Category: Psychology

  • Understanding the fifth dimension

    I have discussed before how the universe is made up of more dimensions than we are usually aware of. We are aware of the three spatial dimensions, and of time but in the backwards direction only. That is not because of any inherent aspect of the universe, it is simply a limitation of our human…

  • On making mistakes

    Many so-called ‘self-help gurus’ will tell you that making mistakes is part of life. You have to make a mistake in order to learn. In fact I recall a business investor who invested in startups saying that he was wary of investing in someone who hadn’t had a business already. If they had a successful…

  • Problem solving

    I read that a well know entrepreneur (I think it was Elon Musk) said that schools should teach problem solving. Well, schools nowadays teach some strange subjects and have moved away from the ‘old fashioned’ three R’s, so I’m sure it would fit in with the views of many progressive school principles. For instance, there…

  • The language of the mind

    There’s a view held by many so-called ‘rational’ people that the world works logically, and if we want to understand the world we must use logic (which is often confused with science). There are two kinds of logic: deductive logic and inductive logic. Deductive logic is of this kind: All fruit grows on treesThis is…

  • Is time speeding up?

    There’s a perception that some people have that time is speeding up. That is, a minute now seems shorter than a minute, say, ten years ago. Sceptics of course debunk this claim as being ‘scientifically inaccurate’, but there is some evidence of this. In fact, what does the concept of speeding up time mean? We measure…

  • Micro-aggressions and gender neutral pronouns

    I was recently told by someone that had I looked at her profile I would have noticed her preferred pronouns that I should be using instead of using the words ‘she’ and ‘her’. What she didn’t realise was that it wasn’t that I didn’t know — it was that I didn’t care. Or to be more precise,…

  • Binary thinking

    I’ve written before about left and right brained thinking. One of the characteristics of left-brained thinkers is that they think in binary. The left side of the brain deals in patterns so thoughts and concepts are put into boxes: an object is a table or a chair or it’s a wall or a door; an idea…

  • People don’t examine facts, they see things through an ideological lens

    Some time ago I wrote an article (The girl with the X ray eyes) on a documentary how CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) under the leadership of Prof. Richard Wiseman set out to discredit a Russian girl Natasha Demkina. The documentary was an attempt to debunk the claims but it was…

  • The enemy is not who you think it is

    There’s a movie from around 2010 called ‘V for Vendetta’. It depicts a UK where a right-wing authoritarian regime has come to power and a vigilante (V) takes on the ruling government. The characteristics of the ruling party are: right-wing, intolerant of minorities, pro religion, and resented by the mass of the population. In reality…

  • This is how it starts

    Many years ago IBM was the big force in computing. They had an advertising slogan ‘No one ever got fired for buying IBM’. In other words, if you need a computer project done and you choose a company other than IBM, and it goes pear shaped (as they often do), your boss is going to…