Clipmarks | Human nature Clips

How to Get People to Like You

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:23:50 GMT

clipped by: kankamuso
clipper's remarks: A little bit more detailed than the usual "just be yourself", heh.

Learn to remember names. A name is very important to someone. If you don’t take the time to learn someone’s name, it indicates that you’re not interested in him or her. When someone remembers your name, it gives you the feeling that you are interesting or important.

Be easy going and natural. When you are stiff, reserved or unresponsive, you unconsciously build up a barrier. But when you are easy going and natural it is easy for people to like you.

Be interesting. Have something to talk about that people find interesting or stimulating. This way people want to be with you.

Don’t have a big ego. If you give the impression that you know it all, that you are superior, you make it hard for people to like you. Be normally humble.

Do some self-study and get rid of negative attitudes. People can consciously or unconsciously pick those up and they might find it irritable to be around you.

Always look for the positive qualities in a person. Getting people to like you is merely the other side of liking them.

Try to build up someone’s ego. Make compliments. Congratulate upon someone’s achievement, or express sympathy when they are in sorrow or if they feel disappointed. The ego is a sacred thing; every human being has the desire to feel important. When you deflate someone’s ego, you are wounding him deep inside.

Give strength to people, support them. Help them to be stronger and they will give you affection.

Whether you like to admit it or not, we want people to like us. If someone tells you that he does not really care if people like him or not, he simply is not being honest. The longing to be liked is one of our deepest desires. We want to be popular, we want people to speak nothing but good of us and we want to have affection of the people around us. It is in our human nature.

Tags: how to, lists, psychology, relationships

7 Thinking Errors You Probably Make

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:14:13 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: Common thinking errors explained, each backed by a scientific study. Food for thought!

Clip Source: www.lifehack.org

The brain isn’t a flawless piece of machinery. Although it is powerful and comes in an easy to carry container, it has it’s weaknesses. A field in psychology which studies these errors, known as biases. Although you can’t upgrade your mental hardware, noticing these biases can clue you into possible mistakes

The entire domain of the scientific method has largely been an effort to overcome the natural inclination towards bias in reasoning

common thinking errors:

1) Confirmation Bias

tendency to seek information to prove, rather than disprove our theories

2) Hindsight Bias

see past results as appearing more probable than they did initially

3) Clustering Illusion

see patterns where none actually exist

4) Recency Effect

give more weight to recent data

5) Anchoring Bias

a well-known problem with negotiations

6) Overconfidence Effect

people tend to grossly overestimate their abilities

7) Fundamental Attribution Error

Mistaking personality and character traits for differences caused by situations

Tags: psychology, human nature, bias, thinking, reasoning, critical thinking

Atheism: 10 Myths & 10 Truths For The Open-Minded

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 07:55:26 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: These 10 Myths of Atheism are well countered by the 10 Truths offered in answer to them in this article.

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

10 myths -- and 10 truths -- about atheism

SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.

Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.

Atheists believe that life is meaningless.

Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.

Atheism is dogmatic.

Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.

Atheism has no connection to science.

Atheists are arrogant.

Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.

Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.

Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.

Atheism provides no basis for morality.

We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn't make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.

Tags: religion, atheism, logic, truth, rationality

What would happen if all humans disappeared from the earth?

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 12:15:12 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: A timeline that shows how long it would take for traces of human-made things and systems to vanish if we all suddenly went away.

Clip Source: www.treehugger.com

Tags: humans, nature, science, death, timeline, end, earth, civilization, time, decay, life, environment, visualization

100 most influential books ever written...

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 07:28:02 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee
clipper's remarks: more than half I had clipped! (limit) For the rest, you may need to visit the site.

Clip Source: thegreatbookslist.com

'100 Most Influential Books Ever Written' by Martin Seymour-Smith

The I Ching

The Old Testament

The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer

The Upanishads

The Way and Its Power, Lao-tzu

The Avesta

Analects, Confucius

History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

Works, Hippocrates

Works, Aristotle

History, Herodotus

The Republic, Plato

Elements, Euclid

The Dhammapada

Aeneid, Virgil

On the Nature of Reality, Lucretius

Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws, Philo of Alexandria

Lives, Plutarch

The New Testament

Annals, from the Death of the Divine Augustus, Cornelius Tacitus

The Gospel of Truth

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus

Enneads, Plotinus

Confessions, Augustine of Hippo

The Koran

Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides

The Kabbalah

Summa Theologicae, Thomas Aquinas

The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

In Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus

The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli

On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther

Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais

Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin

On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs, Nicolaus Copernicus

Essays, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Don Quixote, Parts I and II, Miguel de Cervantes

The Harmony of the World, Johannes Kepler

Novum Organum, Francis Bacon

The First Folio [Works], William Shakespeare

Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei

Discourse on Method, René Descartes

Pensées, Blaise Pascal

Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes

Works, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Ethics, Baruch de Spinoza

Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan

Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac Newton

The Principles of Human Knowledge, George Berkeley

Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke

The New Science, Giambattista Vico

A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume

The Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot, ed.

A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson

Candide, François-Marie de Voltaire

Common Sense, Thomas Paine

An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

Tags: books, influential, interesting, weightage of words.

25 Greatest Science Books of All Time

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 02:26:37 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

The Origin of Species (1859)

Darwin's masterwork is, undeniably, The Origin of Species, in which he introduced his theory of evolution by natural selection. Prior to its publication, the prevailing view was that each species had existed in its current form since the moment of divine creation and that humans were a privileged form of life, above and apart from nature. Darwin's theory knocked us from that pedestal. Wary of a religious backlash, he kept his ideas secret for almost two decades while bolstering them with additional observations and experiments. The result is an avalanche of detail—there seems to be no species he did not contemplate—thankfully delivered in accessible, conversational prose. A century and a half later, Darwin's paean to evolution still begs to be heard: "There is grandeur in this view of life," he wrote, that "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Clip Source: discover.com

1. and 2. The Voyage of the Beagle (1845) and The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin [tie]

3. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) by Isaac Newton (1687)

4. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei (1632)

5. De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres) by Nicolaus Copernicus (1543)

6. Physica (Physics) by Aristotle (circa 330 B.C.)

7. De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius (1543)

8. Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein (1916)

Clip Source: discover.com
9. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976)
10. One Two Three . . . Infinity by George Gamow (1947)

11. The Double Helix by James D. Watson (1968)
12. What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger (1944)
13. The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan (1973)

14. The Insect Societies by Edward O. Wilson (1971)
15. The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg (1977)
16. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)
17. The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (1981)

18. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks (1985)
Clip Source: discover.com
19. The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1814)
20. The Feynman Lectures on Physics by* Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands (1963)

21. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred C. Kinsey et al. (1948)
22. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey (1983)

23. Under a Lucky Star by Roy Chapman Andrews (1943)
24. Micrographia by Robert Hooke (1665)

25. Gaia by James Lovelock (1979)
Honorable Mentions

Tags: science, book, books, reading, best of, list, history, literature, discover, darwin, newton, galileo

Oh yeah, and don't trust yourself either!

Sat, 12 May 2007 09:41:19 GMT

clipped by: ouyangwulong
clipper's remarks: The Chinese philosopher Xun Zi said that human nature is not particularly good, but he went on to argue that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make it better. Too many people resign themselves to say "that's just the way things are" because that's easier than challenging their own beliefs.

Before we can be an agent for change, our ideas must be relentlessly refined in the furnace of critical introspection.

Follow the link to read all these cognitive hazards, and see where you find them in your life!

Clip Source: healthbolt.net

A cognitive bias is something that our minds commonly do to distort our own view of reality. Here are the 26 most studied and widely accepted cognitive biases.

Confirmation bias - the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.

Congruence bias - the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing.

Contrast effect - the enhancement or diminishment of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.

Déformation professionnelle - the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one’s own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.

Disconfirmation bias - the tendency for people to extend critical scrutiny to information which contradicts their prior beliefs and uncritically accept information that is congruent with their prior beliefs.

Illusion of control - the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes which they clearly cannot.

Tags: cognative blind spots, logic, politics, mind, science

SCIENTISTS SHOW HALLUCINOGEN CREATES UNIVERSAL “MYSTICAL” EXPERIENCE

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:33:49 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: in the 1950s, showed signs of therapeutic potential or value in research into the nature of consciousness and sensory perception. “Human consciousness…is a function of the ebb and flow of neural impulses in various regions of the brain-the very substrate that drugs such as psilocybin act upon,” Schuster says. “Understanding what mediates these effects is clearly within the realm of neuroscience and deserves investigation.”

“A vast gap exists between what we know of these drugs-mostly from descriptive anthropology-and what we believe we can understand using modern clinical pharmacology techniques,” says study leader Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor with Hopkins’ departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and Behavioral Biology. “That gap is large because, as a reaction to the excesses of the 1960s, human research with hallucinogens has been basically frozen in time these last forty years.”

Clip Source: www.clusterbusters.com

Clip Source: rixonology.wordpress.com

HOPKINS SCIENTISTS SHOW HALLUCINOGEN IN MUSHROOMS CREATES UNIVERSAL “MYSTICAL” EXPERIENCE
Rigorous study hailed as landmark

Using unusually rigorous scientific conditions and measures, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that the active agent in “sacred mushrooms” can induce mystical/spiritual experiences descriptively identical to spontaneous ones people have reported for centuries.

The resulting experiences apparently prompt positive changes in behavior and attitude that last several months, at least.

The agent, a plant alkaloid called psilocybin, mimics the effect of serotonin on brain receptors-as do some other hallucinogens-but precisely where in the brain and in what manner are unknown.

Cited as “landmark” in the commentary by former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) director, Charles Schuster, the research marks a new systematic approach to studying certain hallucinogenic compounds

Tags: neuroscience, hallucinogenic mushrooms, brain, consciousness

Killing the Buddha

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 00:52:09 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: a fascinating and interesting read:from the article: "It is as yet undetermined what it means to be human, because every facet of our culture—and even our biology itself—remains open to innovation and insight."

Clip Source: mambo.shambhalasun.com

Killing the Buddha

Sam Harris

“Kill the Buddha,” says the old koan. “Kill Buddhism,” says Sam Harris, author ot The End of Faith, who argues that Buddhism’s philosophy, insight, and practices would benefit more people if they were not presented as a religion.

For the fact is that a person can embrace the Buddha’s teaching, and even become a genuine Buddhist contemplative (and, one must presume, a buddha) without believing anything on insufficient evidence. The same cannot be said of the teachings for faith-based religion. In many respects, Buddhism is very much like science. One starts with the hypothesis that using attention in the prescribed way (meditation), and engaging in or avoiding certain behaviors (ethics), will bear the promised result (wisdom and psychological well-being). This spirit of empiricism animates Buddhism to a unique degree. For this reason, the methodology of Buddhism, if shorn of its religious encumbrances, could be one of our greatest resources as we struggle to develop our scientific understanding of human subjectivity.

The Problem of Religion

A Contemplative Science

There is much more to be discovered about the nature of the human mind. In particular, there is much more for us to understand about how the mind can transform itself from a mere reservoir of greed, hatred, and delusion into an instrument of wisdom and compassion. Students of the Buddha are very well placed to further our understanding on this front, but the religion of Buddhism currently stands in their way.

Tags: buddhism, religion, faith, philosophy, zen, mind

Unchain your dogs

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:38:23 GMT

clipped by: bignosemousie
clipper's remarks: Lots of information at the source. Photos that will break your heart.

Unchain your dog, please.

Clip Source: www.unchainyourdog.org

What is meant by "chaining" or "tethering" dogs?

These terms refer to the practice of fastening a dog to a stationary object or stake, usually in the owner's backyard, as a means of keeping the animal under control. These terms do not refer to the periods when an animal is walked on a leash.

Why is tethering dogs inhumane?

Dogs are naturally social beings who thrive on interaction with human beings and other animals. In the wild, dogs and wolves live, eat, sleep, and hunt with a family of other canines. Dogs are genetically determined to live in a group.

A chained animal is caught in a vicious cycle; frustrated by long periods of boredom and social isolation, he becomes a neurotic shell of his former self—further deterring human interaction and kindness. In the end, the helpless dog can only suffer the frustration of watching the world go by in isolation—a cruel fate for what is by nature a highly social animal.

Tags: animals need love and protection

Humans ear bones began as reptile jaws

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 11:54:17 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.cosmosmagazine.com

Humans ear bones began as reptile jaws

SYDNEY: Part of the human ear evolved from jaw bones of our reptilian ancestors, according to a new mammal fossil find.

Three tiny bones found in the middle ear of all mammals are widely thought to have evolved from bones that in reptiles form part of the lower jaw. However, no fossil demonstrating the transition were known until now.

Researchers reported today in the British journal Nature that Yanoconodon allini, a newly-unearthed ancient mammal from China, has ear bones that appear to be at an intermediate stage.

"Now we have a definitive piece of evidence, in a beautifully-preserved fossil split on two rock slabs," said study author and evolutionary biologist Zhe-Xi Luo from the Carnegie Museum of Natural history in Pittsburgh.

It is remarkable that such tiny bones as those in the ear have survived 125 million years, said the study authors.

Tags: science, research, evolution, human ears, reptiles, jaws

Why Are We So Bad at Spotting Lies?

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:03:34 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: By nature, we are a rather trustful species and (unless you lie or detect lies for a living) chances are good that you harbor false assumptions of what deceitful behavior looks like.

So says famous psychologist Richard Wiseman in this summary of his research into the universal, cross-cultural trait of human deception. Among other things, Wiseman shows that by the time they are five, even our own kids can fool us with ease and abandon!

The simple fact is that the real clues to deceit are in the words that people use, not the body language.

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

almost everyone thinks liars tend to avert their gaze, nervously wave their hands around and shift about in their seats.

There is, however, one small problem.

Liars are just as likely as truth-tellers to look you in the eye, they don't move their hands around nervously and they don't shift about in their seats (if anything, they are a little more static than truth-tellers). People fail to detect lies because they are basing their opinions on behaviours that are not actually associated with deception.

So what are the signals that really give away a liar? It is obvious that the more information you give away, the greater the chances of some of it coming back to haunt you. As a result, liars tend to say less and provide fewer details than truth-tellers.

Liars often try psychologically to distance themselves from their falsehoods, and so tend to include fewer references to themselves in their stories.

Tags: lies, lying, deception, human, psychology, wiseman, behavior, smile, laugh

The Evolution of Evolution: how culture changes genes

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:38:38 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Not, as stated, a new idea: been around a long time in complexity theory, and quantum consciousness theory, for instance. This is a short, pithy statement of the claim, read it in a couple of minutes.

Clip Source: www.slate.com

Now we're in the midst of the next mutation in evolutionary theory: Human evolution didn't slow as we advanced from nature to culture. It accelerated and changed. Culture, born of natural selection, became natural selection's driving force.

This is the message of a new study of the human genome. If true, it radically complicates the debate between nature and nurture. The question is no longer simply whether our genes are the source of civilization, but whether they're also its product.

Organisms evolve in response to changing environments. This can lead, paradoxically, to the evolution of traits that change the environment. Once that happens, the process becomes dialectical, and its speed increases, because culture changes more rapidly than nature does.

Much of what now passes for "natural selection" isn't exactly natural. It's social.

It may be true that today's God a human creation. But so, in a way, is today's evolution.

Postcards from Auschwitz

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:44:08 GMT

clipped by: ouyangwulong
clipper's remarks: These photos teach us an important historical lesson: that there is no line separating humans from monsters, a single being can be both, simultaneously.

Contrary to the common presumption, you do not lose your humanity simply because you dehumanize others. Even our worst enemies and the most hideous criminals are startlingly normal people.

If there is a difference between the good and the bad, it must be that truly good people do not think themselves above being capable of true evil. When we lose sight of that, when we begin to presume our own righteousness, declare those who differ with us irredeemably mad or evil, and excuse our own transgressions on account of our own faultlessness, who is to say that we are any different from these people?

Clip Source: www.iht.com

WASHINGTON: Last December, Rebecca Erbelding, a young archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, opened a letter from a former United States Army intelligence officer who said he wanted to donate photographs of Auschwitz he had found more than 60 years ago in Germany.

The comparisons between the albums are both poignant and obvious, as they juxtapose the comfortable daily lives of the guards with the horrific reality within the camp, where thousands were starving and 1.1 million died.

For example, one of the Höcker pictures, shot on July 22, 1944, shows a group of cheerful young women who worked as SS communications specialists eating bowls of fresh blueberries. One turns her bowl upside down and makes a mock frown because she has finished her portion.

Tags: holocaust, politics, crimes against humanity, evil, human nature

Plastic Brain Outsmarts Experts

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:08:08 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: physorg.com

Can human beings rev up their intelligence quotients, or are they stuck with IQs set by their genes at birth? Until recently, nature seemed to be the clear winner over nurture.

But new research, led by Swiss postdoctoral fellows Susanne M. Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl, working at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, suggests that at least one aspect of a person's IQ can be improved by training a certain type of memory.

Most IQ tests attempt to measure two types of intelligence--crystallized and fluid intelligence. Crystallized intelligence draws on existing skills, knowledge and experiences to solve problems by accessing information from long-term memory.

Fluid intelligence, on the other hand, draws on the ability to understand relationships between various concepts, independent of any previous knowledge or skills, to solve new problems. The research shows that this part of intelligence can be improved through memory training.

Tags: brain, plastic, nature, nurture