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How should we measure intelligence? | Mary-Helen Immordino Yang Aug 09, 2024

Show notes

We’ve been looking at intelligence all wrong, explains a neuroscientist.

Our society has an obsession with quantifying everything, often applying measurements and numerical values where they aren't necessary. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a neuroscientist and professor at USC, argues that we've taken this approach with intelligence, and it might not be the right path.

Immordino-Yang uses standardized testing as an example, explaining how modern-day education systems equate high test scores with high intelligence levels. However, these tests usually only measure a student's ability to perform under specific conditions, focusing narrowly on memorization and regurgitation of predetermined answers.

Instead, Mary Helen suggests a more dynamic concept of intelligence, considering a child's ability to navigate complex situations, understand new information, and innovate in real-time. This kind of intelligence is adaptive and essential for societal progress, as it allows for a more well-rounded perception of the world and situations that occur within it.

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About Mary Helen Immordino-Yang:

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD, is an expert on the psychological and neurobiological foundations of social emotion, self-awareness, and culture, and how they impact learning, development, and education.

She is a Professor of Education at the USC Rossier School of Education, a Professor of Psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute, a faculty member in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at the University of Southern California, and the Director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning, and Education (CANDLE).

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This interview is an episode from ‪‪@The-Well‬, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the ‪‪@JohnTempletonFoundation‬.

About The Well

Do we inhabit a multiverse? Do we have free will? What is love? Is evolution directional? There are no simple answers to life’s biggest questions, and that’s why they’re the questions occupying the world’s brightest minds.

Together, let's learn from them.

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Got a Controversial Idea? Here’s Why You Should Share It | Peter Singer - BIGTHINK Aug 09, 2024

Show notes

Ideas that seem wildly controversial today may move humanity towards progress. Philosopher Peter Singer asks —how do we keep them from being stifled? Peter Singer explains why he helped create the “Journal of Controversial Ideas,” a platform for discussing and examining controversial topics without fear of backlash or censorship. According to Singer, history is rife with examples of people challenging beliefs that were once considered certain but were later proven false. Persecuting those people who challenged those prevailing notions, Singer says, stifled progress. Singer underscores the importance of protecting academic freedom and freedom of thought and expression as fundamental to societal progress and knowledge advancement.

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Is success genetic? | Kathryn Paige Harden Aug 05, 2024

Show notes

The relationship between genetics and the environment is incredibly complex.

The term "heritability" refers to the proportion of variation in a population that is due to genetic differences. But people misinterpret the word to mean "genetically determined," "unmodifiable," or "innate" — but it doesn't mean any of these things.

Just because a version of a gene might be linked to a particular outcome in one group of people does not mean it is linked to the same outcome in another group of people.

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About Kathryn Paige Harden:

Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden is a tenured professor in the Department of Psychology at UT, where she leads the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and co-directs the Texas Twin Project. She is the author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (Princeton). Dr. Harden received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia and completed her clinical internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

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This interview is an episode from The Well, our new publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the John Templeton Foundation.

About The Well

So what do they think?

How is the power of science advancing understanding? How are philosophers and theologians tackling these fascinating questions?

Let’s dive into The Well.

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Watch Kathryn Paige Harden's next interview ► Schools ignore genetics—and that’s actually a bad thing • Schools ignore genetics—and that’s ac...

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Why Divergent Thinkers Outperform Geniuses in the Real World | David Epstein - BIGTHINK Aug 03, 2024

Show notes

Don’t take the prodigy pathway. David Epstein says become a broad thinker instead. The idea for Nintendo’s Game Boy system was born from a philosophy that had a much less catchy name: lateral thinking with withered technology. The term was coined by Gunpei Yokoi, a Nintendo employee who started at the company with a similarly dry job: machine maintenance worker. One day, a Nintendo executive noticed that Yokoi had built a simple extendable-arm-grabber toy in his free time. Let’s sell it, the executive said. It became a small hit. Yokoi was eventually promoted to help build out the company’s video game business. But he recognized that he didn’t have the expertise to advance the cutting edge of the video game world. So he decided on a very specific strategy: take already well-understood knowledge and technology from different domains and combine them in unique ways to create new products. The result was the Game Boy. In this interview with Big Think, David Epstein, author of the 2019 book "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World," explains how lateral thinking — a type of thinking where you approach problems from non-obvious angles — is a problem-solving strategy that’s surprisingly well-suited for our fast-changing world.

About David Epstein: David Epstein is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World and The Sports Gene. He has master's degrees in environmental science and journalism and has worked as an investigative reporter for ProPublica and a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He lives in Washington, DC..

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Work Culture in the U.S. is Broken. Employers Must Fix It | Tiffani Bova - BIGTHINK+ Aug 03, 2024

Show notes

Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, burnout: there are a ton of buzzwords to describe how modern work culture is broken. Now that we know what the problems are, how do we fix them? Tiffani Bova shares how companies can repair their relationship with their employees. Modern American working culture is broken — and has been for a long time. The coronavirus pandemic only magnified festering wounds that have adversely impacted employers and employees for far too long. Tiffani Bova, named among the Top 50 Business Thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 for six years running, explores what needs to happen to repair it.

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About Tiffani Bova: Ranked for the last 6 years in the Top 50 Business Thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, Tiffani Bova is a leading thinker who Forbes says “reshapes our perception of growth.” As both a practitioner and academic, she offers a unique perspective and has helped lead the tech industry through several evolutions over her nearly 30-year career as Salesforce’s former Growth and Innovation Evangelist and previously as a Research Fellow at Gartner and a sales, marketing, and customer service executive for start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. She is the author of two Wall Street Journal bestsellers: GrowthIQ and The Experience Mindset. While at Gartner, her forward-looking insights and guidance helped some of the largest technology companies in the world, including Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, SAP, AT&T, Dell, Amazon-AWS, expand their market share and grow their revenues. She was a trusted advisor to multiple senior executives who were responsible for shifting from on-premise to as-a-service business models, resulting in new billion-dollar divisions. In the late 90s and early 2000s, she was a pioneer of cloud computing; she previously led direct and indirect sales, marketing, and customer service for two of the largest web-based start-ups in the US and spearheaded a newly formed division of a Fortune 500 company to $300 million in revenue over two and a half years. Tiffani has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Fast Company, Bloomberg, MSNBC-TV, Yahoo Finance, INC, and Forbes. She is also the host of the podcast What’s Next! with Tiffani Bova...

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3 powerful mind states: Flow state, good anxiety, and Zen Buddhism Aug 03, 2024

Show notes

“We can use neuroscience and tools from psychology to learn how to take advantage of anxiety.” From Zen Buddhism to flow state, these 3 experts explain how to hack your brain.

When you think about the word "anxiety," it likely comes with a negative connotation. But anxiety is a normal human emotion that nearly all of us experience. Reframing anxiety as a tool for change, adopting concepts from Zen Buddhism, and striving to live in a ‘flow state’ can quell the negative thoughts we experience and amplify your mind’s abilities.

Optimizing your brain so that you can work in harmony with your thoughts is entirely possible. These 3 experts explain how we can work with our physiology, rather than try to rebel against it.

Authors Stephen Kotler and Wendy Suzuki along with psychiatrist Robert Waldinger show us how to optimize our mind, transform anxiety, and drop into ‘flow state’ for a more peaceful life.

Timestamps For Easier Navigation:-

0:00 3 powerful mind states

2:39 The flow state

9:59 Harnessing anxiety’s superpowers

17:21 A guide to Zen Buddhism

Up next, How to date, mate, and find fulfillment ► • How to date, mate, and find fulfillme...

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Incarcerated for 19 Years: How Shaka Senghor Found Freedom | BIGTHINK Aug 03, 2024

Show notes

Shaka Senghor spent 19 years in prison, 7 of them in solitary confinement. This is how he found true freedom.

The way Shaka Senghor tells his story, he found himself incarcerated long before he officially went to prison for second-degree murder, and he experienced freedom long before completing his sentence at the age of 38.

Senghor ran away from home and got drawn into the crack cocaine trade at the age of 14. After a series of traumatic events, he felt trapped in a narrative that dictated his life could only lead to limited outcomes: an early grave or a prison cell.

In our intimate interview, Senghor shares the three "keys" that trAnsformed his perspective on life and have enabled him to live as a genuinely free man today.

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About Shaka Senghor:

In 1991, Shaka Senghor pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and spent the next 19 years behind bars, seven of them in solitary confinement. Today, Senghor has become a vocal advocate for prison reform, and tackling the problem of mass incarceration, in all its complex ugliness, head on. Senghor’s memoir, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison, was released in March 2016 and debuted on The New York Times Best Seller List as well as The Washington Post Best Seller List.....

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How the laws of physics doom Planet Earth and The Future of Space Exploration. Michio Kaku Aug 03, 2024

Show notes

Humans won’t survive if we stay on Earth. Michio Kaku explains.

Up Next ► Michio Kaku: 3 mind-blowing predictions about the future • Michio Kaku: 3 mind-blowing predictio...

On Earth, extinction is the norm: 99.9% of species eventually go extinct. Even worse, the laws of physics have destined our planet for destruction. Whether it be from a planet-killing asteroid or the death of our Sun, Earth is doomed.

Humanity needs an insurance policy. Ultimately, if we want to survive long-term, we need to inhabit other planets.

We are entering a new Golden Age of space exploration, but there are obstacles we must overcome.

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About Michio Kaku:

Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-founder of string field theory, and is one of the most widely recognized scientists in the world today. He has written 4 New York Times Best Sellers, is the science correspondent for CBS This Morning and has hosted numerous science specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery/Science Channel. His radio show broadcasts to 100 radio stations every week. Dr. Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York (CUNY), where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study as well as New York University (NYU).

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What to Do If You're Among the 1 in 3 Who Cheat | Michael Slepian's Insights - BIG THINK Aug 03, 2024

Show notes

33% of people cheat, and 77% of people want to know about their partner’s infidelity. Would you tell your partner? Michael Slepian, an expert on secrecy, explains how.

About one-third of people have committed infidelity at some point in their lives. If you're one of them, should you confess it to your romantic partner?

One way to answer the question is to consider whether you would want to know if your partner had cheated on you: Surveys show that 77% of people would want to know, but that still leaves about a quarter of us who'd prefer ignorance. It's also worth questioning your own motives: Maybe you only want to get the secret off your chest to make yourself feel better.

It's a difficult dilemma with no one-size-fits-all solution. But fortunately, as psychologist Michael Slepian explained to Big Think, recent research has been revealing insights on the nature of secrets, what happens when we harbor them, and how and when we should consider getting them off our chest.

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About Michael Slepian:

Michael Slepian is the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School. He previously was a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and received his Ph.D. from Tufts University. He is an elected fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, has received the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science, and received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

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If your attention span has been hijacked, here’s how to take it back. | Amishi Jha Aug 02, 2024

Show notes

Where do you place precious brain resources?

The human brain's attention system is the success story of what makes us unique as human beings.

Because attention fuels our ability to think, to feel, and connect, what we pay attention to is our life. For a long time, throughout our evolutionary history, the brain began to suffer from a very big problem which is that there's far more information out in the environment than could be fully processed.

Attention ended up becoming a very useful solution because it allows us to prioritize information, but there are qualities of the human experience that disable attention. Given how powerful attention is, we need to really respect where we place this precious brain resource.

Chapters For Easier Navigation:-

0:00 introduction

1:27 power of attention

2:38 the challenges of attention

4:38 what is meta awareness

Up Next ► How to enter ‘flow state’ on command • How to enter ‘flow state’ on command ...

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About Amishi Jha:

Dr. Amishi Jha is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami. She serves as the Director of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, which she co-founded in 2010. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California–Davis and postdoctoral training at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University. Dr. Jha’s work has been featured at NATO, the World Economic Forum, and The Pentagon. She has received coverage in the The New York Times, NPR, TIME, Forbes and more.

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About Big Think | Smarter Faster™

► Big Think

The leading source of expert-driven, educational content. With thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think helps you get smarter, faster by exploring the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century.

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