Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (by StanfordUniversity)

I read the transcript of this a while ago, but it’s so much more powerful watching it.

Professor Sapolsky Explains the Origin of Religion Part 1/2 (by RichardDawkinsdotcom)

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8GFQRAlDmE&NR=1

Notes:

Those with schizophrenia were perhaps the ones who saw the burning bush talk and were responsible for other religious visions (e.g. Jesus back from the dead etc.)

Those with OCD likely came up with religious rituals.

People with temporal lobe epilepsy have uncontrolled tendencies to write and become obsessed with religious and philosophical subjects. One person suspected to have this disorder was St. Paul.

Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling In Graduation Speech->Implications

Comment: The following speech was delivered by top of the class student Erica Goldson during the graduation ceremony at Coxsackie-Athens High School on June 25, 2010

“Here I stand

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, “If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years . .” 
The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast — How long then?” Replied the Master, “Well, twenty years.” “But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?” asked the student. “Thirty years,” replied the Master. “But, I do not understand,” said the disappointed student. “At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?” 
Replied the Master, “When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.” 

This is the dilemma I’ve faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective. 

Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn’t you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer - not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition - a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.

John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don’t do that.” Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt. 

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not “to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States.” 

Comment: The full passage reads: “The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever pretensions of politicians, pedagogues other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.” 

“To illustrate this idea, doesn’t it perturb you to learn about the idea of “critical thinking.” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?” To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth? 

This was happening to me, and if it wasn’t for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is. 

And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us. 

We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren’t we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still. 

The saddest part is that the majority of students don’t have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can’t run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be - but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation. 

For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades. 

For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake. 

For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth. 

So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn’t have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians. 

I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let’s go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we’re smart enough to do so!”

Brilliant and true. Wise words for a life.

I agree with the idea that school and work can be a form of unconscious slavery. Like this valediction, I was guilty of excelling, and like her I felt somewhat empty after I had achieved this or that. 

It’s unfortunate that the structure of school is almost like a cattle feedlot, in the sense that as students we are pressured to memorize concepts and learn various things, rather than follow interests that may individualize us - things we actually we to learn. We are taught that learning is a task - for which we should be rewarded. We are taught to accomplish and to make money - for the sake of making money.

It’s sad. It’s sad, because as a culture we continue to pass down these values. We object, yet it’s self-perpetuating.

How can you maximize your happiness in life?

Have positive relationships with supportive people.

Guys are "over-aroused" by video games&porn... and that's connected to why they're 30% more likely to drop out of school.

 

Boys are 30 percent more likely than girls to drop out of school. In Canada, five boys drop out for every three girls. Girls outperform boys now at every level, from elementary school to graduate school. There’s a 10 percent differential between getting BA’s and all graduate programs, with guys falling behind girls. Two-thirds of students in special ed remedial programs are guys. And as you all know, boys are five times more likely than girls to be labeled as having attention deficit disorder — and therefore we drug them with Ritalin.

What are the causes? Well, it’s an unintended consequence. I think it’s excessive Internet use in general, excessive video gaming, excessive new access to pornography. The problem is these are arousal addictions. Drug addiction, you simply want more. Arousal addiction, you want different. Drugs, you want more of the same — different. So you need the novelty in order for the arousal to be sustained.

And the problem is the industry is supplying it. Jane McGonigal told us last year that by the time a boy is 21, he’s played 10,000 hours of video games, most of that in isolation. As you remember, Cindy Gallop said men don’t know the difference between making love and doing porn. The average boy now watches 50 porn video clips a week. And there’s some guy watching a hundred, obviously. And the porn industry is the fastest growing industry in America — 15 billion annually. For every 400 movies made in Hollywood, there are 11,000 now made porn videos.

So the effect, very quickly, is it’s a new kind of arousal. Boys’ brains are being digitally rewired in a totally new way for change, novelty, excitement and constant arousal. That means they’re totally out of sync in traditional classes, which are analog, static, interactively passive. They’re also totally out of syncin romantic relationships, which build gradually and subtly.

 

This is a great talk. 

The idea that men are prone to “arousal addictions” is something worth thinking about as you come across various sorts of behavior in life.

What's the secret to making a few good friends?

 you don’t just have to help someone or need help in a physical way to to develop a reciprocity that leads to friendship, you can also build it by both of you talking about problems, concerns, challenges etc. 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200611/friendship-the-laws-attraction

This article quotes a few psychologists that believe this kind of reciprocity is key to turning acquaintances into friendships and keeping friendships strong. It doesn’t mean that you need to share very intimate details with people right away (or ever) but that some exchange of the challenges you each face in your life is necessary for closeness. You can start small and build up your comfort level, but the key is that you both reciprocate. It also probably helps that you eventually share some things that you wouldn’t share with just anyone.

So, ask questions, listen, occasionally share a challenge in your life, ask the other person if they have have experienced similar challenges e.g. “You ever have one of those days where nothing you say comes out right?” listen, support offer support and understanding reciprocate. When you feel comfortable take it just a little bit deeper.

The linked article is great. Here is some meat from it:

Why do we wind up chatting with one person in our yoga class and not another? The answer might seem self-evident—our friend-in-the-making likes to garden, as do we, or shares our passion for NASCAR or Tex-Mex cooking. She laughs at our jokes, and we laugh at hers. In short, we have things in common.

But there’s more: Self-disclosure characterizes the moment when a pair leaves the realm of buddyhood for the rarefied zone of true friendship. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” may well be the very words you say to someone who is about to become a friend.

“The transition from acquaintanceship to friendship is typically characterized by an increase in both the breadth and depth of self-disclosure,” asserts University of Winnipeg sociologist Beverley Fehr, author of Friendship Processes. “In the early stages of friendship, this tends to be a gradual, reciprocal process. One person takes the risk of disclosing personal information and then ‘tests’ whether the other reciprocates.”

Reciprocity is key. Years ago, fresh out of film school, I landed my first job, at a literary agency. I became what I thought was friends with another assistant, who worked, as I did, for an infamously bad-tempered agent. We ate lunch together almost every day. Our camaraderie was fierce, like that of soldiers during wartime. Then she found a new job working for a publicist down the street. We still met for lunch once a week. In lieu of complaining about our bosses, I told her about my concerns that I wasn’t ready to move in with my boyfriend. She listened politely, but she never divulged anything personal about her own life. Eventually our lunches petered out to once a month, before she drifted out of my life for good. I was eager to tell her my problems, but she wasn’t eager to tell me hers. The necessary reciprocity was missing, so our acquaintanceship never tipped over into friendship.

Once a friendship is established through self-disclosure and reciprocity, the glue that binds is intimacy. According to Fehr’s research, people in successful same-sex friendships seem to possess a well-developed, intuitive understanding of the give and take of intimacy. “Those who know what to say in response to another person’s self-disclosure are more likely to develop satisfying friendships,” she says. 

We become best friends with people who boost our self-esteem by affirming our identities as members of certain groups, and it’s the same for both genders. Men who derive their most cherished identity through their role as high school quarterback, for instance, are most likely to call a former fellow teammate “best friend.”

I particularly liked this quote:

The last and most elusive behavior necessary for keeping friends is being positive. Social psychologists tout the necessity of self-disclosure, but that doesn’t mean an unrestricted license to vent. At the end of the day, the intimacy that makes a friendship thrive must be an enjoyable one, for the more rewarding a friendship, the more we feel good about it, the more we’re willing to expend the energy it takes to keep it alive.

I think if you can talk about your life, your problems, and what’s going on in a fun or funny way, you are able to have self-disclosure without being burdensome.

Playing hard to get is a timeworn technique for snagging that desired significant other. And there’s a reason, say Stanford researchers. Being rejected increases many people’s motivation to pursue that elusive objective—with a vengeance.
But there’s a catch. It turns out that being rebuffed, in fact, makes people less fond of what it is they think they want more. Once they obtain the desired goal, many are quicker to lose interest in it.

“When someone is thwarted from obtaining his original desire, he, in fact, comes to find the attractiveness and appeal of his target to be diminished. Yet, perversely, he may feel he wants it even more. The thrill becomes the chase.”

Marketing: Being Jilted Can Make You Yearn More—or So You Think

In the study, participants were asked to solve several puzzles and were told that if their performance was in the top 25th percentile, they would receive a gift. Then, at random, some were told they had met the goal, while others were told that they had not.

Those who were denied the gift were then asked how much they would be willing to pay for it in a store. Participants who did not receive the gift were willing to pay more for it than those who later did actually receive it. “This shows that being rejected made them want it more,” says Shiv.

“Jilted” participants then completed a second set of tasks to obtain the same gift, and all were told they had won. They were subsequently asked whether they would like to trade the item for another of equal value. Significantly more subjects who had been denied the gift the first time were willing to trade it away than those who had received it on round one.

Brilliant study. I love seeing the whole playing hard to get game get downplayed by a study.

Top Signs You're Not An Alpha Male

You Suck Up To Leaders And Seek Their Approval.

An Alpha Male doesn’t suck up to anyone. He is the leader.

You Blame Others

An Alpha Male takes responsibility for his own actions.

Silly little quotes, but they resonated for whatever reason.

Every Girl's Crazy 'Bout A Sharp Dressed Man - @datingsauce

* 91% of Americans think that dressing well can help boost a man’s looks by making him appear more physically attractive than he really is.

*Women think a well dressed man is confident (75%), sophisticated (44%), smart (37%), or sexy (37%) 

*78% of women believe that one of the hottest things a guy can do is dress well.

*Nearly three in ten (29%) women wouldn’t even consider a second date with a man who didn’t dress well the first time they were together. That’s more than those who would end things if a man didn’t make a lot of money (7%) or have a college degree (5%).

How to Resist Temptations

She placed three groups of people in a room containing a delicious-looking chocolate cake and the implements to divide and eat it.

The first group was put into the room and told to think about the shame and guilt they would feel if they ate it.

The second was told to think about how proud they would be ofnoteating it.

The third group, the control group, was put in the room and given no instructions.

Here were the results:

The control group ate the most.

The group that was told to think about pride ate the least.

MacInnis concluded that shame and guilt do not work as well as a sense of pride to help resist temptation.

I believe I know why: Shame and guilt consume energy, subtracting energy from our will to resist temptation. Pride, on the other hand, gives energy, allocating more energy to the willpower to resist.

Applicable to all sorts of life temptations.

What clothes do women like on men?

clothes that fit well. Men often wear what is comfortable, but if it fits like pajamas, it probably looks like pajamas. Comfort is 50% mental. Wearing clothing that fits properly means you may have to “get over yourself” and get accustomed to a non-pajama feel. The compliments and attention you will get from others, especially women should make it worth it.

What is the best piece of advice women would like to give to men on how to approach women?

what a lot of men don’t realize is that every time an unknown man approaches a woman, it is by default threatening. The best way for a man to understand this is that women view strange men the way men view cops: probably harmless, but always carrying a non-zero chance that they will inflict violence on you and you will not be able to defend yourself. As a man, if you see a cop approach you, think of the immediate heightened sensitivity and “on-guard”-ness that you experience - that is how almost all women feel when an unknown man approaches them. A man doing so must do something active and specific in order to immediately make themselves non-threatening in order to have a chance.

And beyond violence there is a chance they will be creepy in other ways.

Is it true that "less intelligent" people are happier than smart people?

No. Here’s a really good meta-analytic review of the many studies done in this area.

Some key findings in this research area:
  • In a meta-analysis of 26 studies of individuals, intelligence was NOT found to be correlated with happiness. In short, cognitive abilities do not, on the average, lead to more or less happiness.
  • The effect was found for both longitudinal studies and snapshot studies.
Here’s also a much earlier (1934) study showing the same thing. So what’s clear is that this is a very stable and consistent finding.

What is the best way to motivate yourself to improve?

the Arnold Schwarzenegger approach: put your weaknesses on display so others can see them and you get social pressure to improve.

As a young bodybuilder, his calves weren’t as developed as the rest of his body. Instead of hiding them, he cut off the bottoms of the sweat pants he worked out in so that every day, everyone else in the gym could see his small calves. It was constant motivation to him to improve this area of his physique.

If you are a man, what are the pros and cons of dating models? - Quora

Pros:

Models are almost always mellow in daily life. They’re used to gliding through life without a ton of responsibility, and so they don’t tend to be as high-strung as the average woman (or man, for that matter). 

They tend to value you, as a guy, on something other than your looks, because they’ve spent time with male models and have fished those waters.

If you’re susceptible to the siren call of external validation, you will be serenaded every moment of your public life. Guys will stare; their girlfriends will stare and then quickly glare at their mates; and random people will ask you what your secret is, if they don’t just give you the smile and nod.

Cons:

Models are used to being objectified by men, and tend to be a little suspicious at first of your motives. It takes a little more effort to get through to them than to the average woman, in my experience. They ‘test’ you more at first, check to see if you’re just a guy hunting for a trophy.

Models are, on average, average in everything else besides looks. They’re not stupid or brilliant, not sweet or cruel, not cultured or boorish. Their looks set high expectations and their personalities usually fail to deliver. Imagine having a lunch with a billionaire….who turns out to be as boring as an accountant and leaves you peeking at your watch. It’s a downer.

Back to the external validation from above; people will assume that you’re just dating her for her looks, and no one will take her or the relationship seriously. Ever. It doesn’t matter how much time they spend with her, or what you do together, etc. The attention from strangers gets incredibly tiresome after a while, and you start to understand why some women put off such an ice shield when in public. I was doing it myself after a while.

There are really just two archetypes in the mainstream modeling world for women: fashion model and swimsuit model. Fashion models usually are very tall, very skinny, usually flat-chested; swimsuit/lingerie models can be average-height and tend to have more of a classic hourglass shape. These are two tiny, limited corners of the wide landscape of actual feminine figures. This will sound downright bizarre, but after a while, those two body shapes start to seem ordinary, even boring. It’s hard to explain. You don’t start to see other body shapes as more attractive, but the aesthetic shock of ‘perfection’ wears off.

So I really liked this answer on Quora. This type of thinking really applies whenever you meet a beautiful girl or a good looking. Your impulse should be… ok they’re probably average in every respect except their looks so be prepared for that.

I also agree with the comment that good looking people care less about looks, because they’ve sort of been there and done that, and they attract good looking people of the opposite sex, so the appeal of good-looking-ness wears off. 

Yeah, but that averageness comment - it so resonates and it’s something to remember wherever beauty/good looks appear.