Human Filters Human have a huge collection of biases which are generally considered to be bad. But in ancient times, our biases were very useful sorting tools, that helped us to conserve valuable brainpower in a dangerous environment. If you had to use your conscious mind to both look out for tigers and […]
Juggling Stories and Hot Dogs
Old Friends I have a couple of friends in their late seventies. One of the things they do is take these bus trips. It’s mostly retired people, and they take day trips to these places. I know an old guy in Japan who does the same thing, with his wife. There […]
Advice From Imaginary People
Grandmaster Theory I have a friend who has a very interesting hobby. He plays chess, but in a very unique way. He has this chess software on his PC, and this chess software is hooked up a huge database. This database has every game every played. So he’ll watch a game, […]
The Once And Future Hallucination
The Demon There was this philosopher guy a couple hundred years ago named Descartes. He came up with a problem that was unsolvable then, and unsolvable now. The problem was how do we know whether what is happening all around us is real, or just a hallucination? His idea was that our […]
Mind Portal Music Flow
Downtown Trip I had to go downtown recently. I had to file some paperwork. I probably could have done it online, but I wanted to make sure. I talked to a couple of people on the phone and I kept getting different answers. Besides they have a pretty good area next to the city […]
Trailing Memory Average
Palm Reader There’s this very powerful palm reader that works out of a very nondescript shop. In fact, unless you know she’s a palm reader you won’t tell, you won’t be able to tell by the outside of the shop. Even if you walk inside the shop it’s not altogether clear exactly what this woman […]
Cause and Effect
The Mystery Of The Human Mind One of the most confusing things, (or maybe not so confusing since we think we understand it and we really don’t) is the idea of cause and effect. On one hand, it seems simple. We see it happening all the time. It’s the one aspect of science we can […]
The Mind Numbing Power Of Negative Hallucinations
One thing that most people are most skilled at is self-deception. It’s kind of hard to notice, unless you’re specifically looking for it. I took part in this pretty cool hypnosis demo a while back. The guy took people up on stage, and demonstrated how easily we can “forget” information. They call this “negative hallucination.” […]