book promotion, Newsletter, Perception

Finding Happiness in Someone Else’s Happiness

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Return to the Convent, by Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, 1868

The Dutch have a word for a feeling that encapsulates “finding happiness in someone else’s happiness:” gunnen. This would be the opposite of a German word: schadenfreude — a pleasure derived from another’s misfortune. Slapstick comedy depends upon schadenfreude. Two-year-old children have been observed to enjoy the mishaps of others. Tom and Jerry, The Road Runner Show, The Pink Panther and many other kids’ cartoons use schadenfreude as the engine for their comedy. The use of the word schadenfreude took off (exponentially) around the 90s. The use of the word gunnen, on the other hand, has been flat since the turn of the previous century. We can speculate on whether this means that we would rather pleasure ourselves with the tragedies of others rather than get joy from seeing people happy, but that’s not really here nor there. I’d rather live in the gunnen world than the schadenfreude one, but perhaps slapstick and cartoons would have suffered for it. I often write that reading books helps develop empathy. I’m witnessing this development now first hand as I observe the blossoming of my granddaughter’s full repertoire of feelings. She is about to turn four. We read a lot together, and she…

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book promotion, Cognitive Blindness, Newsletter

Thanksgiving and College Applications Stress

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Spilling Thanksgiving Gravy

Thanksgiving is almost upon us. It is always a stressful time — too much travel, too much food, too many people in one room, too much family. But it is also a time for forming memories. There will be moments, good and bad, that will become part of family lore, retold long after everyone goes home and the dishes are finally cleaned. And while horrible in the moment, disaster during times like these make for the most interesting stories going forward: do you remember that time when Uncle Bob spilled all of the gravy on the brand new rug? High emotions make for long lasting memories. Spilled gravy makes for a more memorable story than delicious gravy. It’s just how we are built — we remember the insane stories better than quiet ones. And when we retell those stories to our children, we try to turn them into teaching moments: Uncle Bob shouldn’t have been trying to carry hot dish without gloves, even if he tells everyone he has asbestos fingers. Thanksgiving is not only family togetherness time, it is also the time for filling out college applications — double stress. I’ve helped a lot of kids with their essays…

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Book, My Books, Newsletter

Epigenetics of the Soul

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Flying Raven Witch by Sergei Chudanov

I know I’m being provocative with the title. Epigenetics is the study of the influence of environment on the expression of our genes. Epi is the Greek word for ON or ABOVE. And I am using soul to designate the essence of who we truly are. Thus I want talk about the environmental conditions that shape up, that makes us into us. If I was born into a different economic, cultural, or/and social situation, would I still be me? Or would I be some different version of me?

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Reverse Aging

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Reverse Ageing

I’ve heard it said that if we just hang on for 10 to 15 years more, science will be able to reverse our body’s age to that of a 20-year-old. That’s quite a claim. But what are the implications of living indefinitely? I’ve read many science fiction stories that discuss immortality, always in some distant future. But what if it truly happens in my lifetime? First of all, I need my life partner and soulmate to make it too, otherwise what’s the point? So that’s a given. Now moving on: we have two children. They have to make it. And my friends, too. But, back to the children, it was hard to raise them. Now that we’re helping to raise our three year old granddaughter, my memories of raising my own children are more vivid. Raising children is one of the most difficult things we do in life. We will never love as unconditionally, never be expected to give up as much, and never have someone who loves us “with all of their minds” as a little kid. And the difficulties grow exponentially as kids grow. Our society has long ago given up on “it takes a village,” so parents…

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Anchoring Errors, Background Knowledge Errors, Diagnostic Errors, Errors, Newsletter, Perception, Users

Human Limitations

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Giraffe-sized Asteroid

We live in a vast universe that spans enormous scapes of time and space. But humans evolved to understand information in relatable quantities at a human scale. We conceive landscapes mostly in chunks we can easily walk, connected loosely by strands of distances we can comfortably drive. We live in the now, but relate to the future in terms of a past that we dimly remember. We can make plans just within a very narrow scope of time — days, perhaps weeks. The future is always elusive and vague. We don’t comprehend spans of time outside of our experience. The span of a million years, ten million, a hundred million, or even just a thousand are concepts which we can intellectualize about but can’t really feel. Even in our interactions as members of a species, we can each just maintain a web of a few dozen relationships. Space, time, and human interactions are limited for us. We don’t process and, thus, don’t truly comprehend, information of large or very small scales that are beyond our direct experience. It’s not who we are as humans. This has all sorts of ramifications beyond the obvious. It’s why it’s easy for us to…

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book promotion, Newsletter

Extravagant

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Free Science Fiction

The Latin root of the word extravagant means “to wander outside or beyond.” Clearly the meaning changed somewhat over the years, but wandering in unfamiliar places exposes our senses, and thus our brains, to new experiences. Our senses are hit with novel sights, sounds, and scents. We are getting something “extra” out of life when we venture beyond the familiar. I remember the first time I travelled to a tropical destination. The aroma, as I stepped out of the airport, was overwhelming; it was almost a physical wall of fragrance. There was no doubt that I was entering some place new. Novel sensual experiences impact how we think and remember, putting on a new track our normal train of thoughts. Wandering the world creates wonder. Changing our perspective in this way is a main reason to seek out new experiences. When we think, we don’t do so in isolation. Our minds are not soaring and thinking up ideas in an empty space. We think with our bodies and senses as much or more than we do with our minds. The sensory inputs we get as we move, work, and problem solve, feed us information and clues as to what to…

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book promotion, Long Term Memory, Newsletter, Perception

In-the-Moment Experience Versus Memory of Time

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San Francisco Pride Month Laser Show by Bruce Andersen 2023

Time really does fly. It marches like an unstoppable force. But our memories of the past events and our perception of time are not so immutable. In-the-moment experience and the memory of such are so very different. Our memories are problematic, at best, and completely fictional at worst. But we can choose what we remember; we can shape our own history.

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