Do you know how a bicycle works? If asked, could you say where the chain, pedals and frame are? According to a 2006 study by the University of Liverpool, maybe not. Participants in the study were asked to draw a picture of a bicycle. Later, to make sure that lack of artistic skill wasn’t a […]
Archives for 2015
How Much Free Will Do You Have?
Free will is a thorny philosophical problem. Many see it as the foundation for our lives and morality. Others deny it exists. I’m not so sure where I fall on beliefs about the reality of free will. I strongly suspect it comes down to how you define it. Defined too strictly and it isn’t even […]
Should You Know Your IQ?
As I mentioned in this post about things I’ve changed my mind on, one of them is IQ. I used to believe that IQ was unimportant or overly simplified. But I’ve since been educated against my prejudice—it is a very successful psychometric and has impressive predictive power. Still, after accepting the usefulness of a general […]
Failures of Intensity
Most advice about success, especially communicated through blog articles on the internet, is about what to do. If you want to lose weight, experts tell you what you should eat, what you shouldn’t, which exercises to do or when to do them. If you want to build a business, different experts tell you which steps […]