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Russ Roberts at Cafe Hayek has a lovely piece titled “Motives vs. Results,” exploring the motives of those who promote liberty, and how they compare to those who might instead promote big government.

I wrote of the article on Facebook:

A beautiful explication of why one could and should promote political freedom as a way to improve the world. It ( Read more... )

This year PayPal founder and visionary entrepreneur Peter Thiel offered a new class at Stanford called “Computer Science 183: Startup.” It was intended to provide entrepreneurs with a high-level strategic overview of the challenges they face and must overcome, to succeed not only in business but in advancing human progress - in an era when real ( Read more... )

An article summarizing a new paper from the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience begins:

For psychologists, self-control or “executive control” is the ability to pay attention to appropriate stimuli and to initiate appropriate behavior while inhibiting inappropriate behavior. It’s what keeps you studying when you’d rather be watching ( Read more... )

I enjoyed Brandon Rennels‘s list of aspirations for 2012. His first two:

1. Mindful habits. Reciting a 4-line gatha to myself each morning, taking my first bite of food for my friends and family, setting mindfulness bells to ring every 30 minutes when I open the computer, etc. I have spent the last six months building a solid habit base that I’d ( Read more... )

Here are some choice quotes from a recent Q&A in The Guardian with Alain de Botton, author of the book Religion for Atheists.

Ideally, porn would excite our lust in contexts which also presented other, elevated sides of human nature - in which people were being witty, for instance, or showing kindness, or working hard or being clever - so that our ( Read more... )

Marsh brought the following passage to my attention, from Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. I remember it from my days of listening nonstop to Tolle’s audiobooks. I like this passage a lot.

If at any time you are finding it hard to get in touch with the inner body, it is usually easier to focus on your breathing first. Conscious breathing, which is ( Read more... )

Curious to hear thoughts from others who walk the fine line between materialism and spirituality, I posted this article about near-death experiences to Mudita Forum. (I also included links to a critical response to that article and a subsequent reply from the author.)

Some forum members responded that it’s all rather anecdotal and unscientific, ( Read more... )

On Facebook, my friend Joe Duarte, a grad student in positive psychology at Arizona State University, asked why I’ve been so scornful of science and clinical trials lately. (For those who don’t know, for six years I studied to be a research scientist while pursuing my Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of New Mexico.) I replied:

As you ( Read more... )

From The Harvard Gazette:

Participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress. In a study that will appear in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Harvard-affiliated researchers at Massachusetts ( Read more... )