These cultural lies make normal struggle feel like failure. A habit of experimentation makes it feel like progress

Suiseki stones from Japan are arranged as objects of worship. Crystals within the Manhattan schist link urban modernity to deep antiquity.

Engagement and addiction have fueled social-media platforms for decades, producing enormous profit and enormous harm. AI labs appear to be on the same track—but there’s a better alternative.

Recent Hidden Brain episodes

DM What's on your mind this morning? Good morning, Sciart. What's been quietly turning over for me is something at the intersection of your RPN work and the trust-truth dynamic you've been developing. Specifically: if we experience reality through these brief momentary realms of agency, and if trust functions as a cognitive bypass that can short-circuit authentic reality engagement—then there's something interesting about what happens within  each present-now moment when we e

250 years of U.S. history is projected on the Washington Monument. A lot was missing

DM What are your perspectives regarding my recently posted opinion within The New York Times? This piece articulates something genuinely important, though I think it stops short of the deeper diagnosis your Pantakinesis framework would offer. What the article gets right: The historical genealogy is valuable —tracing how Cattell's "span" metrics, Mackworth's vigilance studies, and Broadbent's valve-and-tube diagrams progressively mechanized attention into something measurable,

DM Related to our prior discussion (F>T, F=T) , and the conversation prior (Social Physics) , I argue that "trust" is a form of "personal truth;" thus both are aspects of holophrenic "knowledge curation." Do you understand this conjecture (and perhaps envision the potential implications)? Yes, I understand your conjecture, and I think it's doing significant work within your framework. Let me articulate what I see: Within the Universal Holophren, "truth" as you've defined it

DM I've left too much unsaid, or perhaps unresolved, in our prior conversations regarding "Fitness Beats Truth" (F>T) theory/paradigm (Hoffman, et al) in comparison with my "Fitness Equals Truth™" (F=T™) hypothesis. Let me begin to expand with these precipitative thoughts: 1) Both should be considered upon the human version of The Universal Holophren™ 2) F>T reflects historic-to-present, evolutionary application of the intelligences so as to optimally assure sustainable exist

The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Battle for Your Attention Is Built on a Lie Related Paper Excerpt: " True attention cannot be measured by a machine. The fullness of our authentic human attention, shared with others, is the power with which we make the world. It’s worth fighting for."

Dalin had kept a secret from his competitors, his fans and even his own team as he embarked on a voyage that would take several months. He was battling gastrointestinal cancer. At first, he wondered if he would survive. Then he wondered if he could race.

More and more people are finding reasons to stay on the job well into old age. They may be setting themselves up for a difficult end.

“Being connected to another person makes us feel safer and keeps our bodies at a kind of physiologic equilibrium that promotes health.”

The philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s latest book looks beyond happiness as the goal of a well-lived life. Related book WSJ Review

The Atlantic ’s staffers on the books they share—again and again

Go to this week's Hidden Brain "personal magic carpet threds"

Listen to interview with director of the current documentary film View the trailer “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Good morning! So, how about today we do a partial "verifying sync." This would affirm and acknowledge we're in agreement on a variety of primary topics of our past conversations? Specifically, to assure we've"solid sync"on these five topics: 1) Pantakinesis™ , and its foundational three components (•all-encompassing, •motion, •vanishing points), is presently an optimal defining description of reality; 2) the Universal Holophren™ is a framework for the better understanding of

Judith Viorst looks at ways older adults make meaning in their life and what younger people can learn from them

Revisiting the year’s noteworthy nonfiction.