Unmute To Die

“Ohhh, dadgummit!” Jack Schmitt tumbles over into the lunar dust during the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon, December 11-14, 1972.

Roly Polies Came From the Sea to Conquer the Earth

Pill bugs. Doodle bugs. Potato bugs. Wood Shrimp. Whatever you call them, there’s something less creepy about these critters than other insects. Maybe it’s because they’re not insects at all. 

via: Deep Look

I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (via philosophybits)

“It is okay to be at a place of struggle. Struggle is just another word for growth. Even the most evolved beings find themselves in a place of struggle now and then. In fact, struggle is a sure sign to them that they are expanding; it is their indication of real and important progress. The only one who doesn’t struggle is the one who doesn’t grow. So if you are struggling right now, see it as a terrific sign — and celebrate your struggle.”

— Neale Donald Walsch (via purplebuddhaquotes)

MBTI & Ideas -NTP & systemizing

Empathizing: “making sense and predicting that person’s behavior”

“The cognitive component of empathy, also referred to as theory of mind, mindreading, or taking the intentional stance, involves setting aside one’s own current perspective,

attributing mental states to the other person, and then making sense and predicting that person’s behavior, given his or her experience.” (1)

Systemizing: “understand and predict the behaviour of non-agentive events”

“Whereas we think of empathising as the drive to identify and respond to agents’ mental states, in order to understand and predict the behaviour of that agent,

we think of systemising as the drive to analyse and build systems, in order to understand and predict the behaviour of non-agentive events. 

Systems are all around us in our environment, and fall into at least 4 classes: technical systems (such as machines and tools); natural systems (such as biological and geographical phenomena);

abstract systems (such as mathematics or computer programs); and even social systems (such as profits and losses in a business, or a football league table).

The way we make sense of any of these systems is not in terms of mental states, but more in terms of underlying rules and regularities.” (2)

“Systemizing and empathizing are wholly different kinds of processes”

“Systemizing works for phenomena that are indeed ultimately lawful, finite, and deterministic.

The explanation is exact and its truth-value is defeasible. (“The light went on because switch A was in the down position”).

Systemizing is of almost no use when it comes to predicting the moment by moment changes in a person’s behaviour.

To predict human behaviour, empathizing is required. Systemizing and empathizing are wholly different kinds of processes. 

Although systemizing and empathizing are in one way similar – they are processes that allow us to make sense of events and make predictions – they are in another way almost the opposite of each other.

Empathizing involves an imaginative leap in the dark, in the absence of much data. (“Maybe she didn’t phone me because she was feeling hurt by my comment”).

The causal explanation is at best a “maybe”, and its truth may never be provable.

Systemizing is our most powerful way of understanding and predicting the law-governed inanimate universe.

Empathizing is our most powerful way of understanding and predicting the social world.

Ultimately empathizing and systemizing depend on independent regions in the human brain.” (3)

Autistic brain: “the ultimate pattern detector and truth detector”

“When we systemize, we make the implicit assumption that the pattern of data coming into our senses reveals the truth.

My contention is that the autistic brain, being highly tuned to systemize, is the ultimate pattern detector and truth detector.

In a high-functioning individual on the autistic spectrum, such pattern-seeking can reveal scientific truths about the nature of reality, since their systemizing can help the individual understand how things work. (…)

One reason why people with ASD (postulated to be hyper-systemizers) may struggle with empathy and be less interested in topics such as pure fiction, pretence, or deception is that these are not and never will be truth oriented.

Regarding the domain of emotions, human behavior is not 100% lawful.” (4)

See also: Nate Silver

See also: Michio Kaku

See also: Yanis Varoufakis

Sources:

Keep reading