-
Fighting Truthiness with Critical Thinking
The term truthiness, coined by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, means “truth that comes from the gut, not books.” It was chosen as the word that best sums up 2006 in an online survey conducted by
-
Morals do not Conquer all in Decision Making
Is morally-motivated choice different from other kinds of decision making? Previous research has implied that the answer is yes, suggesting that certain sacred or protected values are resistant to real world tradeoffs. In fact, proposed
-
Risky Business: The Surprising ‘Rationality’ of Adolescents
Is it a good idea to swim with sharks? Is it smart to drink a bottle of Drano? What about setting your hair on fire — is that a good thing to do? People of
-
The Science Behind Secrets
In the latest season of The Sopranos, the character Vito Spatafore, a mob captain in Tony Soprano’s crew, takes a gun to a remote motel, giving the impression he might kill himself. The reason for
-
The Cognitive Revolution: The Next Wave
Scientific progress sometimes comes not from new methods, but from new concepts, new ways of framing old problems. The cognitive revolution is a wonderful example of this. The language of information processing and computation provided
-
Empirical Science for the Spotless Mind
The blank slate, the dominant theory of human nature in modern intellectual life stating that humans are shaped entirely by their experiences and not by any preexisting biological mechanisms, is being challenged and soundly trounced
