“

To the question many people ask about politics — Why doesn’t the other side listen to reason? — Haidt replies: We were never designed to listen to reason. When you ask people moral questions, time their responses and scan their brains, their answers and brain activation patterns indicate that they reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they’ve decided. The funniest and most painful illustrations are Haidt’s transcripts of interviews about bizarre scenarios. Is it wrong to have sex with a dead chicken? How about with your sister? Is it O.K. to defecate in a urinal? If your dog dies, why not eat it? Under interrogation, most subjects in psychology experiments agree these things are wrong. But none can explain why.

The problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. But their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. It works more like a lawyer or press secretary, justifying our acts and judgments to others. Haidt shows, for example, how subjects relentlessly marshal arguments for the incest taboo, no matter how thoroughly an interrogator demolishes these arguments.

‘The Righteous Mind,’ by Jonathan Haidt - NYTimes.com

Again someone explain that humans are not rational, but rationalizing.

(Reblogged from futuramb)

Wind on a Leaf: I hope Apple gets back to basics in iOS 6

chartier:

iOS has come quite a ways since its humble beginning in 2007, when it had very few background tasks, no folders, no Air-anything, no games, no Notification Center (or notifications), and of course, no (sanctioned) way to add new native apps. Apple has added quite a few welcome features over the…

I actually lolled

(Source: chartier)

(Reblogged from chartier)
(Reblogged from urbanlandscapes)

artemy:

Audio-Technica I Audio 911 I Dubstep (by WHZGUD2)

(Reblogged from artemy)
View high resolution

(Source: hyperform)

(Reblogged from hyperform)

My another blog

I decided to separate my futuristic thoughts from the main tumblr. Since I’ve got a plenty of ideas and concepts, I’ll continue the topic there.

The first post is repost from this blog.

old-ads-and-mags: Magnets I did it too

old-ads-and-mags:

Magnets

I did it too

(Reblogged from freshphotons)

The Game of Life (pt. 1)

I like games. Many people like games. Some people like games so much that they forget to do eating and going to bed and eventually die. That’s the extreme, but it keeps me wandering: why do we like games so much and how can we use it?

One of the most important factors is sense of fullfillment, given by accomplishing goals in the game. You feel important, doing great interesting things (like saving a world), and receive instant gratification for your doings (like new blaster). And all this clearly contributes to addiction: it’s far easier to achieve things in virtual worlds than in the real one.

As seen from simple observations, many people I know play games on a regular basis, and they not always can control the time spent on games. My small social research at the university (a questionnaire for students titled “Why do you play games?”) also points to the fact that most people just escape from their lifes to virtual ones.

Why can’t we not escape and do cool things in real world instead? Because it’s hard. Because real world is incredibly complex. Because (probably) no one will spot your great deeds and you’ll be left alone with your sense of disappointment. And we don’t have exact and full information about real things in many cases.

Why do we do cool things in virtuality? Because it’s simple, straightforward, almost always completely known and gives instant result in the end. Maybe it gives even another badge on your favourite social gaming platform (like Steam).

So we see the difference now. Virtual quest-giver NPC Bob not only tells you a blurry phrase “I want you to go and kill these bandits bothering the village”, but he also puts an arrow on the map and tells you what you’ll get for this quest (in advance!). Your real-as-hell boss Pete isn’t going to tell you “Well, you need to collect this and this and then bring it to me. You can find all this here and there. If you’re stuck, contact me and you’ll receive no penalty for as many as you wish repeats. Having this complete, you’ll immediately have 200$ and a day off. Come see me when you’re ready for a new adventure then”. Sometimes, if your boss is really smart and all-around cool, he really does the thing in this way. But the reward thing is still not here. And there’s still a lot of space to fail: it’s up to your capabilities and knowledge and experience.

Taking freelance work, we have rewards component in place. But we don’t have the exactness of knowledge. We never have it: it’s the real world, it’s infinitely complex.

But can we someday have really as simple jobs as another MMORPGs? Imagine that: you’re offered a mission (not forced to do it). You know the reward. You know the way it’s done and this way isn’t going to change in progress of doing. You know where to go, you have your arrow on compass and a log entry in journal. You can ask for clarifications infinitely. You’re not afraid of failure because you know you will succeed at one point or another.

Your boss creates a ”chain of missions”, some software helps him to balance the payment (real money and vacation days!) and deadlines (they can be fairly optimistic: in games you never like to procrastinate). You accept the mission, it automatically moves to your active tasks and maps all the stuff. And it can map not only physical locations, but the stuff you need to complete the mission: URL with guides, contacts of persons who can help and so on.

I understand how much this is ahead of time and unrealistic. Very many open questions. But with augmented reality it all really could be put to work. It could make fun of most not-very-intellectual jobs and help to motivate brain workers too.

A side note: strangely, there already are some organization trying to make games matter in real life: Games for Change, Games for Health and so on. Having heard nothing of them points to the fact nobody is interested in it right now, apart from enthusiasts. And enthusiasts are not very successfull at the moment.

I’ll probably continue to think about the topic and will eventually share the thoughts with you. Maybe I could imagine a better-detailed view of how it’s all supposed to work.

staceythinx:

We’ve all seen macrophotography of insects before, but never quite like this. These are photos of bugs after they’ve been peeled off the windshield of a car.

Photographer Voker Steger describes his method:

“The speed is important. The right speed is about 70km/h (43 mph). Flies that get hit by a car at that speed look like fallen angels in the electron microscope.”

(Reblogged from freshphotons)
smarterplanet: Be a Gamer, Save the World - WSJ.com We often think of immersive computer and videogames—like “FarmVille,” “Guitar Hero” and “World of Warcraft”—as “escapist,” a kind of passive retreat from reality. Many critics consider such games a mind-numbing waste of time, if not a corrupting influence. But the truth about games is very nearly the opposite. In today’s society, they consistently fulfill genuine human needs that the real world fails to satisfy. More than that, they may prove to be a key resource for solving some of our most pressing real-world problems. Hundreds of millions of people around the globe are already devoting larger and larger chunks of time to this alternate reality. Collectively, we spend three billion hours a week gaming. In the United States, where there are 183 million active gamers, videogames took in about $15.5 billion last year. And though a typical gamer plays for just an hour or two a day, there are now more than five million “extreme” gamers in the U.S. who play an average of 45 hours a week. To put this in perspective, the number of hours that gamers world-wide have spent playing “World of Warcraft” alone adds up to 5.93 million years. Ideas Market Ms. McGonigal will discuss her new book this week on Review’s Ideas Market blog. These gamers aren’t rejecting reality entirely, of course. They have careers, goals, schoolwork, families and real lives that they care about. But as they devote more of their free time to game worlds, they often feel that the real world is missing something. Gamers want to know: Where in the real world is the gamer’s sense of being fully alive, focused and engaged in every moment? The real world just doesn’t offer up the same sort of carefully designed pleasures, thrilling challenges and powerful social bonding that the gamer finds in virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential or to make us happy. Those who continue to dismiss games as merely escapist entertainment will find themselves at a major disadvantage in the years ahead, as more gamers start to harness this power for real good. My research over the past decade at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Institute for the Future has shown that games consistently provide us with the four ingredients that make for a happy and meaningful life: satisfying work, real hope for success, strong social connections and the chance to become a part of something bigger than ourselves. View high resolution

smarterplanet:

Be a Gamer, Save the World - WSJ.com

We often think of immersive computer and videogames—like “FarmVille,” “Guitar Hero” and “World of Warcraft”—as “escapist,” a kind of passive retreat from reality. Many critics consider such games a mind-numbing waste of time, if not a corrupting influence. But the truth about games is very nearly the opposite. In today’s society, they consistently fulfill genuine human needs that the real world fails to satisfy. More than that, they may prove to be a key resource for solving some of our most pressing real-world problems.

Hundreds of millions of people around the globe are already devoting larger and larger chunks of time to this alternate reality. Collectively, we spend three billion hours a week gaming. In the United States, where there are 183 million active gamers, videogames took in about $15.5 billion last year. And though a typical gamer plays for just an hour or two a day, there are now more than five million “extreme” gamers in the U.S. who play an average of 45 hours a week. To put this in perspective, the number of hours that gamers world-wide have spent playing “World of Warcraft” alone adds up to 5.93 million years.

Ideas Market

Ms. McGonigal will discuss her new book this week on Review’s Ideas Market blog.

These gamers aren’t rejecting reality entirely, of course. They have careers, goals, schoolwork, families and real lives that they care about. But as they devote more of their free time to game worlds, they often feel that the real world is missing something.

Gamers want to know: Where in the real world is the gamer’s sense of being fully alive, focused and engaged in every moment? The real world just doesn’t offer up the same sort of carefully designed pleasures, thrilling challenges and powerful social bonding that the gamer finds in virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential or to make us happy.

Those who continue to dismiss games as merely escapist entertainment will find themselves at a major disadvantage in the years ahead, as more gamers start to harness this power for real good. My research over the past decade at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Institute for the Future has shown that games consistently provide us with the four ingredients that make for a happy and meaningful life: satisfying work, real hope for success, strong social connections and the chance to become a part of something bigger than ourselves.

(Reblogged from smarterplanet)