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Yesterday I have seen a new video posted on TED.com, where they have recently started to post external videos that they think are worth watching. One of them was first part from this series.
This series of lectures was filmed in 1991 and given by Richard Dawkins (Wiki) a great evolutionary biologist and a author of a famous book The selfish gene.
The series is targeting youngsters and so the audience is comprised mostly of children. The lectures are very well prepared with a great practical insertions. It shows us why creationism is surely mistaken by saying what can and can't be achieved during an evolution. A great example is explaining the eyes.
One can watch the full series for free on YouTube here, and I greatly recommend it.
Just recently I have read this book, written by Steven Pinker, a great cognitive scientist, and psychologist, that nicely describes how not just us but also our mind came to be during the evolution process, why and how we got the sense of sight, how and why did evolution decide that bigger brains are what is better for the spices, how we think, interact and do many other things in life that we as humans do.
It opens your mind to the completely different perspective of perceiving the life, it tells us why do the modern cognitive scientist think that cultural evolution has taken over of changing our spices away from the biological one.
Author tries to explain the mind by putting together small pieces, that do simple calculations, to create an enourmus biologically powered computation machine that mind actually is. He shows us how the mind is easily convinced to see world different than it actually is, why do we see it the way we do, why a pair of eyes is much better than just a single one.
The journey that one makes by reading this book is amazing since it starts with explaining simple thing and the puts them together just like bricks to explain some complex phenomenon like why do we behave the way we do, and in the end, what the meaning of life is.
If you dare to touch these questions and would like to know some of the answers (or at least what they might be), I recommend you to read this great book.
It was on my way back from Japan, when I didn't have any literature or anything better to do during my 12 hour flight back to Slovenia, when I visited the bookstore, picked up some books for presents and browsed through book of my own interests (mostly fantasy and Science Fiction), when I came across the book from Neil Strauss - The Game
It was a while ago that I heard of this book. Supposedly it describes a part of life of a pickup artist (a man that goes out, picks a girl, gets her attention and makes her fall for him). We get to know what that actually is, how this community formed, how it operates etc.
The story describes how author actually joined the community, became quite a respected icon there and in the end realizes that there is much more to life than live a life of pickup artist.
I must say that I liked the end the most, when author realizes that he must stop pretending who he is if he wants to get a girl who he wants to spend the rest of his life with. I believe this is very true and the most important point that is made throughout the whole book. Even thou the book has 600+ pages, I managed to read it almost till the end just during the duration of flight. And that means it is written very good.
I can't say I recommend it, but one sure won't be disappointed reading it.
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