Researchers have in recent years scaled back their estimates of the influence genetics plays in intelligence differences. The previous figure of 80 percent is outdated. Nisbett says that if you take social differences into account, you would find "50 percent to be the maximum contribution of genetics." That leaves an unexpectedly large proportion of a child's intelligence for parents, teachers and educators to shape.
The real form of the question, the one that generates the correct answer simply in its asking, is, "why doesn't having kids-- or getting married or getting a better job or getting laid or anything else I try to do-- make me happy? Oh. I get it. I'll shut up now."
I was sure that color coordinating the baby and the bathroom would make me happier but it didn't... should I have gone with lavender?
This intriguing media criticism suggests not just that the article's subjects are self-absorbed, but the journalists themselves. The Last Psychiatrist calls such articles "cognitive parasites" because even if one disagrees with the articles' conclusions, they can change the way one thinks.
Multitaskers:
- Did a significantly worse job filtering out the irrelevant information.
- Took longer than non-multitaskers to switch among tasks.
- Less efficient at juggling problems.
- Tended to search for new information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work.
- Process visual and auditory input less efficiently.
- Become reliant on more a more simplistic, and often inferior, thought process, and can thus fall prey to perceptual decoys.
Maybe multitasking gives the illusion of productivity without achieving higher volume...
The implication is that we don't really have a direct experience of what we're feeling ‘right now,' but only a memory - an unreliable memory - of what we thought it felt like some seconds or milliseconds ago. The vivid present tense we all think we inhabit might itself be a retroactive illusion.
