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Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired. He's also written for The New Yorker, Seed, Nature, and the New York Times and is a contributor to Radiolab. He's the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist. His new book is How We Decide.
March 31, 2010
My uncle describes Costco as the place "where you go broke saving money". That certainly describes my experience of the warehouse store - I walk in for some toilet paper and leave with a new television, a tub of cashews...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 1:42 PM • 42 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 30, 2010
David Brooks, summarizing the current state of happiness research: The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting. According to one study, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year. In other words, the best...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:39 PM • 97 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 29, 2010
I've always been fascinated by tip-of-the-tongue moments. It's estimated that, on average, people have a tip-of-the-tongue moment at least once a week. Perhaps it occurs when you run into an old acquaintance whose name you can't remember, although you know...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:20 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 25, 2010
Pablo Picasso once declared that "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." The solution to Picasso's problem is startlingly simple, at least according to the psychologists Darya Zabelina and Michael...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 7:00 AM • 27 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 22, 2010
Over the weekend, I had a little essay in the Times on some new research on why dream at night. When I can't sleep, I think about what I'm missing. I glance over at my wife and watch her eyelids...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:23 AM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 17, 2010
The world is a confusing place. Correlation looks like causation; the signal sounds like the noise; randomness is everywhere. This raises the obvious question: How does the human brain cope with such an epistemic mess? How do we deal with...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:11 PM • 47 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 16, 2010
Here's a moral scenario: A man is sitting near the side of the road when he sees a truck speeding along. It is headed towards a group of five men, who do not hear or see it, and if nothing...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:42 PM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 15, 2010
It sounds like President Obama and his communications staff are getting to know the research of Paul Slovic: After weeks of making his case for the legislation in broad strokes -- including two similar rallies last week in Philadelphia and...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 6:19 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Now that the social web is maturing - the platforms have been winnowed down to a select few (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) - some interesting commonalities are emerging. The one shared feature that I'm most interested in is also a...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:12 PM • 57 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 10, 2010
In response to my post on the effects of mood on cognition, which also referenced the possibilities of self-medicating ourselves into the ideal mood, Andrew Sullivan offered up the following anecdote: I was talking with a fine artist the other...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:58 PM • 63 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
denialism blog 02.14.2012
respectful insolence 02.14.2012
uncertain principles 02.13.2012
confessions of a science librarian 02.13.2012
starts with a bang! 02.13.2012
