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A Healthy Diet For The Mind

cs.uni.edu

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Re: A Healthy Diet For The Mind

#31

Post by nodata »

idoh wrote: post #10
YogSothoth wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you were a news outlet and suppose you were trying to maximize your company's profitability. Clearly,when folks change the channel away from your program, your profitability goes down. So, you might do a bit of research to find out what tends to make folks change or not change the channel. Your research could indicate that strong negative emotions, such as anger, sadness or fear tend to make the viewer fixate…

I think you got it - "If it bleeds, it leads". I can't fault them for maximizing revenues, but I'd advise everyone to avoid them, just like you'd avoid a casino or social gaming.

Why can't you fault a company for maximising revenues?

Re: A Healthy Diet For The Mind

#32

Post by billswift »

CamperBob wrote: post #25
dstorrs wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might check out this novel: http://www.amazon.com/Davids-Sling-Marc-Stiegler/dp/06716536... Among other things, Stiegler posits a "Zetetic Institute" that teaches people how to think better -- effectively, an "organic foods" industry for the mind.

Isn't that basically what the Singularity Institute and http://lesswrong.com/ guys are trying to do?

I added this from David's Sling to the December Rationality Quotes thread on Less Wrong (http://lesswrong.com/lw/37k/rationality_quotes_december_2010...):

In the Information Age, the first step to sanity is FILTERING. Filter the information; extract the knowledge.

Filter first for substance. Filter second for significance. These filters protect against advertising.

Filter third for reliability. This filter protects against politicians.

Filter fourth for completeness. This filter protects from the media.

-- Marc Stielger, David's Sling

Re: A Healthy Diet For The Mind

#33

Post by billswift »

pkghost wrote: post #11

You become the stories you listen to. Be mindful of the diet of ideas you feed your mind. This applies not only to your reading list, but also to your own thoughts.

And your physical actions - Your attitudes and general outlook tends to follow your physical actions as much or more than the other way around. So act how you want to feel, then you will become more like you act. I actually learned this trick back in the eighties from a book Self-Creation by George Weinberg.

Re: A Healthy Diet For The Mind

#34

Post by pendragon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #16
pendragon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN isn't so much a movement in the content industry, but a very specialized aggregator. It certainly is one of the ways I try to provide myself with good reading material so it does help. One of the good things about twitter is if you follow content sharing people with similar interests it acts as a filter. A human filter you are exploiting, but still a pretty good filter. I'm sure somehow content aggregators can mov…

A programmer I know told me once about his method of using Twitter. He doesn't read any normal news sites, use RSS, etc. but just follows on Twitter people who write things that he finds interesting (mostly game development). When someone stops tweeting high-value things (links to interesting articles, etc.) he just stops following him and finds someone with more interesting tweets.

Actually, I just found something which looks like a good solution for developers: http://tagmask.com/ . It allows developers to share not just posts, but code snippets as well. Filtered by tags. A social-news board-community for programmers. Found it via Twitter, Guido shared it. I do indeed use twitter for news and resources.
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