Welcome to Issue #72 of ThinkSpace Thursday
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📚 Light Reading
Happiness Is Bullshit
You don’t want to be happy. Nobody wants to be happy. The idea that any of us are pursuing happiness, that it’s our most fundamental goal in life, is bullshit. It’s contradicted by almost everything we do.
Should You Trust the Myers-Briggs Personality Test?
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. More than 1.5 million people take it every year. It is a thriving, multimillion-dollar-a-year industry. And as any psychologist worth their salt will tell you, it’s mostly nonsense.
Left-brain thinking will destroy civilisation
What has an esoteric theory about the differing functions of the two hemispheres of the brain got to do with everyday politics, science, or arguments on Twitter? Potentially, rather a lot.
🔎 Study of the Week
Do you want the good news or the bad news first?
An opening like that will send a chill through your veins, no matter what the topic. It’s especially worrying when it comes from a significant other or a doctor. A new study says that you probably want the bad news first. But it also finds that, if the decision is left to the news deliverer, you can’t always get what you want.
📺 Video of the Week
In Praise of the Quiet Life (5 mins.)
🎙 Podcast Episode
Most of us strive to be good, moral people. When we are doing that striving, what is happening in our brains? Some of our moral inclinations seem pretty automatic and subconscious. Other times, we have to sit down and deploy our full cognitive faculties to reason through a tricky moral dilemma. Psychologist Molly Crockett explains where our moral intuitions come from, how they can sometimes serve as cover for bad behaviours, and how morality shapes our self-image.
🗣 Quote of the Week
The late Felix Dennis, entrepreneur, publisher, poet, and philanthropist with a net worth of over $750m, reflected on what he would do differently if given the opportunity to start anew.
“If I had my time again, knowing what I know today, I would dedicate myself to making just enough to live comfortably as quickly as I could - by the time I was 35. I would then cash out and retire to write poetry and plant trees.”
👀 Perception Watch
😲 WTF
Theseus was a mythical king and the hero of Athens. He did a lot of sailing, and his famed ship was eventually kept in an Athenian harbor as a sort of memorial. As time went on, the ship’s wood began to rot in various places. Those wooden pieces were replaced one by one. As time went on, more pieces needed replacing. The process of replacing rotten planks with new ones continued until the entire ship was made up of new pieces of wood. Is this completely refurbished vessel still the ship of Theseus?
😁 In the Memetime
📖 Book Club
This book brings together essays by fifteen leading philosophers reflecting on what it means to live an examined and meaningful life. From Eastern philosophies (Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism) to classical Western philosophies (such as Aristotelianism and Stoicism) to contemporary philosophies (such as existentialism and effective altruism), each contributor offers a lively, personal account of how they find meaning in the practice of their chosen philosophical tradition.
🤔 Contemplation Corner
Do you agree? (1 min)
🎧 The Song of the Week
Jadu Heart - Blame
Listen to the ThinkSpace Thursday playlist on Spotify.
🧠 Go Deeper with ThinkSpace
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June Masterclass:
👍 Thanks for Reading
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Live well, and I’ll see you next week.
John
The Ship of Theseus Paradox is also known as the Trigger's Broom Paradox
https://youtu.be/LAh8HryVaeY?t=52