Even though we think we're getting a lot done, ironically, multitasking makes us demonstrably less efficient. Daniel Levitin More Quotes by Daniel Levitin More Quotes From Daniel Levitin Love is about feeling that there is something bigger than just ourselves and our own worries and existence. Whether it is love of another person, of country, of God, of an idea, love is fundamentally an intense devotion to this notion that something is bigger than us. Love is ultimately larger than friendship, comfort, ceremony, knowledge, or joy. Indeed, as the Four Wise Ones once said, it may be all you need. Daniel Levitin wiselove-iscountry Although I don't know Paul McCartney, a mutual friend told me that Paul was reading my book, This Is Your Brain on Music, and stopped after chapter two. McCartney said he was concerned that if he learned more about how he does what he does (as far as composing music), he may not be able to do it anymore! Daniel Levitin readingtwobook Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery. Daniel Levitin practiceclassyears The processing capacity of the conscious mind has been estimated at 120 bits per second. Daniel Levitin consciouscapacitymind No one alive today has a single ancestor in his or her past who died in infancy. We are the champions, my friend! Daniel Levitin championwinningpast In order to understand one person speaking to us, we need to process 60 bits of information per second. Daniel Levitin informationorderneeds The amount of scientific information we've discovered in the last twenty years is more than all the discoveries up to that point, from the beginning of language. Daniel Levitin twentiesdiscoveryyears Librarians are more important than ever before ... are uniquely qualified to help all of us separate the digital wheat from the chaff, to help us understand the reliability of the data we encounter. Daniel Levitin encountersdataimportant I have never seen a proton or electron spinning around it. I have never actually seen a chromosome. I trust that they exist because people who I trust tell me they do. Daniel Levitin people Americans spend more money on music than on sex or prescription drugs Daniel Levitin more-moneydrugsex For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies and cultures change. For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey "truth for now"--to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will be replaced by a new "truth," because that is the way science advances. Daniel Levitin artistsuccessfulmoving The first forms of writing emerged not for art, literature, or love, not for spiritual or liturgical purposes, but for business--all literature could be said to originate from sales receipts (sorry). Daniel Levitin spiritualsorryart We need to take a step back, and realize that not everything we encounter is true. You don't want to be gullibly accepting everything as true, but you don't want to be cynically rejecting everything as false. You want to take your time to evaluate the information. Daniel Levitin take-your-timerealizingaccepting Although it is easier to find information these days, it is easier than ever before to find misinformation, pseudo-facts, unsupported and fringe opinions, and the like. Children should be taught at an early age what constitutes evidence, how to detect biases or distortions in newspaper accounts, and that there exist hierarchies of information sources. In the medical field, for example, a controlled experiment published in a peer-reviewed journal is a better source than a blog by the Ginseng Growers Association, promoting the health benefits of their own product. Daniel Levitin peersagechildren The power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human. Daniel Levitin alivemeanart Those dabs of paint and lines become art when form and flow are created out of lower-level perceptual elements. When they combine harmoniously they give rise to perspective, foreground and background, and ultimately to emotion and other aesthetic attributes. Daniel Levitin perspectivegivingart When we have learned something, there's this thing called belief perseverance. Having learned something, we tend to cling to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Daniel Levitin evidenceperseverancebelief Another possibility is that evolution selected creativity in general as a marker of sexual fitness. Daniel Levitin possibilitycreativityevolution Similarly, dance is not just a raging sea of unrelated bodily movements; the relationship of those movements to one another is what creates integrity and integrality, a coherence and cohesion that the higher levels of our brain process. Daniel Levitin seabrainintegrity What makes a set of lines and colors into art is the relationship between this line and that one; the way one color or form echoes another in a different part of the canvas. Daniel Levitin echoescolorart
