It is impossible to perceive anything directly. What we experience as a visual image starts out as electromagnetic radiation of various frequencies which reflects off of an object and then hits our eye. The photoreceptor cells in our eye are stimulated, information propagates down the optic nerve, and so forth. We usually interpret this as seeing the object we are looking at. However, a more compl...

According to evolutionary theory, emotions evolved because they were helpful for survival. Anxiety alerts us to potential danger and makes us wary. Anger motivates us to fight and shows our allies that we need help. Jealousy motivates us to keep our mates to ourselves to help maximize the number of our offspring that survive to child-bearing age. But the environment we live in today is obviously v...

When you ask people why they read non-fiction, they are likely to tell you that their primary motivation is to learn. But are people's behaviors really consistent with this being their motivation? Almost all of the information that we read is already forgotten days after having read it, and most of what remains is forgotten after months. Even those facts or ideas that are particularly interesting ...

Normally we divide up the elements of knowledge into the traditional categories of history, literature, math, physics, chemistry, psychology, fine arts, and so forth. We are so used to these divisions that it may not even occur to us that knowledge can be split in plenty of other ways. But imagine, for instance, a school that offered the following subjects: Making Observations Formulating Th...

It is common to hear discussions of whether something is moral or immoral, as if "moral" were a word with a specific, agreed-upon meaning. Unfortunately, the word has so many meanings that its interpretation is extremely difficult without extra information. For example, if I say "murder is immoral", I could actually mean any of the following: 1. Murder violates an abstract principle that I wou...

Mathematics is often thought to be universally and unassailably true. Some people even argue that even an omnipotent God couldn’t make math false. But can mathematicians actually prove that math is true? If they can’t, does the fact that math is so useful in solving real-world problems provide evidence of its truth? And, if mathematics is not true, then does that imply that conclusions drawn f...