Why talent is overrated - Oct. 21, 2008 (Fortune Magazine) -- It is mid-1978, and we are inside the giant Procter & Gamble headquarters in Cincinnati, looking into a cubicle shared by a pair of 22-year-old men, fresh out of college. Their assignment is to sell Duncan Hines brownie mix, but they spend a lot of their time just rewriting memos. They are clearly smart - one has just graduated from Harvard, the other from Dartmouth - but that doesn't distinguish them from a slew of other new hires at P&G. What does distinguish them from many of the young go-getters the company takes on each year is that neither man is particularly filled with ambition. These two young men are of interest to us now for only one reason: They are Jeffrey Immelt and Steven Ballmer, who before age 50 would become CEOs of two of the world's most valuable corporations, General Electric (GE, Fortune 500) and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500). The obvious question is how. If we're all wrong about high achievement, that's a big problem.
Artist Manipulates Water With The Power Of Her Mind "Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?” asked existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. NY-based artist Lisa Park took this prompt as an invitation to extend the potential of man beyond our bodily limitations in the performative art project Eunoia, which means “beautiful thought” in Greek. Exploring questions of vulnerability, self-control, and liberation, Park recreates a scene that looks as if it's been lifted from your favorite Kung-Fu movie or an outtake from Kill Bill. Wearing a futuristic headset embeded with electroencephalography (EEG) sensors, Park moniters her own brain activity during meditation and transposes this energy onto dishes of water to reveal zen-like vibrations. Park is working with the experimental brain-computer technologies of the NeuroSky EEG headset, which you might remember from the Necomimi cat ear headset we wrote about a while back. Though the data is robust, it's mostly inscrutable to the untrained eye.
The Illusion of Understanding Success 0Share Synopsis Our tendency to rely on narratives to explain the world distorts our understanding of what it takes to be successful. In December of 1993, J.K. By 1995 she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a story about a young wizard she began writing years before. Rowling’s story, which includes financial and emotional shortcomings followed by success and popularity, is the rags to riches narrative in a nutshell. The reality of Rowling’s story, however, is just that: it’s a story. Yet, we humans, facing limits of knowledge, to paraphrase one author, resolve the myriad of unknown events that defined Rowling’s life before Harry Potter by squeezing them into crisp commoditized ideas and packaging them to fit a warming narrative. The same problem occurs in science. Unfortunately, Frodo’s triumph at Mount Doom is more real than natural selection to some. Tags: creativity, intelligence, philosophy, psychology, success
Mind-reading scan identifies simple thoughts - health - 26 May 2011 A new new brain imaging system that can identify a subject's simple thoughts may lead to clearer diagnoses for Alzheimer's disease or schizophrenia – as well as possibly paving the way for reading people's minds. Michael Greicius at Stanford University in California and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify patterns of brain activity associated with different mental states. He asked 14 volunteers to do one of four tasks: sing songs silently to themselves; recall the events of the day; count backwards in threes; or simply relax. Participants were given a 10-minute period during which they had to do this. For the rest of that time they were free to think about whatever they liked. This differs from previous experiments, in which the subjects were required to perform mental activities at specific times and the scans were then compared with brain activity when they were at rest. Read my mind Diagnostic test and adverts. More From New Scientist Promoted Stories
The Talent Code Neuroscience of Free Will On several different levels, from neurotransmitters through neuron firing rates to overall activity, the brain seems to "ramp up" before movements. This image depicts the readiness potential (RP), a ramping-up activity measured using EEG. The onset of the RP begins before the onset of a conscious intention or urge to act. Philosophers like Daniel Dennett or Alfred Mele consider the language used by researchers. Overview[edit] ...the current work is in broad agreement with a general trend in neuroscience of volition: although we may experience that our conscious decisions and thoughts cause our actions, these experiences are in fact based on readouts of brain activity in a network of brain areas that control voluntary action... Patrick Haggard discussing[15] an in-depth experiment by Itzhak Fried[16] The neuroscience of free will encompasses two main fields of study: volition and agency. To be clear, it is very unlikely that a single study could disprove all definitions of free will.
Reducing academic pressure may help children succeed Children may perform better in school and feel more confident about themselves if they are told that failure is a normal part of learning, rather than being pressured to succeed at all costs, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "We focused on a widespread cultural belief that equates academic success with a high level of competence and failure with intellectual inferiority," said Frederique Autin, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Poitiers in Poitiers, France. "By being obsessed with success, students are afraid to fail, so they are reluctant to take difficult steps to master new material. The study, published online in APA's Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, could have important implications for teachers, parents and students, said Jean-Claude Croizet, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Poitiers who supervised the research based on Autin's doctoral dissertation.
The Unobservable Mind Consciousness is more familiar to us than any other feature of our world, since it is the route by which anything at all becomes familiar. But this is what makes consciousness so hard to pinpoint. Look for it wherever you like, you encounter only its objects – a face, a dream, a memory, a color, a pain, a melody, a problem, but nowhere the consciousness that shines on them. Putting the point in that way makes it clear that, in the first instance at least, the problem of consciousness is a philosophical, not a scientific, problem. This appropriation of the question by philosophy is apt to make scientists impatient. But will we? If the neurobiologist Christof Koch, professor of cognitive and behavioral biology at Caltech, enters this territory with some trepidation, he nevertheless hopes to take possession of it in the name of science.
Want to avoid being a draft bust? Heed the words of Rashaan Salaam | Shutdown Corner It was all downhill for ex-Heisman winner Rashaam Salaam. (Getty Images) From Ryan Leaf to JaMarcus Russell and far beyond, the history of draft bustitude is a long and sad one. There isn't an NFL team, no matter how well-run, without its own selection that set the franchise back. The New England Patriots have Chad Jackson, the Baltimore Ravens tied their name to Kyle Boller, and the Pittsburgh Steelers probably don't have a huge historical archive regarding their decision to take nose tackle Gabe Rivera in 1983 when some kid quarterback from Pitt was looking pretty good just down the road ... Dan Marino was his name, we believe. Among its own draft mistakes, the Chicago Bears would certainly list running back Rashaan Salaam at or near the top. [NFL draft winners/losers: Washington Redskins qualify as both] "Work on your game. Salaam now lives in San Diego and helps run a camp to mentor kids. "My whole life, up until the Chicago Bears … everything was perfect.
Illusion of Truth share share share share Repetition is used everywhere—advertising, politics and the media—but does it really persuade us? Psychology studies reveal all… We see ads for the same products over and over again. Politicians repeat the same messages endlessly (even when it has nothing to do with the question they’ve been asked). Can all this repetition really be persuasive? It seems too simplistic that just repeating a persuasive message should increase its effect, but that’s exactly what psychological research finds (again and again). People rate statements that have been repeated just once as more valid or true than things they’ve heard for the first time. And when we think something is more true, we also tend to be more persuaded by it. Easy to understand = true This is what psychologists call the illusion of truth effect and it arises at least partly because familiarity breeds liking. As every politician knows, there’s not much difference between actual truth and the illusion of truth.
REVERSESTICK COACHING.COM 10 Amazing Examples of Mind Over Matter Humans While we often think of our bodies and minds as two distinct entities, it turns out they are much more entwined than we might assume. Researchers are continually finding evidence that the brain has a distinct power to manipulate the body’s physiology. As these 10 examples show, the mind/body connection can work in our favor or detriment, depending on our knowledge of a situation and our ability to control our thoughts. Judging by their ability to meditate for hours on end, to abstain from food for days, and their vows of silence, most us would agree that Tibetan Monks have better control over their minds and bodies than the average person. Still, what’s particularly amazing is some of them can control physiological processes, such as blood pressure and body temperature – feats many medical doctors find astounding. Although, the display was fascinating to the doctors, for the monks it was an ordinary occurrence. Multiple Personality Disorder Dreams Cause Real Injuries
Mind Modifications What is a Ganzfeld effect? The Ganzfeld (German for “complete/full field”) effect happens when the sensory system is steadily overloaded with a uniform signal. For example, a uniform, steady and all-encompassing soft light to the eyes will cause a “loss of vision”. This happens because, essentially, there is no change in the signal going to the brain, so the brain stops processing the signal. The Ganzfeld is interesting because it is a simple, yet effective tool which provides a mild form of sensory deprivation. Mild sensory deprivation through the Ganzfeld effect gives mild effects. Anyway, to enhance the effect, the basic idea is to extend the Ganzfeld idea to other senses than vision. While trying out the Ganzfeld with a big blank wall in a darkened room, for a short period of time I saw myself in a snowy parking lot. Experimenting with the Ganzfeld Effect A simple “Ganzfeld device” is easy to build; first, cut a uniform colour ping-pong ball in two. Uses of Ganzfeld