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Analects

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Cynosure is the idea betterment is empty without gratification and connection. No true betterment can occur without celebrating the fruits of our success and betterment is only meaningful in its reflection in the lives of others. Everyone agrees.

On Cynosure

Article

I use a lot of odd words around here, to mark out my interpretation of things to others. But they aren’t unique ideas. And mapping them to where I found them is one way of explaining them. So here I explain the idea of cynosure: the three values I hold closest, and the three things I think we should all focus on.

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betterment connection gratification on-(un)happiness on-aesthetics on-thinking-and-reasoning

article

Our brain clusters things that are similar to each other together. This includes ideas and the words we attach to them. If your words are attached to the wrong ideas, you’re going to struggle to make the connection for them.

Language is a barrier to communication

Article

To make the leap from someone else’s idea to your own understanding of it is often troubled by something I call ‘the language problem’. Most of the time this is because of a difference in experience. Knowledge is sometimes a barrier to learning, and this is almost always related to the language problem. Let me show you what I mean.

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betterment collective-architecture connection gratification on-being-fruitful on-leadership on-thinking-and-reasoning wealth-architecture

article

Cultural and aesthetic ‘facts’ are as real as any ‘objective’ truths. They’re just centred on different kinds of meaning. Trivialising them because they ‘go against’ the evidence is failing to recognise what evidence they care about.

Aesthetics are facts too

Article

Facts are just a special kind of belief… Because there isn’t really anything tangible that distinguishes a belief from a fact. Cultural and aesthetic beliefs are facts too, in a certain light—we’re tracing the fuzzy boundaries of our religions, theories, and convictions to put certain meaningful aspects of the world at the centre. They’re just as true as the facts that are more stable, and objective. They’re just centring on something different.

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collective-architecture gratification on-aesthetics on-being-fruitful on-culture thought-architecture

article

Brain networks are groups of brain regions that work together. There are only a handful of interesting ones, but you can actually use them to understand human behaviour.

Not brain regions, brain networks

Article

Brain regions are often oversimplified in popular discourse. The amygdala isn’t just the fear centre, and the prefrontal cortex isn’t solely the ‘smart’ bit. This silly approach to talking about the brain hides the really cool stuff. So let’s talk about those instead.

Brain networks are groups of brain regions that work together. There are only a handful of interesting ones, but you can actually use them to understand human behaviour.

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betterment on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture

article

If you look closely, you’ll see that our ability to speak just hides the fact that other processes are running the show. Find a way to cut the language regions out, and you see other little consciousnesses start to take over.

Mini-brains inside the brain

Article

People love to talk about brain regions, but usually that’s silly. Brain regions usually don’t tell you anything about how the mind works. That’s not true of the language regions though. The language regions tell you something quite weird about the mind, and it has nothing to do with language.

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betterment on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture

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