Tag Archives: My Opinions

Change Literally in the Blink of an Eye

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You can make those life changes you want to make in the blink of an eye.

You can make those life changes you want to make in the blink of an eye.

New research out of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, shows that brain neurons can change in as little as two minutes even in adults. For years scientists have known about the plasticity of the brain – that it can change neuronal connections and even grow new brain cells. But until recently, no one had studied the speed at which these changes can occur.

It is unlikely that a brain cell would grow to maturity and make all those dendrite connections in just two minutes. Some other mechanism must be at work.
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Bush’s Mistake and Kennedy’s Error

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Self-deception proves itself to be more powerful than deception

By Michael Shermer

Published in Scientific American

 

Michael Shermer, PhD
 

The war in Iraq is now four years old. It has cost more than 3,000 American lives and has run up a tab of $200 million a day, or $73 billion a year, since it began. That’s a substantial investment. No wonder most members of Congress from both parties, along with President George W. Bush, believe that we have to “stay the course” and not just “cut and run.” As Bush explained in a speech delivered on July 4, 2006, at Fort Bragg, N.C.: “I’m not going to allow the sacrifice of 2,527 troops who have died in Iraq to be in vain by pulling out before the job is done.”

We all make similarly irrational arguments about decisions in our lives: we hang on to losing stocks, unprofitable investments, failing businesses and unsuccessful relationships. If we were rational, we would just compute the odds of succeeding from this point forward and then decide if the investment warrants the potential payoff. But we are not rational–not in love or war or business–and this particular irrationality is what economists call the “sunk-cost fallacy.”

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What I Know for Sure

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Wrong conclusions can be funny - or disastrous!

Wrong conclusions can be funny - or disastrous!

Sometimes I really believe I know what I’m talking about. So sure am I that what I am saying is the truth that I will insist that my audience believe it, too. I’ll go on a crusade. That’s when the real comedy begins.

”The people with the most ridiculous ideas are always the people who are most certain of them.” — [Bill] Maher’s Certainty Principle

I especially get a giggle out of my conclusions – you know, those times when I think I can boil down all the evidence into a single reasonable interpretation. And, of course, once a final interpretation is arrived at, appropriate action must follow. What happens when my interpretation of the evidence is incorrect? It’s a pretty good bet my “appropriate” action will be askew, too. Wrong conclusions can be the cause of comedy or disaster.

The immensity of the universe and the eons of time are so far outside my limited comprehension that I can’t possibly say with any certainty, for example, that other life exists or doesn’t “out there”.  But for years I stated as a matter of fact that there is a God. How can I possibly know the unknowable? Thinking errors, that’s how!

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Manifestation – It’s all about gratitude

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The beginning of gratitude is acceptance of what is. Fortunately, this is the easy part of manifestation – you already accept what is in your world – and act accordingly. That is why you have what you currently have in your world and why it is that things are the way they are. You accept it that way and act accordingly.

For example, you accept that trees are green and rain is wet. You do not question nature as it is – you simply accept it. EVERYTHING in your life is as it is because you accept it that way – and act accordingly. When was the last time you questioned something in your life that you take for granted – like air. Over time, you have come to simply accept things as they are – for the most part, you take your life for granted.

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