Counter Intuitive Quotes

One of the hardest-to-swallow, most countercultural, counter intuitive implications of the gospel is that bearing up under a difficult burden with patient perseverance is a good thing.

It’s profoundly counter-intuitive for us to think of ourselves as mad. We seem so normal and mostly so good – to ourselves. It’s everyone else who is out of step… And yet maturity begins with the capacity to sense and, in good time and without defensiveness, admit to our own craziness. If we are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who we are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn’t begun.

We now live in a world where counter-intuitive bullshitting is valorized, where the pose of argument is more important than the actual pursuit of truth, where clever answers take precedence over profound questions.

You want to be ‘the guy’ who services ‘this type of person’ or solves ‘this type of problem.’ And even more niched ‘I solve this type of problem for this specific type of person in this unique counter-intuitive way that reverses their deepest fear.

It's a bit counter-intuitive to think about the future in terms of the past. But...I've learned an important trick: to develop foresight, you need to practice hindsight. Technologies, cultures, and climates may change, but our basic human needs and desires - to survive, to care for our families, and to lead happy, purposeful lives - remain the same.

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [Billions and Billions of Demons - JANUARY 9, 1997 ISSUE]

But once more, here I am - confronted with the counter-intuitive notion that intelligence is no protection against strange beliefs.

I've learned, above all, that less is truly beautiful. That happiness and contentment can't be manufactured, bought, subscribed to, or achieved by adding more to our lives. It's the counter-intuitive actioni of stripping away the excess that allows us to discover beauty and joy in the good lives we already have.

Plenty of people take great pride in their intuition & fail badly . Most of the best decisions in the word have been counter intuitive

In this book I would like to describe how this message of falling down and moving up is, in fact, the most counter-intuitive message in most of the world's religions, including and most especially Christianity. We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens; yet nothing in us wants to believe it. I actually think it is the only workable meaning of any remaining notion of “original sin.

It is ignorance that is at times incomprehensible to the wise; for instance, he may not see 'the positive person' or 'the negative person' in such a black and white way as many people do. A wise man may not understand it because, as a catalyst of wisdom, but not always wise in his own eyes, even he can learn from and give back to fools. To think that an individual has absolutely nothing to offer to the table is counter-intuitively what the wise man considers to be 'the ignorance of hopelessness'.

You can’t inspire and lead people without earning their attention. You achieve that in a counter-intuitive way – by paying close attention to what interests them.

You’ll be amazed how quickly people adjust their expectations of your availability once you put stronger boundaries in place.

Humans tend not to purge. We add and add but never subtract.

We so want to be right and so trust that our desire to be right is something that God would surely bless. Yet the desire to be right comes with a price: the fear of being wrong. And so, in a counter-intuitive way, this focus on being right seems to be the porridge we settle for when we exchange our birthright because we're famished and fear that father won't feed us.

Go through them one by one and ask, ‘Is this subscription moving me forward in my business, or just taking time from me?’ Unsubscribe from any newsletter that isn’t taking you and your business forward.

Keeping things stable takes energy. I guess it's a little counter-intuitive, since you think of Newton's first law: a body at rest will stay at rest. But the reality is different. Think about an old water tank you find in the woods. It's sitting there, doing nothing, and yet it's slowly falling apart. Eventually the rust eats away at it beyond a certain threshold, and it collapses under its own weight.

While each word of Heraclitus expresses the pride and the majesty of truth, but of truth grasped in intuitions rather than attained by the rope ladder of logic, while in Sibylline rapture Heraclitus gazes but does not peer, knows but does not calculate, his contemporary Parmenides stands beside him as counter-image, likewise expressing a type of truth-teller but one formed of ice rather than fire, pouring cold piercing light all around.

Brown, thin-legged pedestrians appeared for a moment in the glare of the headlights, like truths apprehended intuitively and with immediate certainty, only to disappear again almost instantly into the void of outer darkness.

Simone de Beauvoir has argued, perhaps counter-intuitively, that Sade deserves to be regarded as a moraliste for the ethical reflection he inspires in his readers: Sade drained to the dregs the moment of selfishness, injustice, misery, and he insisted upon its truth. The supreme value of his testimony lies in its ability to disturb us. It forces us to re-examine thoroughly the basic problem which haunts our age in different forms: the true relation between man and man.37

What if grace were to generate a love more compelling than even our own freedom? It sounds terribly self-defeating—and it is (sort of) and yet there’s something counter-intuitive that plants self-giving and self-sacrifice as the seeds of human flourishing.

The counter-intuitive truth of the Christian life is that joy is granted when we deny ourselves. Our Savior endured the cross “for the joy set before him” (Heb. 12:2). In the same way, when we seek the good of our spouse, when we forsake ourselves, we find joy.

Whatever elaborate, and grotesquely counter-intuitive, underpinnings there might be to familiar reality, it stubbornly continues to be familiar. When Rutherford showed that atoms were mostly empty space, did the ground become any less solid? The truth itself changes nothing.

The concept of 'anti-racism' is an illiberal notion cloaked in liberal terms. lt sounds bold, virtuous and active. No wonder so many well-intentioned people are declaring themselves to be 'anti-racist' with little understanding of its divisive implications. The worst possible way to tackle prejudice is to reanimate the racial divisions of yesteryear through a heightened emphasis on group identity. The wordplay of the anti-racist movement is sufficiently slippery to make rebuttals seem counter-intuitive. Anti-racism proponents have it backward. In order to oppose racism, one must be opposed to anti-racism.

The fundamental theories of modern physics explain the world in jarringly counter-intuitive ways. For example, most non-physicists consider it self-evident that when you hold your arm out horizontally you can feel the force of gravity pulling it downwards. But you cannot. The existence of a force of gravity is, astonishingly, denied by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, one of the two deepest theories of physics. This says that the only force on your arm in that situation is that which you yourself are exerting, upwards, to keep it constantly accelerating away from the straightest possible path in a curved region of spacetime

The first step into getting in the zone is to turn off your judgment switch. Let go, and move away from a nagging inner voice, questions, or anything that prevents you from getting things done. Other negative thoughts might include not being productive out of fear that your work will turn out to be unacceptable. Don’t worry about the quality of work you are creating. You have to keep your energy flowing and continue to contribute, that’s the most important part, whether the work is good or not. We become stagnant and procrastinate because we want things to be just right; we want to feel inspired and good, before we start working. This is counter intuitive because once we start working, that is when we will begin to feel inspired from the creation of our own work. Get your dream energy rolling now.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.18

 When we understand our lives better, we can see where such strength was at work. Always a gift given by Spirit, it is a surprise to us that we were able to prevail. Is it not often after the fact that we discover we have been given the gift of strength?  A true friend can give us encouragement by knowing our history, our joys and our sorrows, our struggles and our strengths, and in their eyes we can see ourselves better. ~ What one person carries easily another person cannot bear. We join strength with strength. A single stick is easily broken. Two sticks together are harder to snap. Together we bear our own and each other’s burdens better, and we understand when the other must go it alone. Sometimes holding is simply the ability to see a bigger picture. Sometimes holding is support and nurturing help, and sometimes holding is holding back and letting things be. In retrospect the latter is often sensed as profound help though in the present we might feel it as counter intuitive. We are, after all, still present for one another though we are not “doing anything”.

I wonder if I am not turning into a contemplative . . . But those roses . They were something else. I was having breakfast and looking at the bouquet on the kitchen counter. I don't believe I was thinking about anything. And that could be why I noticed the movement; maybe if I'd been preoccupied with something else, if the kitchen hadn't been quiet, if I hadn't been alone in there, I wouldn't have been attentive enough. But I was alone, and calm, and empty. So I was able to take it in . . . In the split second while I saw the stem and the bud drop to the counter I intuited the essence of Beauty.

As a society we certainly equate speed with smarts. Think fast. Are you quick-witted? A quick study? A whiz kid? Even Merriam-Webster bluntly informs us that slowness is “the quality of lacking intelligence or quickness of mind.” But we also recognize something counter-intuitive about accepting full-stop that people who react faster are smarter. That’s why, even though athletic training improves reaction time, we wouldn’t scout for the next Einstein at a basketball game. Intelligence probably has a lot to do with making fast connections, but it surely has just as much to do with making the right connections.

Atheism will appeal to psychology and sociology to explain human behavior, which is legitimate, but what explains human psychology? Atheism can only find explanatory power in evolution such that the mind is - paradoxically - a mindless organ that is forced to act according to its chemistry and cannot act otherwise. The fact that humans are capable of recognizing depravity in others, are offended by it, seek to reform it, feel guilt, and are capable of redemptive behavior all speak against this explanation. The fact that humans are capable of meta-cognition - thinking about thinking - and are therefore able to postulate their own mindlessness is counter-intuitive to say the least.

I for many years after my initial diagnosis was reluctant to take my medications as prescribed. Why was I so unwilling? Why did it take having to go through more episodes of mania, followed by long suicidal depressions, before I would take lithium in a medically sensible way? Some of my reluctance, no doubt, stemmed from a fundamental denial that what I had was a real disease. This is a common reaction that follows, rather counter-intuitively, in the wake of early episodes of manic-depressive illness. Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one’s notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.

Jesus walked a path of "suffering servanthood." We Christians say glibly that we are "saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus" but seem to understand this as some kind of heavenly transaction on his part, instead of an earthly transformation on his and our part. We need to deeply trust and allow both our own dyings and our own certain resurrections, just as Jesus did! This is the full pattern of transformation. If we trust both, we are indestructible. That is how Jesus "saves" us from meaninglessness, cynicism, hatred, and violence--which is indeed death. God is Light, yet this full light is hidden in darkness so only the sincere seeker finds it. It seems we all must go into darkness to see the light, which is counter-intuitive for the ego. Our age and culture resists this language of "descent." We made Christianity, instead, into a religion of "ascent," where Jesus became a self-help guru instead of a profound wisdom-guide who really transformed our mind and heart. Reason, medicine, wealth, technology, and speed (all good in themselves) have allowed us to avoid the quite normal and ordinary "path of the fall" as the way to transform the separate and superior self into a much larger identity that we call God.

Another motive [to commit fraud] may be the fraudster’s pathologically mistaken views on what science is about. The immunologist and Nobelist Sir Peter Medawar has argued, perhaps counter-intuitively, that scientists who commit fraud care too much about the truth, but that their idea of what’s true has become disconnected from reality. ‘I believe,’ he wrote, ‘that the most important incentive to scientific fraud is a passionate belief in the truth and significance of a theory or hypothesis which is disregarded or frankly not believed by the majority of scientists – colleagues who must accordingly be shocked into recognition of what the offending scientist believes to be a self-evident truth.’103 The physicist David Goodstein agrees: ‘Injecting falsehoods into the body of science is rarely, if ever, the purpose of those who perpetrate fraud,’ he suggests. ‘They almost always believe that they are injecting a truth into the scientific record … but without going through all the trouble that the real scientific method demands.’104 104. Medawar, The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice , p. 197. 103. David Goodstein, On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010): p. 2.

A well-known geneticist and an outspoken evolutionist, Richard C. Lewontin from Harvard University, confesses that he is "first and foremost a materialist and then a scientist": It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, so we cannot allow a Divine [intervention]… These are explicit statements that Darwinism is a dogma kept alive just for the sake of adherence to materialism. This dogma maintains that there is no being save matter. Therefore, it argues that inanimate, unconscious matter created life. It insists that millions of different living species (e.g., birds, fish, giraffes, tigers, insects, trees, flowers, whales, and human beings) originated as a result of the interactions between matter such as pouring rain, lightning flashes, and so on, out of inanimate matter. This is a precept contrary both to reason and science. Yet Darwinists continue to defend it just so as "not to allow a Divine intervention.

The mythical ‘butterfly effect’ does exist, but we don’t spend enough time butterfly hunting. Here are some recent butterfly effect discoveries, from my own experience: A website adds a single extra option to its checkout procedure – and increases sales by $300m per year. An airline changes the way in which flights are presented – and sells £8m more of premium seating per year. A software company makes a seemingly inconsequential change to call-centre procedure – and retains business worth several million pounds. A publisher adds four trivial words to a call-centre script – and doubles the rate of conversion to sales. A fast-food outlet increases sales of a product by putting the price . . . up. All these disproportionate successes were, to an economist, entirely illogical. All of them worked. And all of them, apart from the first, were produced by a division of my advertising agency, Ogilvy, which I founded to look for counter-intuitive solutions to problems. We discovered that problems almost always have a plethora of seemingly irrational solutions waiting to be discovered, but that nobody is looking for them; everyone is too preoccupied with logic to look anywhere else. We also found, rather annoyingly, that the success of this approach did not always guarantee repeat business; it is difficult for a company, or indeed a government, to request a budget for the pursuit of such magical solutions, because a business case has to look logical.

I’m going to sleep now,” she said in a strangled voice. “Alone,” she added, and his face whitened as if she had slapped him. During his entire adult life Ian had relied almost as much on his intuition as on his intellect, and at that moment he didn’t want to believe in the explanation they were both offering. His wife did not want him in her bed; she recoiled from his touch; she had been away for two consecutive nights; and-more alarming than any of that-guilt and fear were written all over her pale face. “Do you know what a man thinks,” he said in a calm voice that belied the pain streaking through him, “when his wife stays away at night and doesn’t want him in her bed when she does return?” Elizabeth shook her head. “He thinks,” Ian said dispassionately, “that perhaps someone else has been taking his place in it.” Fury sent bright flags of color to her pale cheeks. “You’re blushing, my dear,” Ian said in an awful voice. “I am furious!” she countered, momentarily forgetting that she was confronting a madman. His stunned look was replaced almost instantly by an expression of relief and then bafflement. “I apologize, Elizabeth.” “Would you p-lease get out of here!” Elizabeth burst out in a final explosion of strength. “Just go away and let me rest. I told you I was tired. And I don’t see what right you have to be so upset! We had a bargain before we married-I was to be allowed to live my life without interference, and quizzing me like this is interference!” Her voice broke, and after another narrowed look he strode out of the room. Numb with relief and pain, Elizabeth crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up under her chin, but not even their luxurious warmth could still the alternating chills and fever that quaked through her. Several minutes later a shadow crossed her bed, and she almost screamed with terror before she realized it was Ian, who had entered silently though the connecting door of their suite. Since she’d gasped aloud when she saw him, it was useless to pretend she was sleeping. In silent dread she watched him walking toward her bed. Wordlessly he sat down beside her, and she realized there was a glass in his hand. He put it on the bedside table, then he reached behind her to prop up her pillows, leaving Elizabeth no choice but to sit up and lean back against them. “Drink this,” he instructed in a calm tone. “What is it?” she asked suspiciously. “It’s brandy. It will help you sleep.” He watched while she sipped it, and when he spoke again there was a tender smile in his voice. “Since we’ve ruled out another man as the explanation for all this, I can only assume something has gone wrong at Havenhurst. Is that it?” Elizabeth seized on that excuse as if it were manna from heaven. “Yes,” she whispered, nodding vigorously. Leaning down, he pressed a kiss on her forehead and said teasingly, “Let me guess-you discovered the mill overcharged you?” Elizabeth thought she would die of the sweet torment when he continued tenderly teasing her about being thrifty. “Not the mill? Then it was the baker, and he refused to give you a better price for buying two loaves instead of one.” Tears swelled behind her eyes, treacherously close to the surface, and Ian saw them. “That bad?” he joked.

We then reached a fork in the valley. Should we go left or right? Dad called it left. I had a very powerful intuition that right was the choice we should make. Dad insisted left. I insisted right. It was a fifty-fifty call and he relented. Within two hundred yards we stumbled across a snowy track through the woods and followed it excitedly. Within a mile it came out on a mountain road, and within ten minutes we had flagged down a lift from a car heading up the hill in the darkness. We had found salvation, and I was beat. The car dropped us off at the gates of the garrison thirty minutes later. It was, by then, late into the night, but I was suddenly buzzing with energy and excitement. The fatigue had gone. Dad knew that I had made the right call up there--if we had chosen left we would still be trudging into the unknown. I felt so proud. In truth it was probably luck, but I learned another valuable lesson that night: Listen to the quiet voice inside. Intuition is the noise of the mind. As we tromped back through the barracks, though, we noticed there was an unusual amount of activity for the early hours of a weekday morning. It soon became very clear why. First a sergeant appeared, followed by another soldier, and then we were ushered into the senior officers’ block. There was my uncle, standing in uniform looking both tired and serious. I started to break out into a big smile. So did Dad. Well, I was excited. We had cheated a slow, lingering hypothermic death, lost together in the mountains. We were alive. Our enthusiasm was countered by the immortal words from my uncle, the brigadier, saying: “I wouldn’t smile if I was you…” He continued, “The entire army mountain rescue team is currently out scouring the mountains for you, on foot and in the air with the search-and-rescue helicopter. I hope you have a good explanation.” We didn’t, of course, save that we had been careless, and we had got lucky; but that’s life sometimes. And the phrase: “I wouldn’t smile if I was you,” has gone down into Grylls family folklore.

Positive arguments for the natural possibility of absent qualia have not been as prevalent as arguments for inverted qualia, but they have been made. The most detailed presentation of these arguments is given by Block (1978). These arguments almost always have the same form. They consist in the exhibition of a realization of our functional organization in some unusual medium, combined with an appeal to intuition. It is pointed out, for example, that the organization of our brain might be simulated by the people of China or even mirrored in the economy of Bolivia. If we got every person in China to simulate a neuron (we would need to multiply the population by ten or one hundred, but no matter), and equipped them with radio links to simulate synaptic connections, then the functional organization would be there. But surely, says the argument, this baroque system would not be conscious! There is a certain intuitive force to this argument. Many people have a strong feeling that a system like this is simply the wrong sort of thing to have a conscious experience. Such a “group mind” would seem to be the stuff of a science-fiction tale, rather than the kind of thing that could really exist. But there is only an intuitive force. This certainly falls far short of a knockdown argument. Many have pointed out that while it may be intuitively implausible that such a system should give rise to experience, it is equally intuitively implausible that a brain should give rise to experience! Whoever would have thought that this hunk of gray matter would be the sort of thing that could produce vivid subjective experiences? And yet it does. Of course this does not show that a nation's population could produce a mind, but it is a strong counter to the intuitive argument that it would not. . . . Once we realize how tightly a specification of functional organization constrains the structure of a system, it becomes less implausible that even the population of China could support conscious experience if organized appropriately. If we take our image of the population, speed it up by a factor of a million or so, and shrink it into an area the size of a head, we are left with something that looks a lot like a brain, except that it has homunculi—tiny people—where a brain would have neurons. On the face of it, there is not much reason to suppose that neurons should do any better a job than homunculi in supporting experience.

This brings me to an objection to integrated information theory by the quantum physicist Scott Aaronson. His argument has given rise to an instructive online debate that accentuates the counterintuitive nature of some IIT's predictions. Aaronson estimates phi.max for networks called expander graphs, characterized by being both sparsely yet widely connected. Their integrated information will grow indefinitely as the number of elements in these reticulated lattices increases. This is true even of a regular grid of XOR logic gates. IIT predicts that such a structure will have high phi.max. This implies that two-dimensional arrays of logic gates, easy enough to build using silicon circuit technology, have intrinsic causal powers and will feel like something. This is baffling and defies commonsense intuition. Aaronson therefor concludes that any theory with such a bizarre conclusion must be wrong. Tononi counters with a three-pronged argument that doubles down and strengthens the theory's claim. Consider a blank featureless wall. From the extrinsic perspective, it is easily described as empty. Yet the intrinsic point of view of an observer perceiving the wall seethes with an immense number of relations. It has many, many locations and neighbourhood regions surrounding these. These are positioned relative to other points and regions - to the left or right, above or below. Some regions are nearby, while others are far away. There are triangular interactions, and so on. All such relations are immediately present: they do not have to be inferred. Collectively, they constitute an opulent experience, whether it is seen space, heard space, or felt space. All share s similar phenomenology. The extrinsic poverty of empty space hides vast intrinsic wealth. This abundance must be supported by a physical mechanism that determines this phenomenology through its intrinsic causal powers. Enter the grid, such a network of million integrate-or-fire or logic units arrayed on a 1,000 by 1,000 lattice, somewhat comparable to the output of an eye. Each grid elements specifies which of its neighbours were likely ON in the immediate past and which ones will be ON in the immediate future. Collectively, that's one million first-order distinctions. But this is just the beginning, as any two nearby elements sharing inputs and outputs can specify a second-order distinction if their joint cause-effect repertoire cannot be reduced to that of the individual elements. In essence, such a second-order distinction links the probability of past and future states of the element's neighbours. By contrast, no second-order distinction is specified by elements without shared inputs and outputs, since their joint cause-effect repertoire is reducible to that of the individual elements. Potentially, there are a million times a million second-order distinctions. Similarly, subsets of three elements, as long as they share input and output, will specify third-order distinctions linking more of their neighbours together. And on and on. This quickly balloons to staggering numbers of irreducibly higher-order distinctions. The maximally irreducible cause-effect structure associated with such a grid is not so much representing space (for to whom is space presented again, for that is the meaning of re-presentation?) as creating experienced space from an intrinsic perspective.

Article 10: Whether symbolic logic is superior to Aristotelian logic for philosophizing? Objection 1 : It seems that it is, for it is a modern development, and would not have become popular if it were not superior. In fact, 99% of all formal logic textbooks in print today use symbolic rather than Aristotelian logic. Objection 2: It is as superior in efficiency to Aristotelian logic as Arabic numerals to Roman numerals, or a computer to an abacus. Objection 3: Aristotelian logic presupposes metaphysical and epistemological realism, which are no longer universally accepted. Symbolic logic is ideologically neutral. It is like mathematics not only in efficiency but also in that it carries less “philosophical baggage.” On the contrary , the authority of common sense is still on the side of Aristotelian rather than symbolic logic. But common sense is the origin, basis, and foundation of all further refinements of reason, including symbolic logic; and a branch should not contradict its trunk, an upper story should not contradict its foundation. All philosophical systems, including symbolic logic, since they are refinements of, begin with, and depend on the validity of common sense, even while they greatly refine and expand this foundation, should not contradict it, as symbolic logic does. (See below.) I answer that at least two essential principles of symbolic logic contradict common sense: (1) the counter-intuitive “paradox of material implication,” according to which a false proposition materially implies any proposition, false as well as true, including contradictories (see Socratic Logic , pp. 266-369); and (2) the assumption that a particular proposition (like “some elves are evil”) claims more, not less, than a universal proposition (like “all elves are evil'’), since it is assumed to have “existential import” while a universal proposition is assumed to lack it, since symbolic logic assumes the metaphysical position (or “metaphysical baggage”) of Nominalism. See Socratic Logic , pp. 179-81, 262-63 and The Two Logics by Henry Veatch. Furthermore, no one ever actually argues in symbolic logic except professional philosophers. Its use coincides with the sudden decline of interest in philosophy among students. If you believe that is a coincidence, I have a nice timeshare in Florida that I would like to sell to you. Reply to Objection 1: Popularity is no index of truth. If it were, truth would change, and contradict itself, as popularity changed — including the truth of that statement. And thus it is self-contradictory. Reply to Objection 2: It is not more efficient in dealing with ordinary language. We never hear people actually argue any of the great philosophical questions in symbolic logic, but we hear a syllogism every few sentences. Reply to Objection 3: Symbolic logic is not philosophically neutral but presupposes Nominalism, as shown by the references in the “/ answer that ” above.

We find, counter-intuitively, that a small population correlates with shorter humans, and a larger population correlates with taller humans.2 This only makes sense in light of the FSM theory of gravity. With more people on earth today, there are fewer Noodly Appendages to go around, so we each receive less touching—pushing down toward the earth—and thus, with less force downward, we’re taller.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counter-intuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.

Karen, and so many like her, will go on that diet—even though she knows it’s counter to her eating-disorder recovery goals, and even though she knows how unlikely it is to make her feel better. She’ll follow the new plan and cut out a new round of foods, because she’s still looking for what we all seek: A way to feed ourselves that makes sense. That feels simple and right. That doesn’t make us feel guilty about everything we put into our bodies. We no longer trust ourselves to know this intuitively, and maybe some of us never did. So instead, we’re searching for something external: an expert we can trust, a set of rules to follow, a literal recipe for how to develop this basic life skill. Many people within the wellness industry are searching for the same thing. But in the meantime, they’re happy to sell us their new plan.

And the truth is, quite often God's desire for us will run against the prevailing current. 'Get off the next exit.' His guidance sometimes (often?) seems counter-intuitive.

So much about DevOps is counter intuitive, contrary to common practice, and even controversial. If production deployments are problematic, how on earth can deploying more frequently be a good idea? How can reducing the number of controls actually increase the security of our applications and environments? And can technology really learn anything from manufacturing?

You can count on two hands, maybe one, the number of species that mate for life. Love, the romantic kind, the obsessive kind, and sometimes even the unconditional kind, is counter-intuitive to the propagation of the species and survival, and yet when it's right and pure, it can be the one thing above all else that makes every second of your life worth living" -Lucy

The connection between writing and dancing has been much on my mind recently: it’s a channel I want to keep open. It feels a little neglected — compared to, say, the relationship between music and prose — maybe because there is something counter-intuitive about it. But for me the two forms are close to each other: I feel dance has something to tell me about what I do.

Imagine the cocktail party raconteur who captivates his listeners with some adventure story while taking dramatic sips from a gin martini. Chances are he is not a writer. This seems counter-intuitive. After all, writers create characters that are so darn interesting. A good writer can hold you spellbound through a two-hundred page story. Why aren’t all writers scintillating, life-of-the-party types in person? Some are. But many are not. Part of the answer is that writers are not required to think on their feet. Spur-of-the-moment wittiness is a necessary quality for improv actors, talk-show hosts, and politicians. But writers don’t think or work in real time. They create at their own pace, spending hours or days on clever dialogue, or crafting a scene in which they get to micro-manage every detail. Real life doesn’t work like that. And that’s okay. There is really only one place where a writer needs to be absolutely charming and irresistible; not at cocktail parties, not on television, not in front of a live audience -- but on paper.

Napoleon’s intuition was a mix of homeostatic pressure – strong urges felt whenever he saw opportunity or felt threatened – followed by his default responses through entrained behavior over the years as an artillery officer and commander, and likewise matching patterns of unfamiliar situations to previously known situations.   In order to have secured France’s place in the world, Napoleon would have needed to start acting against his intuition at some point, and taking a counter-intuitive position (to him) in regards to opportunities and threats.

The most important things in life rarely come with urgency. It may seem counter intuitive, but the most important things in life are easily pushed to the back burner.

One of my rules in consulting is simple: never solve the problem I am asked to solve. Why such a counter-intuitive rule? Because, invariably, the problem I am asked to solve is not the real, fundamental, root problem.

The whole idea of: "Well, surely if you're going to make progress on this set of [science] puzzles, you will want to know everything everyone has done on the way there." [But] by the time you learn everything everyone has done on the way there you will have spent a huge amount of time and made no progress. And even worse, you will be entrained. You will be entrained in the thought process that got them stuck in the first place. And this all very counter-intuitive: Do you want to know everything that is known before you try to add anything? The answer is: You probably don't. You'll ask better questions [if you don't.] You'll ask some bad ones [too]. You'll ask some questions that other people have figured their way past, but you'll ask some good ones that nobody's asked yet and that's where the breakthroughs live.

To work less and make more, all you need to do is move the needle on one metric: Effective Hourly Rate (EHR). Here’s how to calculate your EHR: Take the amount of revenue you make in a month and subtract your costs. What you have left is your monthly profit. (If you have a job, then your wage is your profit.) Divide your profit by the number of hours you worked in the month to get it. The number you have now is your EHR. Let’s say you make $20,000 a month in revenue, and your fixed and variable costs come to $15,000. That means your profit will be $5,000. If you work 250 hours a month to achieve that profit then: $5,000/250 = EHR $20/hour

What he tells them is unexpected, counter-intuitive. In effect he says this: “You know what your parents suffered. You have heard about their slavery in Egypt. You yourselves have known what it is to wander in the wilderness without a home or shelter or security. You may think those were the greatest trials, but you are wrong. You are about to face a harder trial. The real test is security and contentment

Compare Richard Lewontin, reviewing Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World in the New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997: “It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

26. In intimate relationships is your inability to linger over conversations an impediment? 27. Are you always on the go, even when you don’t really want to be? 28. More than most people, do you hate waiting in line? 29. Are you constitutionally incapable of reading the directions first? 30. Do you have a hair-trigger temper? 31. Are you constantly having to sit on yourself to keep from blurting out the wrong thing? 32. Do you like to gamble? 33. Do you feel like exploding inside when someone has trouble getting to the point? 34. Were you hyperactive as a child? 35. Are you drawn to situations of high intensity? 36. Do you often try to do the hard things rather than what comes easily to you? 37. Are you particularly intuitive? 38. Do you often find yourself involved in a situation without having planned it at all? 39. Would you rather have your teeth drilled by a dentist than make or follow a list? 40. Do you chronically resolve to organize your life better only to find that you’re always on the brink of chaos? 41. Do you often find that you have an itch you cannot scratch, an appetite for something “more” and you’re not sure what it is? 42. Would you describe yourself as hypersexual? 43. One man who turned out to have adult ADD presented with this unusual triad of symptoms: cocaine abuse, frequent reading of pornography, and an addiction to crossword puzzles. Can you understand him, even if you do not have those symptoms? 44. Would you consider yourself an addictive personality? 45. Are you more flirtatious than you really mean to be? 46. Did you grow up in a chaotic, boundaryless family? 47. Do you find it hard to be alone? 48. Do you often counter depressive moods by some sort of potentially harmful compulsive behavior such as overworking, overspending, overdrinking, or overeating? 49. Do you have dyslexia? 50. Do you have a family history of ADD or hyperactivity?

The longstanding worries about the “interpretation” of quantum mechanics are now settled: we are dealing with information, packets of bits, rather than particles and waves with weird, counter-intuitive properties.   Placing information at the root of existence resolves a number of longstanding puzzles, in domains as far apart as quantum mechanics and philosophy.

A tangled ball of string trying to lead a string that has long ago untangled itself is counter-productive and detrimental to the world. It's like attempting to question or guide one whose intuition is already in-tune with his heart and those around him. He communicates with something that is greater than him and so his processes and decisions are unknowable and confusing to others. Meddling only creates static in the clarity of his natural radar. It's better to seek those who are acting on ignorance, delusions, and pressure. The great ability of a true guide therefore lies in the ability to discern who is in need and who isn't. The great test being to confront those who are most difficult to confront. Those who have lost their ability to feel.

It is counter-productive and even detrimental to the world to attempt to question or guide one whose intuition is in-tune with his heart and those around him. He communicates with a force that is greater than him, and so his processes and decisions are unknowable and confusing to that of lower men. For those who can lower themselves to think that one such as he does not know what he was or is doing is shameful. Their meddling only creates static in opposition to the pre-existing clarity of his natural radar. It is advised that these 'guides' instead communicate with those whose influencers come mainly from lack of experience, the mind, and externals. Because the Magi-Poet-Warrior is not it. The great ability of a true guide therefore lies in the ability to discern who is truly in need and who isn't – the great test being to confront those who are most difficult to confront. Otherwise, it is just a tangled ball of string trying to lead a string that has long ago already untangled itself.

A tangled ball of string trying to lead a string that has long ago already untangled itself is counter-productive and detrimental to the world. It's like attempting to question or guide one whose intuition is already in-tune with his heart and those around him. He communicates with something that is greater than him and so his processes and decisions are unknowable and confusing to others. Meddling only creates static in the clarity of his natural radar. It's better to seek those who are acting on ignorance, delusions, and pressure. The great ability of a true guide therefore lies in the ability to discern who is in need and who isn't. The great test being to confront those who are most difficult to confront. Those who have lost their ability to feel.

It is counter-productive and even detrimental to the world to attempt to question or guide one whose intuition is in-tune with his heart and those around him. He communicates with a force that is greater than him, and so his processes and decisions are unknowable and confusing to that of lower men. For those who can lower themselves to think that one such as he does not know what he was or is doing is shameful. Their meddling only creates static in opposition to the pre-existing clarity of his natural radar. It is advised that these 'guides' instead communicate with those whose influencers come mainly from lack of experience, the mind, and externals. Because the Naked One is not it. The great ability of a true guide therefore lies in the ability to discern who is truly in need and who isn't – the great test being to confront those who are most difficult to confront. Those who have lost their ability to feel. Otherwise, it is just a tangled ball of string trying to lead a string that has long ago already untangled itself.

It is counter-productive and even detrimental to attempt to guide an individual whose intuition and heart are unbound, for he is able to connect to and act on something greater to him and so his processes are unknowable and confusing to that of lower men. Guides become meddling and unnecessary interference to the clarity of his natural radar. Those whose influencers come mainly from the mind and externals are the ones who need the guides more.

It is counter-productive and even detrimental to the world to attempt to question or guide one whose intuition is in-tune with his heart and those around him, for he is able to act according to a force that is greater than him and his processes and decisions are unknowable and confusing to that of lower men. For those who can lower themselves to think that one such as he does not know what he was doing is shameful. Guides whose meddling only serves to create static interference opposed to the clarity of his natural radar are advised to communicate with those whose influencers come mainly from lack of experience, the mind, and externals. The great work of true guides, the Naked Ones, there lie in the ability to confront those who are most difficult to confront and who live on illusions. Otherwise, it is just a tangled ball of string trying to lead a string that has long ago already untangled itself.

It is counter-productive and even detrimental to the world to attempt to question or guide one whose intuition is in-tune with his heart and those around him. He communicates with a force that is greater than him, and so his processes and decisions are unknowable and confusing to that of lower men. For those who can lower themselves to think that one such as he does not know what he was or is doing is shameful. Their meddling only creates static in opposition to the pre-existing clarity of his natural radar. It is advised that these 'guides' instead communicate with those whose influencers come mainly from lack of experience, the mind, and externals. Because the Magi-Poet-Warrior is not it. The great ability of a true guide therefore lies in the ability to discern who is truly in need and who isn't – the great test being to confront those who are most difficult to confront. Those who have lost their ability to feel. Otherwise, it is just a tangled ball of string trying to lead a string that has long ago already untangled itself.

It is counter-productive and even detrimental to the world to attempt to question or guide one whose intuition is in-tune with his heart and those around him. He communicates with a force that is greater than him, and so his processes and decisions are commonly unknowable and confusing to that of lower men. It is shameful for those who can lower themselves to think that one such as he does not know what he was or is doing. Their meddling only creates static which is in opposition to the clarity of his natural radar. For these 'guides', it is advised that they instead communicate with those whose influencers come mainly from lack of experience, the mind, and externals. The great work of true guides therefore lie in the ability to confront those who are most difficult to confront and feed off of or have fallen to illusions. Otherwise, it is just a tangled ball of string trying to lead a string that has long ago already untangled itself.

It is counter-productive and even detrimental to the world to attempt to question or guide one whose intuition is in-tune with his heart and those around him. He communicates with a force that is greater than him, and so his processes and decisions are commonly unknowable and confusing to that of lower men. For those who can lower themselves to think that one such as he does not know what he was or is doing is shameful. Their meddling only creates static which is in opposition to the existing clarity of his natural radar. It is advised that these 'guides' instead communicate with those whose influencers come mainly from lack of experience, the mind, and externals. The great work of true guides therefore lie in the ability to confront those who are most difficult to confront and the test of the true guide is to discern who is in need and who isn't. Otherwise, it is just a tangled ball of string trying to lead a string that has long ago already untangled itself.

It is counter-productive and even detrimental to the world to attempt to question or guide one whose intuition is in-tune with his heart and those around him. He communicates with a force that is greater than him, and so his processes and decisions are unknowable and confusing to that of lower men. For those who can lower themselves to think that one such as he does not know what he was or is doing is shameful. Their meddling only creates static in opposition to the pre-existing clarity of his natural radar. It is advised that these 'guides' instead communicate with those whose influencers come mainly from lack of experience, the mind, and externals. Because the Naked One is not it. The great ability of a true guide therefore lies in the ability to discern who is truly in need and who isn't – the great test being to confront those who are most difficult to confront – those who have lost their ability to feel. Otherwise it is just a tangled ball of string trying to lead a string that has long ago already untangled itself.

Though it may seem counter intuitive to our inner perfectionist, recognizing our mistakes as valuable lessons (not failures) helps us lay the groundwork for later success.

The man who draws first sparks an unconscious response from a trained opponent, who tends to draw more smoothly and with greater speed. It is counter-intuitive, but as Japanese kendo fighters will affirm, the instinctive reaction after thousands of hours of training is often faster than a blow resulting from a controlled decision. On

Some of the ways we found creativity – the brainstorm, for instance – seemed completely counter-intuitive to where I knew my best ideas came from. These came (and still do come) in the quiet moments on my own, when I wasn’t trying, like during long flights, cycling or the shower.

The subject of the fourth essay, ‘Probability as a Guide to Life’, is the connection between means–end reasoning and probability. The appropriateness of a choice of means clearly depends on the probability with which it will lead to desired results. But what kind of probability should matter here? One natural answer is chance, or objective single-case probability: on this view, an ideally rational agent should pick that action which maximizes the objective single-case probability of desired results. Helen Beebee and I agree that some notion of objective probability is needed here, but argue that the crucial notion is not chance, but knowledge-relative probability, by which we mean the objective probability of results relative to those circumstances that the agent knows about. At first this answer might seem highly counter-intuitive. But we show that it has great theoretical advantages over the alternative chance principle, in that it allows a uniform account of matters which would otherwise require separate explanation

This may sound counter intuitive, but I deeply believe that the path to happiness in a relationship is not just about finding someone who you think is going to make you happy. Rather, the reverse is equally true; the path to happiness is about finding someone who you want to make happy, someone whose happiness is worth devoting yourself to.

There is no explaining the "pure" experience. There is only the completely unwarranted presupposition that others should others should somehow "understand" that it has taken place. but the judgement whether a "pure" rather than a secondary "experience" has actually occurred can, by definition, only be self-referential.&that would be in order if, simultaneously, there were not the presumption that something objectively meaningful about phenomenal reality had been illuminated.Or, putting it another way,the problem is not what James Joyce termed the "epiphany," the momentary glimpse of meaning experienced by an individual, but rather the refusal to define its existential "place" or recognize its explanatory limits....Insisting upon the absolute character of revelatory truth obviously generates a division between the saved & the damned.There arises the simultaneous desire to abolish blasphemy and bring the heathen into the light.Not every person in quest of the "pure experience,"of course,is a religious fanatic or obsessed with issues of identity.Making existential sense of reality through the pure experience,feeling a sense of belonging, is a serious matter & a legitimate undertaking.But the more the preoccupation with the purity of the experience, it only follows,the more fanatical the believer. In political terms,therefore,the problem is less the lack of intensity in the lived life of the individual than the increasing attempts by individuals and groups to insist that their own,particular,deeply felt existential or religious or aesthetic experience should be privileged in the public realm.Indeed, this runs directly counter to the Enlightenment.... Different ideas have a different role in different spheres of social action.Subjectivity has a pivotal role to play in discussing existential or aesthetic experience while the universal subject is necessary understanding of citizenship or the rule of law.From such a perspective,indeed,the seemingly irresolvable conflict between subjectivity and the subject becomes illusory: it is instead a matter of what should assume primacy in what realm....From the standpoint of a socially constructed subjectivity,however, only members of a particular group can have the appropriate intuition or "experience," to make judgements about their culture or their politics...This stance now embraced by so many on the left,however, actually derives from arguments generated first by the Counter-Enlightenment & then the radical right during the Dreyfus Affair.These reactionaries, too, claimed that rather than introduce "grand narratives" or "totalizing ambitions" or "universal" ideas of justice, intellectuals should commit themselves to the particular groups with whose unique discourses and experiences they, as individuals, are intimately and existentially familiar.The "pure"-or less contaminated- experience of group members was seen as providing them a privileged insight into a particular form of oppression. Criticism from the "outsider" loses its value and questions concerning the adjudication of differences between groups are never faced, ...Not every person who believes in the "pure experience" -again-was an anti-Semite or fascist.But it is interesting how the "pure experience," with its vaunted contempt for the "public" and its social apathy,can be manipulated in the realm of politics.Utopia doesn't appear only in the idea of a former "golden age" located somewhere in the past or the vision of future paradise...history has shown the danger of turning "reason" into an enemy and condemning universal ideals in the name of some parochial sense of "place" rooted in a particular community, Or, put another way, where power matters the "pure" experience is never quite so pure and no "place" is sacrosanct.Better to be a bit more modest when confronting social reality and begin the real work of specifying conditions under which each can most freely pursue his or her existential longing &find a place in the sun.

Reducing physical aggression One of your son’s really annoying habits might be a tendency to hit or kick or push or grab when he is frustrated or angry. This is quite typical behaviour for an impulsive, very physical boy. He can get overwhelmed by his upset feelings. He may aim his blows for maximum impact, or he may be lashing out indiscriminately, not really knowing what he is doing. Either way, for his own sake and for the sake of everyone around him, you want to help him develop better impulse-control. The more you talk about his hitting, the more your son will think of himself as someone who hits and someone who gets told off for it. Instead, I want you to Descriptively Praise him when he is not hitting, kicking, biting, pushing, etc. You might be thinking, ‘But when he’s not hitting it’s because he’s not even angry. He’s not even thinking of hitting, so why take a chance and remind him that he could be hitting right now?’ You might prefer to say nothing at all about his misbehaviour. I’m asking you to notice and mention the absence of the negative, which I know seems very counter-intuitive. And if the annoying behaviour is a recurring problem, you will need to notice and mention when he is not doing it wrong many times a day. At odd times throughout the day, even when he is not upset and therefore not even tempted to be aggressive, you could simply say:   You’re not hitting.   You’re keeping your arms and legs to yourself.   When the baby knocked down your tower, you screamed, but you didn’t hit or kick. That showed self-control.   When he is angry but not reacting physically, you could add, ‘You’re controlling yourself,’ or ‘You’re not hurting anyone,’ (and remember to keep your distance if you can see, or even just sense, that he is in a volatile mood and might become aggressive).

Yes, it is counter-intuitive to refrain from assisting a child!   But when we help a child to do something she might be able to do for herself, we are robbing her of a vital learning experience and ultimately not helping at all.

It is counter-productive and even detrimental to the world to attempt to question or guide one whose intuition is in-tune with his heart and those around him, for he acts according to a force that is greater than him, and so his processes and decisions are unknowable and confusing to that of lower men. For those who can lower themselves to think that one such as he does not know what he was doing is shameful. Guides whose meddling only serves to create static interference in opposition to the clarity of his natural radar are advised to communicate with those whose influencers come mainly from lack of experience, the mind, and externals. The great work of true guides, the Naked Ones, therefore lie in the ability to confront those who are most difficult to confront and who live on illusions. Otherwise, it is just a tangled ball of string trying to lead a string that has long ago already untangled itself.

It is counter-productive to attempt to guide an individual whose intuition and heart is unbound, for he is able to connect to something greater and thus whose actions and processes are unknown to that of lower men. Those whose influencers from mostly from the mind and externals are the ones who need the guides more.

I read a lot. Most recently I’ve been reading a lot of psychology books. I’m really fascinated by how our minds work and why we make the choices we do. So much of it is counter-intuitive.

A reality of personal productivity is that humans are not great at estimating the time required for cognitive endeavors. We’re wired to understand the demands of tangible efforts, like crafting a hand ax, or gathering edible plants. When it comes to planning pursuits for which we lack physical intuition, however, we’re guessing more than we realize, leading us to gravitate toward best-case scenarios for how long things might take. We seem to seek the thrill that comes from imagining a wildly ambitious timeline during our planning: “Wow, if I could finish four chapters this fall, I’d really be ahead of schedule!” It feels good in the moment but sets us up for scrambling and disappointment in the days that follow. By deploying a blanket policy of doubling these initial estimates, you can counter this instinct toward unjustified optimism. The result: plans that can be completed at a more leisurely pace. The fear here, of course, is that by doubling these timelines, you’ll drastically reduce what you accomplish. But your original plans were never realistic or sustainable in the first place.

A reality of personal productivity is that humans are not great at estimating the time required for cognitive endeavors. We’re wired to understand the demands of tangible efforts, like crafting a hand ax, or gathering edible plants. When it comes to planning pursuits for which we lack physical intuition, however, we’re guessing more than we realize, leading us to gravitate toward best-case scenarios for how long things might take. We seem to seek the thrill that comes from imagining a wildly ambitious timeline during our planning: “Wow, if I could finish four chapters this fall, I’d really be ahead of schedule!” It feels good in the moment but sets us up for scrambling and disappointment in the days that follow. By deploying a blanket policy of doubling these initial estimates, you can counter this instinct toward unjustified optimism. The result: plans that can be completed at a more leisurely pace. The fear here, of course, is that by doubling these timelines, you’ll drastically reduce what you accomplish. But your original plans were never realistic or sustainable in the first place.

Figure 2.1 Cortical connections over two years adapted from Conel The top row shows the baby’s cortex at birth, then at one month and at three months. They all look about the same, don’t they? But look what happens at six months (bottom left box): the number of cell bodies remains the same, but the number of connections has multiplied exponentially. The connections grow so quickly in the first three years of life that neuroscientists call it neural exuberance. Neural exuberance! The name is well earned: The baby’s brain makes 24 million new connections every minute, and this continues for the first three years of life. Each neuron may be connected to 1,000 other neurons — that multiplies out to 100 trillion possible connections between neurons, more than the number of stars in the universe. This high level of connectivity between brain cells leads to the cortex of a three-year-old being twice as thick as an adult’s! As connections are created, new abilities emerge. For example, when connections grow in Broca’s area — speech production — around six months, then children begin to speak. Around nine months of age, the frontal areas (behind the forehead) become more interconnected, and that’s when most children develop object permanence: knowing that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight. Before object permanence develops, when Mom is out of sight she’s no longer in the baby’s universe. This is why young babies are inconsolable when Mom leaves. Once they start to develop object permanence, babies can hold on to an internal image of Mom. This is about the age that babies play peek-a-boo. Mom disappears when she puts the blanket over her head, but the nine-month-old knows Mom’s still there even if he can’t see her. The infant tests his “knowledge” when he pulls the blanket off and sees — sure enough! —Mom really is there! What is the use of so many brain connections in the first three years of life? These connections are ready-made highways for information to travel along. The toddlers’ ability to quickly adapt and learn is possible because they have a vast number of brain connections available for making sense of the world. Thanks to neural exuberance, the child does not need to create connections on the spur of the moment to make meaning of each new experience; myriad connections are already there. Pruning of connections The number of connections remains high from age 3 until age 10, when the process of neural pruning begins. Connections that are being used remain; others get absorbed back into the neuron. It’s similar to pruning a bush. After pruning, individual branches get thicker, fruit is more abundant, and the whole bush gets fuller. This seems a little counter-intuitive, but pruning works because it allows the plant’s limited resources to go to its strongest parts; water and nutrients are no longer wasted on spindly branches and dried-out roots. Similarly, when unused brain connections are pruned, neural resources are more available for brain areas that are being used. This results in a more useful and efficient brain that’s tailor-made to meet each individual’s needs. This process of pruning occurs in all brain areas. Figure 2.2 presents findings published by Sowell and associates. They measured Magnetic Resonance Imaging in 176 normal subjects from age 7 to 87 years. The x-axes in these graphs present years from 10 to 90 years. Notice there is a common pattern of decreasing connections in all brain areas. In some brain areas this change is steeper, such as in frontal areas, but is flatter in other areas such as temporal areas in the left hemisphere.

True success isn’t being at the beach with your laptop. It’s being at the beach without your laptop.

Some people avoid the possibility of rejection by never actually making an offer. I think it stems back to the caveman era, where being rejected by your tribe meant you were probably going to die.

It is not enough simply to point out that Firestone insisted that technology alone can never “liberate” social relations. Such a response leaves unanswered the question of why she has been so often portrayed as saying that it can. Ironically, the common misreading of Firestone on this point only confirms one of her manifesto’s central claims — that the “dialectic of sex” cannot even be fully comprehended in a society in which questioning its a priori status is so counter- intuitive as to appear “insane.” It thus remains important to ask what the positioning of Firestone as a naïve technological determinist and the frequent chastisement of (an oversimplified version of) her claim that new reproductive technologies could bring about women’s liberation reveals about the evolution of feminist debate over reproduction and technology?

The Value of Kanban is Counter-Intuitive

Often, it is not that we want to shame someone; it is just a default, counter-intuitive response that needs to be guarded against.

Accept and love yourself just the way you are, even when it seems ridiculous, uncomfortable, and counter-intuitive. In fact, especially when it seems ridiculous, uncomfortable, and counter-intuitive.

The abstract concepts at the center of our oldest cognitive systems constitute a primordial 'blessing of abstraction,' counter to long-standing intuitions concerning what is learned or innate, and what is unique to our species or shared by other animals. For millennia, thinkers have supposed that knowledge begins with modality-specific sensations and culminates in abstract concepts only late in ontogeny and phylogeny. Multidisciplinary research in the developmental cognitive sciences turns this assumption on its head. Although we do not routinely articulate our abstract concepts, they are foundations for learning about things, places, and events at all ages and in a wide range of species. Ancient cognitive systems capture properties of the world that apply to all the diverse environments in which these creatures live.

...the more we give according to God's purpose, all the more we receive as well. This principle seems counter-intuitive, and if we think about it, supernatural economy is really only possible when we take our cue from an infinite God, who, by merely saying a word, created the stars and the heavens!

One did not need to know why the ovens were so ugly, so very ugly. A tragically burly insect eight feet tall and made out of rust. Who would want to cook with an oven such as this? Pulleys, plungers, grates and vents were the organs of the machine… The patients, all dead, were delivered on a stretcher-like apparatus. The air thick and warped with the magnetic heat of creation. Thence to the Chamber, where the bodies were stacked carefully and, in my view, counter-intuitively, with babies and children at the base of the pile, then the women and the elderly, and then the men. It was my stubborn belief that it would be better the other way round, because the little ones surely risked injury under that press of naked weight. But it worked. Sometimes, my face rippling peculiarly, with smiles and frowns, I would monitor proceedings through the viewing slit. There was usually a long wait while the gas was invisibly introduced by the ventilation grilles. The dead look so dead. Dead bodies have their own language.

We need to say ‘Yes’ to the things we love, that bring us joy, and are giving us the result we’d like to get. We need to say ‘No’ to the things we simply don’t want to do. We achieve this by putting up filters.

It was like the answer sheet a teacher uses to mark tests.

ACTION ITEMS TO INCREASE YOUR EHR Install time management software on your computer. Monitor how you’re spending your time. Adjust your workflow based on the report. Turn off all social media notifications (both emails and push notifications on your phone). Switch your phone to silent. Unsubscribe from any email newsletter that isn’t taking your business forward.

Opportunities are like waves. They come along all the time, but choosing the right one is critical. Which is why you should spend a few moments deciding what type of opportunity you want so you’ll recognise it when it arrives.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people’.

ACTION ITEMS TO INCREASE YOUR EHR Calculate your overall EHR (if you haven’t already done so). Calculate the EHR of each of your business activities/products/services. Identify your 4% activities/products/services. Identify the activities/products/services you need to delete. Identify activities you like doing, but could realistically be done by someone else. Identify the EHR you’ll use to filter all future opportunities and ideas. Apply that filter to all future opportunities and ideas.

A big mistake most business owners make is focusing too heavily on reducing costs. While it seems obvious, and is relatively easy to do, you can only reduce your costs by 100%. After that, there’s nothing more to gain.

The scope for paid communities is wide. You just need to find yourself a starving crowd.

How will you solve your target audience’s problem and help them get results? That’s your offer.