Bolaño on Minor Works and Masterpieces

Before Archimboldi left, after they’d had a cup of tea, the man who rented him the typewriter said: “Jesus is the masterpiece. The thieves are minor works. Why are they there? Not to frame the crucifixion, as some innocent souls believe, but to hide it.” 2666, Roberto Bolaño

WikiLeaks Defended, pt 2

“Wikileaks and the Dangers of Hubris,” by Maria Bustillos, The Awl WikiRebels, documentary about WikiLeak made by Swedish television network SVT

John Baldessari on Ideas

Bell Telephone’s Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives

[In 1952,] a number of Bell’s top executives, led by W. D. Gillen, then president of Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania, had begun to worry about the education of the managers rising through the company’s hierarchy. Gillen took the problem to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a trustee. Together with representatives of the university, [...]

Winslow-Yost On Video Games

Waste is not a byproduct—it’s the point: playing video games is a revolt against life. All art forms, even the polite ones, are escapist in that each answers some fundamental objection to the world and its limits. Novels let you know, granting access to inner lives and narrative arcs otherwise hidden and guessed at. Films [...]

Bolaño on Being Calm

But if it’s going to work out, it’s absolutely crucial that we stay calm. Calm is the one thing that will never let us down. And Amalfitano said: everything else lets us down? And the voice said: yes, that’s right, it’s hard o admit, I mean it’s hard to have to admit it to you, [...]

On Facts

Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan [...]

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true. Wikipedia: Confirmation Bias

Negative Capability

when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason Letter of 21 December 1817, John Keats

Cognitive Dissonance

An uncomfortable feeling caused by holding contradictory ideassimultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational driveto reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. Wikipedia: Cognitive Dissonance

On Loving Life Before It’s Meaning

“I understand it all too well, Ivan: to want to love with your insides, your guts – you said it beautifully, and I’m terribly glad that you want so much to live,” Alyosha exclaimed.  ”I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world.” “Love life more than its meaning?” “Certainly, love [...]

The Dunning–Kruger Effect

A cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes. Wikipedia: Dunning–Kruger Effect

Anosognosia

A condition in which a person who suffers disability seems unaware of or denies the existence of his or her disability. This may include unawareness of quite dramatic impairments, such as blindness or paralysis. Wikipedia: Anosognosia

Categorical Imperative

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Wikipedia: Categorical Imperative