The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
also read Descartes’ Error, by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio.22 Damasio had noticed an unusual pattern of symptoms in patients who had suffered brain damage to a specific part of the brain—the ventromedial (i.e., bottom-middle) prefrontal cortex (abbreviated vmPFC; it’s the region just behind and above the bridge of the nose). Their emotionali
... See moreJonathan Haidt • The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
I sat reading James Salter—“We cannot imagine these diseases, they are called idiopathic, spontaneous in origin, but we know instinctively there must be something more, some invisible weakness they are exploiting. It is impossible to think they fall at random, it is unbearable to think it”—and I found myself nodding in recognition. Whether it was p
... See moreMaria Konnikova • The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win
Some economists are already working on that. They are using this brain-imaging data to support a new political philosophy known as asymmetric paternalism. That's a fancy name for a simple idea: creating policies and incentives that help people triumph over their irrational impulses and make better, more prudent decisions. Shlomo Benartzi and Richar
... See moreJonah Lehrer • How We Decide
On the other hand, very often we don’t know for a long time, if ever, what the doctor did for us. In other words, the market is testing whether or not the doctor can give us hope and the feeling of having been taken care of, not whether the doctor really makes us healthier. Feeling more or less hopeful is a pretty inaccurate test. Hope is even supp
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