Challenging Belief 🤔

Monday Morsels: Challenging Belief

Image: Wired

Image: Matt Cherubino

Over the last two weeks we’ve had ample time to reflect & refresh on the year that was, hit our glucose levels with the equivalent of a nuclear bomb, and just take the time to get bored. We did casually roll out the new changes to our new brand, Neuralle (bye bye Single Partners). By now you would have seen the slight changes to our content (self improvement & cognitive science), but now you’ll see a gradual evolution of our brand and communication.

I couldn’t have made the changes without my partner in crime, Lauren Lopatko — who will part of the Neuralle team moving forward.

If like us (and Neil deGrasse Tyson) you find the entire New Year’s eve insanity to be genuinely insignificant, you’ll love what we have in store for you over the coming weeks. The podcast is now into the initial stages of editing, and we shall have some long form pieces coming your way.

Image: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Twitter

But in the meantime, here’s your weekly Monday morsels fresh off the press.

Random morsels to get smarter —
This week’s curation for your enjoyment.

Creating a Rat, with AI 🐀

Sounds ludicrous doesn’t it? Well before you say that, understand that journalists were saying that during Google Deep Mind’s efforts to teach a computer how to master the game Go. Creating a rat level AI would be a significant step in the simulation of a mammalian brains (for context the size of neocortex below), leading us closer towards either human simulations or artificial general intelligence — what a time to be alive…

Image: Peer.Tamu.Edu

The world as 100 people 🌏

The general media will have you alarmed at the state of the world, a brilliant play at your visual & emotional reactions care of the front lobe/amygdala. However, removing a few key issues (inequality, climate change) we are significantly safer than we were 200 years ago. See some key points from a brilliant website I visit regularly Our World in Data.

Image: OurWorldInData.Org

17 Levers in Archimedes Toolbox 🔨

To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail — as Charlie Munger says. We have emphasised on our site that the most effective people in the world, view their lives as an operating system to be constantly improved. This podcast episode by Tim Ferriss has been one of my favourites this year purely because he highlights key questions you can utilise (as any effective person should) over the course of your life. I can affirm that I use at least half of these questions on a regular basis; with podcast guests, strategy sessions, negotiations, writing, investing — the more you widespread your questioning, the greater your probability of success. This is definitely not one to be missed.

Image: Four Hour Work Week Blog

Challenging Beliefs 🤔

This study highlighted by both Nature & Sam Harris over the last month was conducted by the University of Southern California on the maintenance of political & non-political beliefs. Over 40 individuals who were political liberals of deep conviction, read 8 political & non-political statements while being assessed by an fMRI machine. The study showed that challenges to political beliefs “highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offered insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena”. In essence, people are personally attached to their political beliefs, because it defines who they are as individuals. In the age of fake news & post-fact discussion happening all around us, how can we overcome this? At present this is quite a small study sample, but perhaps the way to convince someone of deep conviction with new information, is to start from a place of common ground or agreement. I’ve no doubt that this will be a topic we touch in our long form pieces, as it will be considerably applicable to our individual lives, and negotiations in business.

Image: Wired

Which morsel was your favourite?

What lessons do you want more or less of? Let us know!

Just send a tweet to @Neuralle and put #MondayMorsels in there so we can find it.

Happy reading,

Jordan & team @ neuralle.com

Neuralle is focused on Human Intelligence (H.I.) to dramatically increase the output of business owners & quality of life of high performers.

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