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Future Thinking: How to End the Internal War | Ari Wallach - BIGTHINK Aug 12, 2024

Show notes

Futurist Ari Wallach shares how to become future-conscious.

Futurist Ari Wallach knows it can be very difficult, but he's going to need you to think about yourself. Not yourself right now — that's easy to do. You're already doing it! He means thinking about yourself in the future.

Keeping what may lie ahead in mind — being future-conscious — makes you more likely to eat right and exercise; more likely to plan ahead financially; more likely to forge strong, healthy relationships and treat people right.

Researchers have found we see our future selves like celebrities, like some vaguely knowable figure. And when that extends society-wide, we make decisions that may not benefit us, like spending recklessly or harming the climate for quick gain.

Wallach is the founder and executive director of Longpath, an initiative that wants to foster being future-conscious. If you can keep tomorrow in mind, it can be possible to have a better today.

Chapters for easier navigation:-

0:00 Meet the two yous

1:01 The Matt Damon experiment

2:41 The 'longpath' mindset

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About Ari Wallach:

Ari Wallach is an applied futurist and Executive Director of Longpath Labs. He is the author of Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs by HarperCollins and the creator and host of the forthcoming series on PBS A Brief History of the Future, which is being executive produced by Kathryn Murdoch and Drake. He has been a strategy and foresight advisor to Fortune 100 companies, the US Department of State, the Ford Foundation, the UN Refugee Agency, the RacialEquity 2030 Challenge and Politico’s Long Game Forum. As adjunct associate professor at Columbia University he lectured on innovation, AI, and the future of public policy. Wallach's TED talk on Longpath has been viewed 2.6 million times and translated into 21 languages. Ari was the co-creator of 2008's pro-Obama The Great Schlep with Sarah Silverman. He has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, Vox, and more. He lives in the lower Hudson Valley with his wife, three children and wonderdog Ozzie. More at https://www.longpath.org/

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Enhance Rational Thinking with Bayes' Rule | Steven Pinker - BIGTHINK Aug 12, 2024

Show notes

The formula for rational thinking explained by Harvard professor Steven Pinker. In his explanation of Bayes' theorem, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker highlights how this type of reasoning can help us determine the degree of belief we assign to a claim based on available evidence. Bayes' theorem takes into account the prior probability of a claim, the likelihood of the evidence given the claim is true, and the commonness of the evidence regardless of the claim's truth. While Bayes' theorem can be useful for making statistical predictions, Pinker cautions that it may not always be appropriate in situations where fairness and other moral considerations are important. Therefore, it's crucial to consider when Bayes' theorem is applicable and when it's not.

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Chapters:-

0:00 What is Bayesian thinking?

1:01 The formula

2:41 When Bayes’ theorem obscures the solution

4:25 Bayes’ theorem in a nutshell

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About Steven Pinker: Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his nine books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, and Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.

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-------Boost Your Team's Emotional Intelligence with This Game Aug 12, 2024

Show notes

Personality clashes at work? Play this card game. Successful communication is at the heart of great teamwork, but words can mean different things to different people. We all tend to project our own biases onto commonly used words. Mary and David Sherwin — experts in team dynamics — have devised Teamwords, a collaborative card-based team-building system that cuts through differences to create consensus. If we can agree on the meaning of words at the start of projects, we will understand each other much better as we work together. About Mary Paynter Sherwin: Mary Paynter Sherwin is a seasoned writer, educator, and public speaking coach with expertise in helping individuals and schools develop rigorous curricula and activities for their learning needs. She has worked on multiple successful training programs and product innovation toolkits, such as Kaiser Permanente’s i60 Innovation Toolkit with Propelland and frog’s Collective Action Toolkit. Along with David, she is on the faculty of PNCA’s MFA in Collaborative Design, and was formerly an adjunct professor at St. Mary’s College of California. About David Sherwin: David is a design leader, teacher, and strategist with deep expertise in creating new products, services, and training solutions. At companies such as frog, Lynda.com, and LinkedIn, he has led and coached dozens of large-scale product and service design teams, as well as helped to create training workshops and events for clients such as UNICEF, DARPA, and the World Economic Forum. Along with Mary, David is co-author of design bestseller Creative Workshop and Turning People into Teams.

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Everyone Needs This Essential Skill | Tiago Forte - BIGTHINK Aug 11, 2024

Show notes

Productivity expert Tiago Forte tells us what schools should learn from YouTubers. Technology has both a concentrating and democratizing force on society. While it allows a billionaire and a college student to use the same computer or phone, access to education and training determines how effectively one can use technology. Author Tiago Forte notes that those who could benefit the most from this education, such as people on the wrong side of the digital divide, often can't access it due to a lack of awareness or resources. That’s why he argues for democratizing the idea that one doesn't have to do everything with their biological mind and that cognitive extension through software can make one's life much easier.

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chapters:

0:00 Tech democracy (with an asterisk)

1:31 The problem: The real digital divide

2:43 The skill everyone needs

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About Tiago Forte: Tiago Forte is one of the world’s foremost experts on productivity. He has taught more than 20,000 people worldwide through his programs and writes and speaks on how technology can help knowledge workers revolutionize their personal effectiveness. Tiago’s online course, Building a Second Brain, has produced more than 5,000 graduates from over 70 countries. The course draws on his experience in academic disciplines such as information science, practical fields such as user experience design, and his work with top organizations and leaders in Silicon Valley. Tiago believes knowledge management is one of the most impactful skills in the world today, and his work is dedicated to making it accessible to individuals for the first time. In a previous life, he worked in microfinance in Latin America, served in the Peace Corps in Ukraine, and consulted for large companies on product development in San Francisco. He lives in Long Beach, California, with his wife Lauren, son Caio, and dog Ximena...

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How Evolution Shapes Problem-Solving Machines | Michael Levin - BIGTHINK Aug 11, 2024

Show notes

Evolution doesn’t fix things — it reinvents them. Michael Levin, a biologist, explains. This interview is an episode from @The-Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation. Esteemed biologist Michael Levin explores a captivating biological perspective of evolution — one that’s hard for engineers to come to terms with. In their work, making random changes to a system usually makes things worse, not better. But evolution, on the other hand, doesn't just produce specific solutions to specific challenges; instead, it creates what Levin calls "problem-solving machines." These machines are made up of hierarchical biological hardware with incredible adaptability, capable of tackling various challenges without assuming specific environmental conditions. Contrary to commonly held ideas about evolution, it doesn't just search for the best possible physical characteristics in organisms. It also uses signals and behaviors to shape how organisms function, so when things change or get damaged, the different parts of an organism can continue to function. From metabolic to physiological dilemmas, Levin highlights evolution’s remarkable ability to adapt. About Michael Levin: Michael Levin is a developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University, where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor and serves as director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. Prior to college, Michael Levin worked as a software engineer and independent contractor in the field of scientific computing. He attended Tufts University, interested in artificial intelligence and unconventional computation. To explore the algorithms by which the biological world implemented complex adaptive behavior, he got dual B.S. degrees, in CS and in Biology and then received a PhD from Harvard University. He led an independent laboratory from 2000 to 2007 at Forsyth Institute, Harvard. Now, his lab at Tufts studies anatomical and behavioral decision-making at multiple scales of biological, artificial, and hybrid systems...

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Healing Trauma Without Medication | Dr. Essam Daod - BIGTHINK Aug 11, 2024

Show notes

The groundbreaking approach to stopping PTSD before it happens.

Bandages, gauze, sterile eye dressings — these are some standard supplies you can expect to find in a first aid kit. But what about tools to help mend the mental and emotional wounds people suffer during traumatic experiences?

After traveling to Greece to help Syrian refugees during the height of the refugee crisis, child psychiatrist Essam Daod came to the realization that, just as it’s important to treat physical wounds as quickly as possible, tending to psychic injuries is also an urgent matter.

“I think that we have this very short window of opportunity — what I call the “golden hour” — that we can really do the intervention before the, you know, [traumatic] experience can be stored and imprinted in the brain, especially for kids.”

In 2015, Daod and his wife started Humanity Crew, an organization that has so far provided more than 32,000 hours of free mental health services to refugees in the Mediterranean. The organization does its best to reframe traumatic experiences for people when it makes sense to do so — for example, helping a young refugee boy who survived a dangerous ocean journey to see himself as a strong and capable hero. This can nudge the mind to store memories as positive experiences instead of traumatic ones.

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About Dr. Essam Daod:

Essam is a psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist who grew up in Israel in a small Arab Palestinian village in the Galilee. He specialized in child and adolescent psychiatry and graduated from psychoanalytic school. In 2015, he flew to Greece for a humanitarian rescue mission where he co-founded Humanity Crew and has been working with refugees ever since. Humanity Crew specializes in the provision of psychological aid to refugees and people in crises, working to deploy mental health and psycho social support to displaced populations in order to improve their wellbeing, to restore order in their lives, and to prevent further psychological escalation. Currently, he is an avid refugee mental health activist and researcher who has spoken at countless conferences and media outlets all over the world advocating for the importance of mental health support for refugees. In 2016 Essam and Humanity Crew were awarded "The Defenders of Refugee Rights Award" at the 4th Edition of Cities Defending Human Rights in Barcelona. In 2018, he became a WHO mental health expert team member, and a TED Fellow.

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Strengthen Your Mind by Using Your Body | Wendy Suzuki - Big Think Aug 11, 2024

Show notes

Exercise gives your brain a “bubble bath of neurochemicals,” says Wendy Suzuki, a professor of neural science. Exercise can have surprisingly transformative impacts on the brain, according neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki. It has the power not only to boost mood and focus due to the increase in neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and noradrenaline, but also contributes to long-term brain health. Exercise stimulates the growth of new brain cells, particularly in the hippocampus, improving long-term memory and increasing its volume. Suzuki notes that you don’t have to become a marathon runner to obtain these benefits — even just 10 minutes of walking per day can have noticeable benefits. It just takes a bit of willpower and experimentation.

Chapters:

0:00 My exercise epiphany

1:35 What is “runner’s high”?

2:40 The hippocampus & prefrontal cortex

3:32 Neuroplasticity: It’s never too late to move your body

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About Wendy Suzuki: Dr. Wendy A. Suzuki is a Professor of Neural Science and Psychology in the Center for Neural Science at New York University. She received her undergraduate degree in Physiology and Human Anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987, studying with Prof. Marion C. Diamond, a leader in the field of brain plasticity. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from U.C. San Diego in 1993 and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before accepting her faculty position at New York University in 1998. Dr. Suzuki is author of the book Healthy Brain, Happy Life: A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain and Do Everything Better.

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Introducing Collective Illusions: a new series with Todd Rose | Big Think Aug 11, 2024

Show notes

Collective illusions lie to us. Here’s what they are, with Todd Rose

“Collective illusions” is a situation where most people in a group go along with an opinion they don’t agree with, simply because they incorrectly believe that the majority also agrees with it.

We’ve known about collective illusions for over 100 years, but our cultural and technological conditions have changed. Today, creating and sustaining these illusions is so easy that they proliferate at a speed we’ve never seen in history.

From trust and conformity to aspiration, this new series, hosted by Todd Rose, explores and decodes the world's greatest Collective Illusions.

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Collective Illusions is a 9-part series brought to you by Stand Together: a community of changemakers tackling our biggest challenges

For more stories, ideas, and advice from changemakers, subscribe to Stand Together ► / standtogethercc

Watch the entire Collective Illusions playlist ► • Collective Illusions

And visit Stand Together’s website to learn more ► https://standtogether.org/

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About Todd Rose:

Todd Rose is the co-founder and president of Populace, a think tank committed to ensuring that all people have the opportunity to pursue fulfilling lives in a thriving society. Prior to Populace, he was a faculty member at Harvard University where he founded the Laboratory for the Science of Individuality and directed the Mind, Brain, and Education program. Todd is the best selling author of Collective Illusions, Dark Horse, and The End of Average. He lives in Burlington, Massachusetts.

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Can You Rely on Your Memory? This Neuroscientist Has Doubts | André Fenton - BIGTHINK Aug 11, 2024

Show notes

There are three kinds of memory that all work together to shape your reality. Neuroscientist André Fenton explains. Neuroscientist André Fenton discusses the intricate relationship between memory, perception, and reality, shedding light on the complexity of human cognition. Fenton believes memories are not fixed but are continually modified by our experiences and mindsets. This, in his mind, underscores the importance of humility and empathy in acknowledging the fallibility of our memories and the need to consider different perspectives in our quest for truth. We created this video in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators.

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About André Fenton: André Fenton, professor of neural science at New York University, investigates the molecular, neural, behavioral, and computational aspects of memory. He studies how brains store experiences as memories, how they learn to learn, and how knowing activates relevant information without activating what is irrelevant. His investigations and understanding integrates across levels of biological organization, his research uses genetic, molecular, electrophysiological, imaging, behavioral, engineering, and theoretical methods. This computational psychiatry research is helping to elucidate and understand mental dysfunction in diverse conditions like schizophrenia, autism, and depression. André founded Bio-Signal Group Corp., which commercialized an FDA-approved portable, wireless, and easy-to-use platform for recording EEGs in novel medical applications. André implemented a CPAP-Oxygen helmet treatment for COVID-19 in Nigeria and other LMICs and founded Med2.0 to use information technology for the patient-centric coordination of behavioral health services that is desperately needed to equitably deliver care for mental health. André hosts “The Data Set” a new web series on how data and analytics are being used to solve some of humanity’s biggest problems

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Is technology melting your memory? Or helping it? | Lisa Genova | Big Think Aug 11, 2024

Show notes

Is technology melting your memory? Or helping it?, with Lisa Genova

Technology is a double-edged sword. There is a common belief that smartphones are hurting our memory, but this isn’t entirely true.

Certainly, if you want to form memories effectively, you need to be aware of your surroundings in the present moment, not distracted by your phone.

Yet there is a lot of upside to technology as well. In an instant, you have all the world’s knowledge at your fingertips. And social media reminds us of past events that we otherwise might not remember.

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About Lisa Genova:

Lisa Genova is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens, and Every Note Played. Still Alice was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, and Kristen Stewart. Lisa graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in biopsychology and holds a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University. She travels worldwide speaking about the neurological diseases she writes about and has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, Today, PBS NewsHour, CNN, and NPR. Her TED talk, “What You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer’s,” has been viewed more than five million times. The New York Times bestseller REMEMBER is her first work of nonfiction.

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