#text byme

[empiricaldaily]

How excellent can a specific biological machine be?

Text By Me 44. 

[digamequando]

Quando ela ama...

Se ela gostar de você, não te contará, mas deixará claro. Se ela achar que você não gosta dela, ela irá sumir antes de se apaixonar e não conseguir mais fugir. Ela sorri para o chão, não só por vergonha, mas porque ela precisa avaliar os efeitos de suas palavras nela. Ela gosta de gentilezas como abrir a porta ou puxar uma cadeira. Ela admira sorrisos que queriam ser risadas, mas que a timidez não deixa. Ela gosta de conversas que vão além do superficial. Ela sempre vai querer ouvir seu ponto de vista, ou para tentar te convencer do contrário, ou para deixar que você o faça. Ela ama rir. Ama quem a faz rir. Conte de seu passado e ela planejará o seu futuro. Acredite, se ela gostar de você, ela te procurará...

(Carolina Kufner)

[empiricaldaily]

Seven Lofty Goals

Text By Me 31  1. Feynmanian beauty and curiosity. 2. Dennettian happiness. 3. Russellian clarity, clarity, clarity. 4. Sherlockian observe-ability.  5. Allenian overview and control. 6. Kabat-Zinnian presence and awareness within it all. 7. Tysonian detachment and proportionality.

[empiricaldaily]

Haiku: Maybe it's my DNA

Text By Me 30. Maybe their gene-pool mixed badly or perhaps it's epigenetics My third science-haiku.

[empiricaldaily]

An Evolutionary Definition of Love

[empiricaldaily]

A Short Review of ED 2012

Text By Me 22.

This tumblr was started on April 25th 2012, as a channel for me to post daily about things that I find noteworthy and to help motivate me to write something myself on a weekly basis. The central theme for this tumblr and, also, consequently the quotes and the weekly posts being: truth, science, and beauty.

The first quote posted was from Marcus Aurelius book Meditations (that book also inspired this tumblr's name, later changed to Empirical Daily):

"Do not stray from your course, but with regard to every impulse deliver what is right, and with regard to every idea that presents itself preserve your power to grasp the truth."  

Top Four Weekly Posts of 2012 

During 2012, since April 25th, I have tried to write a weekly piece (although there have been a few hiatuses). The pieces are of very varying length and quality. The one that perhaps is the most noteworthy is The Beauty of the Abstract. A link to that piece, and three other pieces that I feel stick out (for the better) below:

1. The Beauty of the [scientific] Abstract - Reality only adds to the beauty of things, it never subtracts. 

2. This is not... - A good intro piece for this blog; don't be fooled by the tumblr name that can, at first glance, seem like new-age nonsense. Meditations is meant in the strictest sense of [rigorous empirical] reflection, not as anything Buddhistic or equivalent to Buddhism.  

3. How We Can Get a Peak at Reality  - Not all opinions are of equal value. 

4. The Three People Who have Influenced My Thinking the Most   - A short piece on Russell, Feynman, and Dennett. 

Most Noted Post of 2012

Neil DeGrasse Tyson's comment on Neil Armstrong after he passed away: "Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) was not entirely human. He was the spiritual repository of our spacefaring dreams & ambitions. In death, a little bit of us all dies with him. Farewell my friend."    - 220 notes, mainly because it was reblogged by physicsphysics. 

Top Three Quotes of 2012

Here are three quotes from 2012 that capture the Mars landing, the essence of science, and the problem with economic incentives. 

1. "Celebrate Curiosity – and curiosity. Celebrate science, America, humanity, rationality, physics, engineering, mathematics, the evolved brain" - Richard Dawkins 2. "Just an FYI: The Scientific Method is doing whatever it takes not to fool oneself into thinking what’s true is false, or what’s false is true." - Neil DeGrasse Tyson 3. “Economics question: Do perverse incentives create assholes or locate assholes?” - Zach Weiner

[empiricaldaily]

Hormone Activation of Evolutionary Magnitudes.

Your system is hardwired, from million and million years of evolution, to crave opioid kicks, to go into alert by cortisol, to risk dopamine depletion, all the while constantly struggling to keep homeostasis. We all depend on how good our deck of gens been tuned to handle its environment and the hormonal flooding that comes from the simple act of being alive. It's why people can only date within their "league".* It's why most fortune 500 CEO's are above average in height.* It's why we fear being alone. It's why longterm goals like studying for exams can be so difficult to adhere to in a timely fashion.* It's also why we tend to cling to the illusion of a self.* It's why beautiful people have it easier in court.* It's why we fear death. It's also why you might have a behavioral plan until you're in a social environment. That's a major trigger for hormone activation, and in that turbulent moment, your cognitive plan is out the window. There is, of course, some wiggle room here. There are cognitive tools we can use to adjust our behavioral responses to our own chemical activation. We might even be able to alter our chemical activation to a certain degree with some amount of routine. And, also, with certain chemical additions (meds). Within the confines of our genetic decks that is. Knowing this won't change anything. You will still -- as soon as you are alone, are with others, are trying to focus beyond your peak hours --- be flung into hormone activation of evolutionary magnitudes - magnitudes stronger than your cognitively constructed resolution. That means, being flung into being scared, tired, stressed, horny, happy, and sad, regardless of your cognitive map. It means, at times, feeling like you're under water, submerged in emotional free fall, not knowing how to stop the drop. Except for the wiggle room, there might not be much one can do to affect this. But, for me, the knowledge of the mechanism behind it all, that knowledge brings some peace of mind when I'm in the middle of the hormone storm. But it's a kind of peace of mind that has to be cultivated. Because that mind-frame is anything but hardwired, and it will fly out the window as soon as I am under any kind of pressure. So, for me, it's important to return to this truth. Often and regularly, and to cultivate that kind of mindset in the face of evolutionary flooding. That meta-perspective gives me (the illusion of?) a little more meaning-making wiggle room and a little more detachment to the illusionary self, and a little more detachment to all the obsession that follows with that illusion. Another way to view it is: older evolutionary mechanisms pulling against a newer evolutionary cognitive machinery - with all its benefits and limitations.

[empiricaldaily]

On Determinism and Fatalism