the father of electricity through his discovery of electromagnetic induction.
13. Ørsted and Ampère were geniuses without thought of use; Faraday, a technician with no thought but use.
14. Throughout science, the greatest breakthroughs came from those who placed curiosity far above utility.
15. For most of their careers, the Maxwells and Ørsteds of the world cared less for use than for ideas themselves.
16. And out of such useless knowledge came discoveries that proved more important than those made for utility.
17. The point isn't that every act of indulgence leads to unexpected utility, only that many of the significant have.
18. So, as the American educator Abraham Flexner argued, it is useful to abolish the tyranny of the word 'use.'
19. For the true enemy of progress is not the irresponsible thinker, but the thinker who despises useless pursuits.
19 points on why it takes brains to see
1. René Descartes made a profound observation: 'I think, therefore I am.'
2. The fact we think, he argued, proves we exist; the rest can be doubted.
3. Descartes used the act of seeing as a way to illustrate his point of view.
4. He sketched a diagram showing how vision might work mathematically.
5. He showed light entering the eye as rays of lines that converge at the back.
6. But this wasn't seeing, observed Descartes, rather, the work of judgement.
7. In the sense that we see what’s there, then come to a decision about what it is.
8. From this concept of vision, seeing becomes a metaphor for the role of a judge.
9. And just as a judge decides based on the evidence, seeing is based on evidence.
10. In doing so, Descartes revealed the importance of seeing as active observation.
11. Meanwhile, science learned to separate biological sight from cultural judgement.
12. Biological sight: what there is to see; cultural judgement: how we make sense of it.
13. So seeing the world isn’t about how we see things, but what we make of what we see.
14. Ludwig Wittgenstein's duck–rabbit drawing is a helpful way to picture the difference.
15. It can look like a duck or a rabbit, depending on how your mind decides to see it.
16. This ambiguity arises because the brain runs two streams: one for perception, one for action.
17. And what we make of what we see is shaped by the interaction between the two streams.
18. As art theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff puts it, the brain isn't a camera, but a sketch pad.
19. So seeing doesn't just happen, it's something we do; it takes brains, not just eyes.
18 points on the reality of simultaneous realities
1. Quantum physicists are beginning to sense a strange reality.
2. That it's possible for two versions of a story to happen at once.
3. That, in principle, events can occur in an indefinite causal order.
4. As in, both A causing B and B causing A can be simultaneously true.
5. The study of indefinite causality began with the physicist Lucien Hardy.
6. Through his paper, 'Probability Theories with Dynamic Causal Structure.'
7. The prospects of indefinite causality are now being observed across labs.
8. This possibility comes from a quantum phenomenon called superposition.
9. In a superposition, particles maintain all possible realities until they're measured.
10. Which is a way for physicists to go past the limitations of cause and effect thinking.
11. For it's imperative to go past causal perspectives to understand the quantum nature of things.
12. But until recently, there haven't been that many ideas about how post-causal physics might work.
13. For causal thinking has been a barrier without which coherent, meaningful theories couldn't be made.
14. But with physicists going past or reordering causal thinking, new forms of quantum experiments are on.
15. Leaping from positions of causality to superpositions is giving physicists more creative lenses to play with.
16. Which is permitting predictions without the constraints of well-defined, coherent, meaningful causal theories.
17. Einstein revoltionised physics not by thinking about what exists, but by thinking about what could possibly be.
18. With superpositions permitting simultaneous possibilities, quantum mechanics is excitingly more indeterministic.
15 points on the mammoth of random
16 points on the beginnings of strategic planning
1. Ancient creatures crawled out of water to see better.
2. Since eyes see farther in air, it brought access to new food on land.
3. All the poking out, seeing and trying led to limbs; to help them move.
4. As animals came onto the land, two types of spaces defined ecosystems.
5. These gave rise to predator–prey dynamics, dominance and survival strategies.
6. Open spaces, like grasslands and plains, favoured strategies for chasing and speed.
7. Closed spaces, like forests and jungles, favoured strategies for hiding and escape.
8. Big predators dominated in the open space; small ones took shelter in closed terrain.
9. At this stage, not much planning was needed; options to hide or hunt were defined.
10. But neither speed nor stealth had a distinctive edge in a certain ecological sweet spot.
11. A zone where open and closed habitats mingled, so it wasn't too sparse or too dense.
12. The palaeontologists Malcolm MacIver and Lars Schmitz call this the 'Goldilocks Zone'.
13. With a balanced edge for both predators and prey, this zone required animals to plan.
14. Which led to the beginnings of our planning circuitry; to envision, determine, be strategic.
15. So our ability to imagine or choose future paths is based on what we think others will do.
16. But our planning circuitry is limited and evolving, so we're still bad at planning ahead.
14 points on the gene that propels inventive thinking
1. Human invention began between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago.
2. The engine that kickstarted human invention: our pattern-making mind.
3. Instead of seeing things and events separately, we were seeing them as wholes.
4. We could do this by using a type of repetitive ‘if-and-then’ pattern of thought.
5. Soon, we grasped the concept of causality by connecting cause and effect.
6. This led to language, which helped us articulate and manipulate new ideas.
7. Our minds then built out empathy circuits, linking imagination with reason.
8. These circuits formed bridges between minds and enabled the trading of ideas.
9. This grand narrative of invention traces back to a single pattern-seeking gene.
10. Psychopathologist Sir Simon Baron-Cohen links it to the gene for autism.
11. In other words, it’s the gene for autism that drove the evolution of invention.
12. Which makes sense, as autistic minds are wired for superior pattern-seeking.
13. Philosopher Keith Frankish calls our greatest invention the invention of invention itself.
14. So to encourage invention is to appreciate the autistic mindset. It’s our ingenuity switch.
19 points on how Japanese companies endure
1. Almost 60% of the world’s oldest companies over 200 years are in Japan.
2. Some 33000 companies in Japan have been running for over 100 years.
3. 600 Japanese companies are 300, 190 are 400 and 40 are 500 years old.
4. Famous brands like Nintendo and Suntory have been on since the 1800s.
5. In contrast, Western companies, broadly, appear to be a lot less enduring.
6. Like only 14% of Fortune 500 companies from the 1950s survive today.
7. Difference between Western and Japanese approaches: short vs. long lens.
8. The Japanese orientation to the long view is rooted on several cultural factors.
9. Japan's long been an island with limited interaction and reliance on foreign stuff.
10. So they're predisposed to preservation; to make the most of what's there, for as long.
11. Japan's shown an unusual appreciation for tradition, mastery, artistry and aesthetics.
12. So they revere their craftspeople; some spend entires lives perfecting specific crafts.
13. Japan's ancestry ethos feeds the intention of moving companies onto their descendants.
14. So much that some companies adopt workers into family bloodlines to ensure succession.
15. Japan's ability to manage technological progress is done so whilst retaining competencies.
16. Like Nintendo went from cards to electronics giant by retaining competency on creating fun.
17. Japan's reverence to service/hospitality means anticipating and delivering on needs is principle.
18. So they apply omotenashi—performance without expecting anything in return—to experiences.
19. All added up, Japanese companies endure because they put sustainability before quick profiting.
22 points of the ill-treatment of door handles
2. Wooden latches, strings, leather straps were all primitive examples.
3. By the 18th century, houses in Europe had elaborate iron handles.
4. French palaces showed off delicately cast brass versions.
5. English houses preferred simple round or oval knobs.
6. Door handles were soon locally made, with local tastes and materials.
7. 20th century saw architects, rather than artisans, take to door handles.
8. The advent of art nouveau led to the spread of florid, organic brass handles.
9. Door handles were rethought as architectural specialties, not mere add-ons.
10. But the big shift came with adding functional sensibilities to the door handle.
11. The modernists saw buildings as wholes and door handles as its minimalist forms.
12. Bauhaus handles became the complete expression of modernism in the 1920s.
13. Their radical, stripped-down designs worked, looked decent and felt comfortable.
14. As factories went from weapons to products after WW2, handles became easy jobs.
15. But the most influential door handle was designed by a philosopher, Wittgenstein.
16. Wittgenstein's basic handle morphed into what's now the common door handle.
17. With handles becoming like chairs, the postmodern era saw a brief renaissance.
18. Consumers and architects wondered how many more designs the world needs.
19. Thereafter, door handles increasingly became ill-considered and insignificant.
20. The door handle is our critical interface with a building, yet it now seems absent.
21. They've been reduced to the most generic, sorry, cheaply made piece of metal.
22. Which all reflects the value we've come to place on aesthetics and architecture.