#stem

Like casinos, large corporate entities have studied the numbers and the ways in which people respond to them. These are not con tricks - they're not even necessarily against our direct interests, although sometimes they can be - but they are hacks for the human mind, ways of manipulating us into particular decisions we otherwise might not make. They are also, in a way, deliberate underminings of the core principle of the free market, which derives its legitimacy from the idea that informed self-interest on aggregate sets appropriate prices for items. The key word is 'informed'; the point of behavioural economics - or rather, of its somewhat buccaneering corporate applications - is to skew our perception of the purchase to the advantage of the company. The overall consequence of that is to tilt the construction of our society away from what it should be if we were making the rational decisions classical economics imagines we would, and towards something else. ↗

— Nick Harkaway

#choice #corporations #economics #information #power

It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both. ↗

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#combine #deadly #decide #mind #none

I believe [...] that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#death-penalty #justice #justice-system #legal-system #reasonable-doubt

The retirement system that is in place for members of Congress and other federal workers features what is known as the Federal Employment Retirement Plan. ↗

— Virgil Goode

#employment #features #federal #known #members

En el aspecto social, la inclusión es el principio básico. Nuestro lema son los pobres primero y para los pobres los mejores instrumentos, los mejores maestros, las mejores infraestructuras. La cultura para los pobres no puede ser una pobre cultura. Debe ser grande, ambiciosa, refinada, avanzada, nada de sobras. Además, ellos multiplican su efecto, porque son enormemente agradecidos ante el esfuerzo. No es práctico incorporar a su vida esa faceta como si fuera un florero. ↗

— José Antonio Abreu

#inspirational #national-system-of-orchestra #orchestra #poverty #venezuela

They don't have intelligence. They have what I call 'thintelligence.' They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surround. They don't see the consequences. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#intelligence

A mind is a simulation that simulates itself. ↗

— Erol Ozan

#brain #computer #computers #computing #consciousness

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results. ↗

— John Dewey

#educational-system #philosophy #education

What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up. ↗

— John Taylor Gatto

#education

It seems to me that the great pleasure of human life is not in having an opinion, but rather in learning all the ways you are wrong, and all the nuances you failed to account for, and all the truths that turned out to be not as simple as you once believed. And it seems to me that one of the central pleasures of attending school is that you get to read with really well-informed people who can help welcome you into a complex world stuffed with rich and maddening ambiguity. ↗

— John Green

#education-system #education