Continued interruption

I forgot to mention - about Inception. It wouldn't have to change much to incorporate a different theory of mind. I think I've mentioned before that one of my favorite ideas for a different ending to Inception would be making Mal a pure creation of Cobb - Ariadne is actually his wife, trying to bring him out of the dream-world. In this case, Mal might have been so convinced of his ability to incept that he created a reality in which it made sense and worked - and to bring him out of it, Ariadne creates a labyrinth (which could have worked in all that cool labyrinth stuff I wish had been included toward the end...) and the entirety of the labyrinth - the context - could have been her way of inception - to create a context, rather than a single item. Which is really what a movie does, come to think of it.

An interruption: Inception

Still haven't re-watched it (need to do that one of these days...) but a thought struck me the other day:

Inception seems to have a very rationalistic theory of mind - as if the mind is very organized - if you get down through the security and plant an idea deep enough, that idea can change all someone's life.

I'm not an expert by any stretch, but it would seem to me that the best studies of mind today have come to the opposite conclusion - whether or not one is a rationalist, one's mind is very empirical and tends to base ideas strongly on preponderance of evidence.

As Thomas Harris said, our conclusions are a lump, not a sum.
AKA Context, context, context.

Read more efficiently: Audiobooks

Whether you believe in Evolution or an intelligent designer, you should agree that the eyes were not made for long-term reading.

If you're an evolutionist, you are convinced the eyes are there to comprehend a world at multiple layers and depths, watching out for the predator in the bush, or the berries, or the grain.

If you're a creationist, you believe the eyes were formed by God to interact with the world he created - a world full of light and color and depth - different levels of focus, things to see to the side, and to the front.

The ears, however, in both cases, are for hearing - and primarily for hearing human voices. The ears are so good at human voices, they will actually detect them in random samples of sound. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voice_phenomenon)

It is puzzling and saddening, then, that visual reading is far and away the most popular sort of reading, and having a book read to you is much more rare - often relegated to the long car trip.

I, for one, find audiobooks to be a wonderful way to read, while resting my eyes. Vocal performance adds another layer of meaning that can be analyzed and learned from. I especially enjoy listening to Faulkner on tape - in book format, he's a bit difficult to understand, but with the right reading, he's lucid, thunderous, and awe-striking. If you've ever wanted to understand Faulkner but been unable to, I heartily recommend 42 Short stories by William Faulkner. You'll actually get the jokes, and they aren't even the best part.

Game of Thrones, on the other hand, even with a good reading, is too thin on the ground with real creativity.
Why is it that every fantasy book must have:
Named swords.
Estranged royalty.
Crows.
Spiders.
Scary dreams.
and all the other cliches that are too boring to name here?

Really? You get the chance to create  whole world. You have people trusting enough to read volumes of your work, and you aren't interested in doing more.

It's rather sad, really.

Okay, I'll admit it, I only scanned this

But it echoes one of the problems I've consistently had with the school system:

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/aim-to-fail

If you fail in school, you tend to permanently mark up your record. Only certain types of problems can be solved by failure-averse behavior. Failure is valuable.

Worth a scan, for a few decent illustrations.

One of my favorite TED talks

And it's interesting too!

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

We are strange stuff.

Text is alive

I'm a big fan of non-text alternatives where it comes to imbibing knowledge. I love things like podcasts, video courses, and even more interactive tools like Memrise and Dual-N-Back tests.

But I still get lost in worlds of text - especially when it comes to gathering disparate information, nothing beats text. It's scannable. I can browse down a page. I can't do that (yet) with audio or video.

In that regard, here's a text-based resource I wish I had found years ago:
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13151&page=4

The National Academies Press. Lots to read there - and if you want to read it on your computer, it's all free. A few things I'm reading/scanning:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13151

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13151

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9853

And a favorite quote from one of those (Rising above the Gathering Storm):

"The Gathering Storm committee concluded that a primary driver of the future economy and concomitant creation of jobs in the 21st century will be innovation, largely derived from advances in science and engineering. While only 4 percent of the nation’s work force is composed of scientists and engineers, this group disproportionately creates jobs for the other 96 percent." (page 4)

Neural Plasticity: What does it mean to you?

To me, it means I get to design my brain. How awesome is that!?