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Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
From Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal: In his groundbreaking book How the Mind Works, Pinker argues that stories equip us with a mental file of dilemmas we might one day face, along …
For those who didn’t follow him, Jonah Lehrer has a gift for turning science into a great story. His beautiful writing made it hard to resist the narrative fallacy. The recent news about him …
In his new book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, Jonathan Gottschall puts forth the argument that storytelling’s deceptions emerge from deeply human needs. The …
Your memory changes every time you tell a story. Police have to be very careful when questioning witnesses. They basically treat a witness’s memory like a crime scene: once you go over it a …
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” – Joan Didion Tyler Cowen with an excellent TED talk on the dangers of storytelling: So if I’m thinking about this talk, I’m …
In this short lecture, Kurt Vonnegut explains the different shapes that stories can take using a chalkboard. Now let me give you a marketing tip. The people who can afford to buy books and magazines …
We often think we can rely on common sense. But in a complex world, common sense is not always sufficient. *** Duncan Watts new book Everything is Obvious: Once You Know The Answer explores the limit …
Future Babble has come out to mixed reviews. I think the book would interest anyone seeking wisdom. Here are some of my notes: First a little background: Predictions fail because the world is too …