Neanderthals became a distinct population around 450 to 400 thousand years ago (ka). They endured for an astonishing 350.000 years, until we lose sight of them somewhere around 40ka.They spread across a remarkable swathe of space: they lived from north Wales across to China, and southwards to the fringes of the Arabia's desert.

The who

First discovery of Neanderthal bones was made in 1856, near Dusseldorf, in a quarry of limestone. Given their ancient condition, abnormal bulk and origin in a cave, they were thought to be of a primitive human.

Meeting them again

Neander "thal" (valley) was named for a 17th century poet and composer, Joachim Neander. It was consumed by massive quarrying and the new valley became known as Neander Thal.The weird bit is that Joachim's family's name was originally Neumann, later converted by his grandfather to Neander. Both names literally mean "new man".What better name for the place where we discovered a new human?

Neanderthal meaning

That any bones at all survive over such immense timescales is astonishing. Every skeletal part is immensely important. They offer a treasure of data on individual lives, simultaneously acting as windows onto entire populations.Specialists apply a vast range of techniques from biochemistry to high-tech visualisation, examining whole bodies or zooming down to the near daily layer inside teeth. Through the DNA they contain, Neanderthal remains are also our direct connection to these vanished people.

An archeology of bones

Both we and they inherited some ancient features in common, but their lineage kept other we lost, while the reverse is also true.Neanderthals & Homo Sapiens reflect two diverging pathways of being human.Our inquisitive minds love to discover reasons for everything, but in fact evolution via natural selection is simply about reproductive success, not forging uber-adaptation. Building bodies is an interconnected process and altering one part can cause transformation elsewhere. While a genetic blueprint is important, how hominins live also profoundly impacts bodies, from bones to cellular level.

Two ways of being human

Shanidar 1, a skeleton found in Iraqi Kurdistan, was well into middle age when he died and has overcome an astonishing number of physical difficulties:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">his right upper arm suffered multiple fracture and shrivelled after healing, its lower part being amputated;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">his right shoulder blade was malformed;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">he had bony growth conditions that lead to poor hearing;</li><li class="ql-align-justify">he survived multiple head injuries (one leaving him with a crushed face and blind in one eye).</li></ul>In spite of living with chronic pain and his many challenges, he adapted to daily life in the group.

Most battered Neanderthal

It seems unlikely that individual Neanderthals developed their sophisticated technologies without social learning contexts and reasonably elaborate communication.The range of skills and great accomplishment across diverse materials implies some sort of teaching, matching the fact that directed instruction is common to all living humans. Combined teaching by showing as well as telling is most effective, and young Neanderthals likely learned by cultural and bodily immersion.Proof for this are the obvious techno-lithic complexes, the shell-knapping or birch tar technology.

Inter-generational learning

Composite tools that imply the inherent process of joining together must have reinforced collaboration, crucial for hunting and social networks.Birch tar suggests interesting ideas: to comprehend that bark would transform to sticky, pungent black liquid means grasping that matter could transmute. Rather than being destroyed by fire, it would be remade.As tar was cooked, cooled and solidified, then was reheated and softened once again, so cycles of change were witnessed and understood.They combined convention with adaptability. They invented ways to take things apart and join them together.

Minds create things, but things also create minds.

Moving heavily muscled and shorter legs is hard work, but so is beating a bigger heart. Neanderthals would have needed a whopping 3500 - 5000 kcal every day, going up to 7000 in harsh environments when lacking insulating clothes.That's the equivalent of a blow-out Christmas day binge: a fry-up at breakfast, roast dinner and champagne, cheese platter, plus left overs and trifle for dinner. Each and every day.Three reindeers every 7 days would hit that target.To get enough vital micronutrients you need fat, brain, tongue, eyes and marrow.

Food isn't simply nutrition

Neanderthals had a wider array of bitter and sour taste perception, larger tolerance for sampling unfamiliar plants of fermented meats.They kept some food underwater. They stored meat by drying it or by mashing up with fat and marrow.Storing plant based foods would require similar processes, by drying or put in water, which could only happen at living places rather than while out and about gathering.A whole range of options exist with fermentation. Storing in low oxigen conditions allows meat to on the path of putrefaction while still being edible.

Richer culinary world than ours

Scrutinising the shifting of stone by Neanderthals has other implications beyond their capacity for planning or managing time and resources. Since the distances their artefacts moved were the only direct measure of mobility, they ended up being used as proxy for range size.Range size isn't just about land, but about people. If Neanderthals lived in small areas, then they's rarely meet other groups. Moreover, without large territories and extended social relations, it was theorised that Neanderthals wouldn't need material expressions of shared cultural values, which can help maintain networks.

Social stones

Did Neanderthals have a thing for shine and glitter?Examples are known across the Neanderthal world: a quartz crystal, a fossil shell, pumice stones. Can we infer symbolic meaning? A special treatment of them would be needed.At Cioarei-Boroșteni cave in the southern Carpathians excavations uncovered a hard ball-like object, enough to fill your hand, yet remarkably dense. Possibly opal.Residues of black and red pigment were found. What the pigment was used for can only be imagined, but it's significance lies in showing that Neanderthals were interested in applying color to unusual things.

Manuports = carried by hand

Multiple episodes of interbreeding between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal, even between Neanderthal and Denisovan.A man died at Peștera cu Oase, Romania, between 42 and 37 ka. His genetic ancestry was mind blowing because 11% was Neanderthal. This means he had a Neanderthal ancester within just four to six generations. This man's heritage also shows multiple interbreeding phases with another around 2 millennia before his death.

Interbreeding

Until incredibly recently, the world was sparkling with hominins: Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo Floresiensis (hobbits) and other tentatively named Asian populations like Homo Luzonensis, or Naledi in Africa.The great challenge going forward is combining the ever growing but very different kind of evidence: how genetics connects to physical diversity and making sense of both of them in relation to the culture they produced.

Thinking outside the cave

21st century advances in genetics allows us to recover Neanderthal DNA from dust. Biological experimentation splicing neanderthal genes into mice has already begun. There are now multiple projects building Neander-oids: small clumps of gene-edited human brain cells. They're not true brains, but develop electrical connections. In 2019 they'd been connected to robots controllable through signalling. These machines can walk and possibly track neural development. All these raise profound concerns. This is all science happening in the dark.There's no agreed ethics, code of practice or transparency.

Futures

Reconsider the complexity of Neanderthal life by seeing them as kindred hominins: curious, creative, adaptable and skilled.

** WINNER OF THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE 2021 ** 'Beautiful, evocative, authoritative.' Professor Brian Cox 'Important reading not just for anyone interested in these ancient cousins of ours, but also for anyone interested in humanity.' Yuval Noah Harari Kindred is the definitive guide to the Neanderthals. Since their discovery more than 160 years ago, Neanderthals have metamorphosed from the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins. Rebecca Wragg Sykes uses her experience at the cutting edge of Palaeolithic research to share our new understanding of Neanderthals, shoving aside clichés of rag-clad brutes in an icy wasteland. She reveals them to be curious, clever connoisseurs of their world, technologically inventive and ecologically adaptable. Above all, they were successful survivors for more than 300,000 years, during times of massive climatic upheaval. Much of what defines us was also in Neanderthals, and their DNA is still inside us. Planning, co-operation, altruism, craftsmanship, aesthetic sense, imagination, perhaps even a desire for transcendence beyond mortality. Kindred does for Neanderthals what Sapiens did for us, revealing a deeper, more nuanced story where humanity itself is our ancient, shared inheritance.

history

History

books

Books

artificialintelligence

Artificial Intelligence

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Kindred

Research <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-05027-021">shows</a> that viewing criticism as a judgment on one’s abilities can lead to lower self-worth, lower positive mood.Use a helpful<a href="https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/the-power-to-decide-how-you-feel-9550c0c7"> metacognitive approach</a>—one that moves the focus from emotion to analysis.Set up an internal affirmation such as: “I don’t care what this feedback says about the person giving it, and I choose not to see it as a personal attack on me. I will assess it on its face about the matter at hand—nothing more, nothing less.”

1. It’s not personal (even when it’s personal).

Once you depersonalize criticism in this way, you can start to see it for what it is: a rare glimpse into what outsiders think about your performance, and thus a potential opportunity to correct course and improve. If this doesn’t come easily to you, one way to develop the grit to do so is to ask friends or colleagues whom you like and trust to form a critics’ circle, reviewing one another’s work and giving honest suggestions.This is one way to lose much of your fear of critics.

2. Treat criticism like insider information.

If I am criticizing to help, I am doing it right; if I am doing it to harm, I am doing it wrong. To keep critical feedback in the first category, the research tells us that it should have <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871187117301529?casa_token=kdYNfvng5DUAAAAA:za6TBzX5T_aAA-Bs9u1772PpWN48UOhyBlsNERtvLDzUS51iX00TtXwXgAZxH3phaxHjS0_Fzw">five elements</a>: the care of the recipient in mind; respectful delivery; good intentions; a pathway to improvement; and appropriate targeting of the recipient’s needs.

3. Make criticism a gift, never a weapon.

Scholars writing in 2014 <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2753/MER1052-8008240201">showed</a> that positive feedback given to students in public was 9 percent more motivating than when given privately, while negative feedback in private was 11 percent more motivating than in public.

4. Praise in public, criticize in private.

Consider Isaac Newton. In 1672, at age 29, he published a<a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/publications/reading-room/2023-07-12-donway-isaac-newton-part-one"> paper on light and colors</a> of which he was probably quite proud. Most critics received it favorably, save for one: Robert Hooke, a well-regarded scientist and inventor, who wrote a <a href="https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00005">condescending critique</a> of Newton’s paper. As legend has it, Newton was so angry at Hooke that he <a href="https://royalsociety.org/blog/2010/12/hooke-newton-and-the-missing-portrait/">slashed every portrait</a> of Hooke he could find, which is why, per the tale, none exists today.

Accept criticism better!

Four rules backed by research for giving and accepting critical feedback.

Being able to accept a bad review and use it constructively is not just an essential life skill; it will also make you happier.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

philosophy

Philosophy

career

Career

mentalhealth

Mental Health

humanresources

Human Resources

How to Take—And Give—Criticism Well

The real problem of time management today, though, isn't that we're bad at prioritising the big rocks. Is that there are too many rocks - and most of them are never making it near that jar. The critical question isn't how to differentiate between activities that matter and those that don't, but what to do when far too many things feel at least somewhat important, and therefore arguably qualify as big rocks.

Whether it's in time, activity or object of focus, prioritise the things that are really important for you.Start doing that thing that matters most to you.

Pay yourself first

Fix a hard upper limit to the things you allow yourself to work on at any given time.Working on everything is simply not an option.

Limit your work in progress

You need to start saying no to things you do want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life.Make a top 25 of the things you most want in life. Focus on the top 5 and completely ignore the 20. They distract you from what matters most.

Resist the allure of middling priorities

Procrastination has to do not with how much we'll be able to do in the time available, but rather that we won't have enough talent to produce work of sufficient quality.It prevents us from making the work that matters most to us.It's a strategy of emotional avoidance

Procrastination vs Perfection

At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been.

Attention is life, not a resource

Some Zen Buddhists hold that the entirety of human suffering can be boiled down to this effort to resist paying full attention to the way things are going, because we wish they were going differently, or because we wish we felt more in control of the process. There is a very down-to-earth kind of liberation in grasping that there are certain truths about being a limited human from which you'll never be liberated.You don't get to dictate the course of events.And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality's constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.

Stop resisting

You can never be truly certain about the future.And so your reach will always exceed your grasp.

Hopefully, when the future arrives, we'll have what it takes to weather it.If you're willing to endure the discomfort of not knowing, a solution will always present itself.Rather than race towards a solution, let reality unfold at its own speed.

Keep improvising

We find ourselves living in the future , locating the 'real' value of our life in some time that we haven't yet reached, and never will.

You are here vs 'when-I-finally' mind

Develop a taste for having problems(problems are the very substance of life) Embrace radical incrementalism(tolerate the fact that you won't produce much on a daily basis, but produce more over the longterm)(be willing to stop when your daily time is up - help strengthen the muscle of patience that will allow you to return to your work again and again) Originality lies at the far side of unoriginality(stay in the trial-and-error phase of copying others, learn new skills and accumulate experience)(the willingness to stop and be where you are, make the most of whatever part of the journey)

Principles of patience

You won't put a dent in the universe.It's a relief to be reminded of your insignificance.The things you are already doing are more meaningful than the things you're supposed to be doing.

You're not Einstein

... of being in control... that with more work you could meet other people's limitless demands... that painful experiences aren't coming your way... that this isn't really it.The average human life is terrifyingly short and this is cause for relief. Let go of the quest to become optimised. Just roll up your sleeves and start work on what's possible.

Give up hope..

1.A "fixed volume" approach to productivity (predetermined time boundaries for work + two to do lists (one closed and one open, keep max. 10 items on your closed one, add things from the open one only after completing tasks in the closed one)2.Focus on one big project at a time (postpone everything that you can, but one thing; the satisfaction from completing one big project will make the anxiety seem worth wile)3.Decide in advance what to fail at (strategic underachievement, conscious form of imbalance, underperform in some things on purpose, come back to them later)

10 tools for finitude

4.Focus on what you've already completed (keep a 'done' list, the motivating power of small wins, fight the productivity debt and the wish to reach a zero balance by evening)5.Stop caring for too many things (social media, news, logic of attention economy)6.Embrace boring technology (single function)7.Seek out novelty in the mundane (pay attention to everyday things)8.Curiosity in relationships (your goals isn't to achieve something, but figure out who the other human is)9.Instant generosity (if you feel like giving a praise or a gift, act on impulse and do it)

10.Practise doing nothing"I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot sit quietly in their own chamber."Blaise Pascal

I've been looking for ways in which to balance  what I want to do with what I need to do. This book puts things in perspective in a mix of self help and philosophical bits. The weeks we live in a life really are finite.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER   “This is the most important book ever written about time management.”  —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get around to what counts? We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks. Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of the challenge. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' it introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny. Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

productivity

Productivity

mindfulness

Mindfulness

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

timemanagement

Time Management

Oliver Burkeman

Four Thousand Weeks

Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the opressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity in both.

Not Losing Humanity When Fighting Oppression

The oppressed, having internalised the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedomFreedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man: nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather an indispensable condition for the quest for human completion.

The Courage For Freedom

Conditioned by the experience of opressing others, any situations other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restrictions on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual rights - although they had no respect for the millions who suffered.

The Oppressor’s Bias

For the oppressors, “human beings” refers only to themselves; other people are “things”.

Certain opressors change sides and join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation, but because of their background they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation. They talk about the people, but they do not trust them; and trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change. A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favor without that trust.

Humanity Implies Trust

This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The teacher talks about reality as if were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. He expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to “fill” the students with the contents of his narration.Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity.

The Narrative Character Of Education

Education becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Students become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store.

The Banking Concept Of Education

Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. The raison d’être of libertarian education lies in its drive towards reconciliation.Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.

Curiosity vs. Learning

The interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the opressed, not the situation which oppresses them”. The educator’s role is to regulate the way the world “enters into” the students. People “receive” the world as passive entities. The educated individual is the adapted person, because she or he is better “fit” for the world. Everything in this ready-to-wear approach serves to obviate thinking.

Ready-to-wear Education

The role of the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos. Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of counsciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality.

Education as the practice of freedom

Education as the practice of freedom- as opposed to education as the practice of domination- denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people.

People in their relation to the world

Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming- as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality. The unfinished character pf human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity. Problem-posing education is revolutionary futurity.

The unfinished character of human beings

The pursuit of full humanity cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity. No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so.

Attempting to be more human

The world is spiralling with global conflicts and one wonders how true change can come about within oppressed societies. Freire’s text remains ardently relevant.

education

Learning & Education

Paulo Freire

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

..tell me the difference between tragedy and comedy.(...)A trick. There's no difference. It's a question of perspective. Storytelling is a landscape, and tragedy is comedy is drama. It simply depends on how you frame what you're seeing.

Lotto laughed with the others, not because he was a punch line, but because he was grateful to Denton Thrasher for revealing theater to him. The one way, Lotto had finally found, that he could live in this world.

Grief is for the strong, who use it as fuel for burning.

I hated my violin as a boy until my father made me compose a score as a match was happening on the telly. Tottenham, Manchester, our boys losing. And suddenly, as I was playing, everything that I had felt so deeply without music deepened even more. The dread, the joy. And that was it for me, re-creating that moment was all I wanted to do. I called the composition Audere Est Facere. He laughed.

Lobes of warmth, of cold, always the dazzle. He thrashed away, feeling a good tiredness come over him. He swam until his arms burned and his lungs were salted, and he swam some more.

She, at some point, had stopped loving him. (He couldn't know.) It was the sorrow of his life. But perhaps, right then she did.

She forgot meals, ate dinners of tuna still in the can, spent too much time streaming films in bed. Time clicked by. The days grew colder, darker. Some days she never turned on the light, waking at eight when the sun rose weakly, sleeping at four-thirty when it bled itself out. She felt ursine. Norwegian.

When he came in, it was only minutes after her, but she'd smelled the winter in his hair when he leaned his head against her neck. She held his head gently, feeling his secret happiness moving in him.

Or this: every day they woke in the same place, her husband waking her with a cup of coffee, the cream still swirling into the black. Almost unremarked upon, this kindness. He would kiss her on the crown of her head before leaving, and she'd feel something rising in her through her body to meet him. These silent intimacies made their marriage, not the ceremonies or parties or opening nights or occasions or spectacular fucks.

Was getting a bit bored with this story of a marriage until I got to the middle of it and everything changed. Lives are made of daily details and well kept secrets. Loved it in the end.  ❤︎

Fates and Furies: A Novel [Groff, Lauren] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Fates and Furies: A Novel

Scenes from a Marriage

Instagram is full of people in love with their image of reading.Reading for learning is not all coffee shops and cosy couches. Most of the time is pen and paper and rereading concepts that are difficult to grasp.You read because you want to know more, do more, grow more. You have a purpose. You're looking for things that could give you an edge, that you could later use in your purpose.

Reading with purpose

Connecting ideas can be a creative action.Use technology to put together ideas from different backgrounds and come up with new insights.

Learning like mixing music

An insight is an atomic self-contained re-usable unit of knowledge.It has emotional value. A gut feeling that you've stumbled over something really valuable.

What's an insight?

Atomic: Is the idea the smallest it can be? If you resonated to multiple items maybe you could capture them separately. Self-contained: The nugget should be valuable on its own. You should get most of the value by looking at it. This means short summarised notes work better than lengthy never-ending paragraphs. Re-usable: The insight needs to allow for methods of interaction. It should be classified in a manner that you recognise, it should point back to the source etc.

What makes a good IDEA?

We sometimes get lost in the process of reading. We go to slow or take too many notes. Here's how to read efficiently, remember & mix new concepts.

For most people music is one the most meaningful (if not the only) spiritual experience. Music can detach you from this world, making you feel a deep sense of harmony, letting you experience a state…

writing

Reading & Writing

music

Music

creativity

Creativity

How to learn better by thinking like a DJ

Getting ready can become a distraction.Being prepared is overrated: start before you feel ready.Being successful is not about your ability to plan, but your ability to act. You may make more mistakes at first if you decide to start acting before you feel ready, but the long-term compound effect of learning from these mistakes will get you closer to your goals than any amount of preparation. The illusion of a perfect time to start is holding you back.

A fine line between PREPARATION and PROCRASTINATION

“It takes a long time to feel ready. Everyone thinks it’s an overnight thing, but when you start out, it’s really hard.”

Yes, getting ready is comfortable. But most successful people report feeling uncomfortable when they first got started. Many still feel uncomfortable—or, in the words of Larry Page, “uncomfortably excited”—many years after they achieved what many would consider as huge successes.

UNCOMFORTABLE is good

Instead of preparing and researching, start before you feel ready. Pick a first step and just do it. Repeat that step until you feel comfortable enough, then kick it up a notch. When you look back, you won’t believe how much progress you’ve made.

Start before you're ready

You don’t know what you don’t know. The best and quickest way to learn is through experienceAvoid the illusion of productivity. Reading tutorials or watching fitness videos feels good, but it’s just a way to trick your brain into thinking you’re being productive by keeping busy.Momentum takes time to build up. Over time, your efforts will compound. Any time spent not acting is time wasted.

Just jump

Procrastination is such an obstacle for creative perfectionists that sometimes we could use a reminder to just do things. Stop overthinking. 

You should start before you feel ready. Getting prepared feels good, but it’s a way to trick your brain into thinking you’re being productive.

habits

Habits

startup

Startups

Being prepared is overrated: start before you feel ready

Neuroscientists have found that the pleasure of grasping a new concept is a biochemical cascade that triggers a dose of natural narcotics. The process in itself of struggling to understanding is not fun, but once you get it, you feel fabulous. This breakthrough in understanding rewards the brain with opium like substances.

The brain getting its fix

The brain starts craving for a fix.This motivates humans to maximize the rate of which they absorb knowledge. Opioid receptors in the brain are linked to comprehension and interpretation of images. The greater the neural activity in this area, the greater the pleasure.

Knowledge junkies

Knowledge addiction is linked to mate selection. Perceived intelligence is more attractive (a brain over muscles preference). Gives a whole new meaning to 'sapiosexual', doesn't it? Neural Darwinism or competitive learning shows that a preference for novel concepts has evolutionary value.

Knowledge has evolutionary value

Competitive learning means that inhibited neurons are now free to code other stimulus patterns. More free thinking and more variable connections. We show an incredible real time selectivity for experiences that are richly interpretable and novel.

Unquenchable enthusiasm for new things

Amazing scientific insights on why humans learn: a connection between chemicals in our brain and the desire to understand the world around us.

'Thirst For Knowledge' May Be Opium Craving

He published his for essential paper all in his one miracle year of 1905.He was 'meh' at poetry or violin playing. He refused the job of being the Israel's president (he didn't quite fit the job profile now, did he, with all that wild hair). :))

Was Einstein really all that smart?

Words cam with difficulty to him, but images came easier.He wasn’t mathematically brilliant, but could pull his weight. He was different. He had a clear way of thinking that wouldn’t register on an intelligence test. His first paper on special theory of relativity  can be understood by ordinary mortals: no jargon, just simple ideas, inescapable logic. Just brilliant in its simplicity.

Einstein was a bit of a weirdo.

He ran little experiments. At age 16 he wondered about riding alongside a ray of light. What does light look light for a moving observer? Light would always look like it was moving at the same speed. Other's were thinking about this also, but his thoughts were more visual.When thinking about theory of gravity, he imagined riding a falling elevator. He was also extremely stubborn. He didn't trust experiments not confirming his ideas. Trusting his instincts was mostly correct.

Einstein's way of thinking

Einstein seems like this larger than life figure, but his weirdness makes him likeable. Makes him more human and approachable.

How did a man who had been working as a patent clerk publish four groundbreaking papers about space, time, atoms and the strange nature of light -- all in one year? A look at Albert Einstein's unique intelligence. 

Kindred

How to Take—And Give—Criticism Well

Four Thousand Weeks

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Scenes from a Marriage

Irina Bălan