A short book – only 105 pages. An old book – written in 1906. A fascinating book – in a time when these sort of ideas are being resurrected by the likes of Rupert Sheldrake and his morphic fields this is a real insight into a way of thinking that was seemingly abandoned – at least by mainstream thought – for much of the 20th Century. Proves once again that it is often wrong to assume that “no one has thought of this before” about ANY subject.
Philosophical
To Forget
There have been plenty of posts in this blog about our selective memory – the way we remember some things but not others – the way we find it difficult to distinguish between reality and fiction when looking back at past events – the way we tend to exaggerate, one way or another, those memories that we retain – the way that something someone else says or does will trigger a memory, sometimes even triggering a memory that is fictitious.
To Forgive
This post is the result of my thinking being triggered by a very specific piece of “news” (its not really news since the actual event happened many years ago – but has only recently become public knowledge). I was very unsure of how to react to this particular story – so this blog is me thinking it through.
Everyone Knows
I’ve said it before – and I will probably say it again – it is really good when you get unexpected confirmation of things that you have written. In my recent post Tell Me About It I tackled the ever more prevalent problem of what is known as the “illusion of explanatory depth” with regard to our knowledge.
Tell Me About It
One thing that has informed my worldview over recent years was the discovery that there exist a whole host of cognitive biases that cause us to mis-perceive everything we see, hear and think. In a previous post I linked to an article that listed no less than 58 of these – and I have a poster on my desk which lists 20. (note that these both originate from the same website)
Jumping To Conclusions
In the last few days I have seen two really good examples in social media of people bringing their own biases to discussions and replying to what they thought was written rather than what was actually written. In both cases it made them look just a bit foolish.
Does Reality Matter?
One recurrent theme of my blog entries is the difficulty we each experience separating reality from fiction. I don’t mean that we are consciously deluding ourselves – although I expect that we all do that from time to time – rather that we simply lose track of what is real as against what is “made up”.
Faking It
There is a bit of a furore about the perceived influence of so called fake news on the result of the US election. On the one hand this strikes me as extremely funny – on the other it is rather worrying (on a number of levels).
inSignificant
Not my usual sort of book, I guess – however it was fascinating how the author broke through his own ‘failings’ and found a way to be a great and loved teacher.
Grey Areas Everywhere
In two posts last month around the time of the Olympic Games I wrote about the difficulties that are presented when it is necessary to impose some set of rules and regulations to prevent ‘cheating’ – specifically with regard to so-called “performance enhancement”.