"35 Scientific Concepts That Will Help You Understand The World"

[browngirl]

http://www.businessinsider.com/scientific-concepts-that-will-make-you-smarter-2013-5?op=1

With thanks to amaebi.

I was especially chuffed to find the concept of "Fixed-action patterns", which I think many people confuse with instincts (as in "It's instinctual for men to act in X way and women to act in Y way that ends up creating a society that looks like stereotypes of 1950's USA!" or "It's instinctual for everyone to see Black women as less attractive than other women because dark skin and masculinization and so on all of which has nothing to do with the last several hundred years of history!" As you might guess I have a grudge against [the popular-culture oversimplification and distortion of] evolutionary psychology, and this is a useful concept through which to examine its claims.

(Of course in pulling that one out I'm falling into the first one, aren't I?)

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Constraint satisfaction

When presented with too many choices — no matter how beautiful or beneficial — it can be overwhelming, and we are paralyzed by indecision.

This is part of why Linux is having such difficulty being accepted as a desktop OS--it's just *too* damn configurable for the average person to deal with. Compare how many different kinds of Windows 7 or OSX screenshots there are with the different desktop screenshots for Linux. Unity vs. Mint/Cinnamon vs. KDE vs. Gnome vs. XFCE vs. LXDE and that's just *choice of window managers*, not *how to configure the window manager*. *head asplodes*

Take away some of that choice, however, and the old-school guys like me who are used to hand-hacking config files to get what we want start complaining.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Didn't we use to call those "habits"?

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

"externalities" is my favourite one; there are so many arguments where people simply cannot see why something is wrong even though it seems to benefit everyone involved, because they don't have the concept of externalities in their toolbox.