Top 10 Strange Phenomena of the Mind Humans The mind is a wonderful thing – there is so much about it which remains a mystery to this day. Science is able to describe strange phenomena, but can not account for their origins. We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time – of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances – of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remember it! Déjà vu is the experience of being certain that you have experienced or seen a new situation previously – you feel as though the event has already happened or is repeating itself. Déjà vécu (pronounced vay-koo) is what most people are experiencing when they think they are experiencing deja vu. Déjà visité is a less common experience and it involves an uncanny knowledge of a new place. Déjà senti is the phenomenon of having “already felt” something. Jamie Frater
List of common misconceptions From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Each entry on this list of common misconceptions is worded as a correction; the misconceptions themselves are implied rather than stated. These entries are concise summaries; the main subject articles can be consulted for more detail. A common misconception is a viewpoint or factoid that is often accepted as true but which is actually false. They generally arise from conventional wisdom (such as old wives' tales), stereotypes, superstitions, fallacies, a misunderstanding of science, or the popularization of pseudoscience. Some common misconceptions are also considered to be urban legends, and they are sometimes involved in moral panics. Arts and culture[edit] Business[edit] Federal legal tender laws in the United States do not require that private businesses, persons, or organizations accept cash for payment, though it must be treated as valid payment for debts when tendered to a creditor.[1] Food and cooking[edit] Food and drink history[edit] Music[edit]
Don't Panic!: Il flusso del silenzio, l'insistenza dell'oblio La percezione, l'acquisizione e la diffusione dell'Informazione sta cambiando questa società (vedi penetrazione e sempre maggiore dei new media: social network, blog, youtube ecc). Molti se ne erano già accorti (ma son rimasti spesso inascoltati) prima ma solo in quesi giorni sembra accorgersene il resto del mondo (soprattutto l'Italia). E tramite Punto Informatico son arrivato a questo scritto di William Gibson , autore di fantascienza, datato 2008 (maggio, Roma) ma terribilmente e profeticamente attuale. "È qualcosa che vorrei sottoporre all’attenzione di ogni uomo di stato, leader politico e dirigente d’azienda: il futuro, alla fine, vi porterà allo scoperto. Il flusso del silenzio, l’insistenza dell'oblio di William Gibson Grazie per avermi accolto in questa Roma del Ventunesimo secolo, un posto che non ho avuto il piacere di visitare prima d’ora, sebbene l’abbia visitato un tempo, nelle spoglie di un uomo più giovane, in una delle sue innumerevoli versioni precedenti. Grazie.
Why We Believe Our Own Lies 0 Share Synopsis The power of cognitive dissonance in our daily lives. Leon Festinger was an American social psychologist, responsible for the development of the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, which suggests that when people are persuaded to say things and to behave in ways that are inconsistent with their beliefs, an uncomfortable psychological tension is aroused. This tension will lead people to change their beliefs to fit their actual behavior, rather than the other way around, as originally thought. Festinger’s ground-breaking social psychological experiments provide a central insight into the stories we tell ourselves about why we think and behave the way we do. You are told the experiment is about how your expectations affect the actual experience of a task. Your first task is extremely boring. Then you are ushered through to another room where you are interviewed about the experiment you've just done. "No," you insist. The Power of Cognitive Dissonance
The Lesson of the Monkeys | Jason Wells I was first told of this experiment* by a former work colleague, and later discovered this illustration of it. It’s both illuminating and disturbing. There is a clunky word that describes this phenomenon: filiopietism, or the reverence of forebears or tradition carried to excess. But I prefer another term for it: the tragic circle. I believe many of these tragic circles exist, mostly unseen, in across all cultures and societites, causing untold harm. When discovered, they should be terminated. The lesson is as obvious as it is important: question everything. * Stephenson, G.
Psychology of Cyberspace - The Online Disinhibition Effect On the other hand, the disinhibition effect may not be so benign. Out spills rude language and harsh criticisms, anger, hatred, even threats. Or people explore the dark underworld of the internet, places of pornography and violence, places they would never visit in the real world. We might call this toxic disinhibition. On the benign side, the disinhibition indicates an attempt to understand and explore oneself, to work through problems and find new ways of being. You Don't Know Me (dissociative anonymity)As you move around the internet, most of the people you encounter can't easily tell who you are. As the character now becomes more elaborate and "real" within our minds, we may start to think, perhaps without being fully aware of it, that the typed-text conversation is all taking place within our heads, as if it's a dialogue between us and this character in our imagination - even as if we are authors typing out a play or a novel.
Cognitive bias The Atir-Rosenzweig-Dunning Effect: When Experts Claim To Know The Unknowable Remember the Dunning-Kruger Effect? The finding by David Dunning and Justin Kruger that incompetence leads to inflated beliefs of competence. If you need a refresher, the concept is succinctly explained below by John Cleese: Dunning has now conducted a new study with colleagues Stav Atir and Emily Rosenzweig, finding that expertise has its own pitfalls. The researchers first asked the participants to rate their expertise in a particular area, personal finance for example, before being asked to rate their knowledge of a variety of specialist terms, some of which do not really exist, such as “pre-rated stocks, fixed-rate deduction and annualized credit.” But astoundingly the effect wasn’t limited to self-professed expertise. One burning question the researchers didn't speculate on is examples of where this effect may occur in the real world. But before you begin to gloat in the benefits of ignorance, you should be aware that it seems most of us are actually vulnerable to this phenomenon.