People are misers of mental effort. If we don't have the interest or the capacity to look into the arguments, if the message isn't personally relevant, if we judge that we already know all we need to know about a topic, there is no reason to spend precious mental resources.

Kyle Hill

Categorized in : Look Judge People Effort

A rainbow is the product of physics working for your appreciation of beauty.

Kyle Hill

rainbow physics appreciation beauty

It's okay to take that reservoir of passion that you have and let it flow into whatever you love. Experiment, question, replicate, be critical, be nerdy, be yourself.

Kyle Hill

yourself you passion love

We tend to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs and ignore or discredit information that does not. This confirmation bias settles over our eyes like distorting spectacles for everything we look at.

Kyle Hill

eyes look ignore information

Thor is magical, yes, but it is the magic of reality. His hammer was crafted 'in the heart of a dying star,' but so were you! Most of the atoms that make you up are in fact the innards of a ball of gas in space that got so heavy that it exploded. Stars died so that you could live, as physicist Lawrence Krauss would say.

Kyle Hill

you space stars heart

Human atoms are the notes, their life the symphony.

Kyle Hill

human atoms notes life

Jesus walking on water is an allegory, not fluid mechanics. God destroying the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah is a warning, not a historical battle. Doubting Thomas is an example, not a person. The story of Noah, with all of its scientific and historical impossibilities, can be read the same way.

Kyle Hill

battle god walking water

What is basically just an IQ score has roots in education, socioeconomic status, genetics, and environmental factors. Looking at any one of these roots doesn't give you a full picture of the tree, but it does tell you that a tree is there.

Kyle Hill

you environmental education tree

Reality is on a delay. For you, nothing is now. Realizing this fact is unsettling. If we can only react to the past, how do we manage to navigate the present? It's easy to spiral into a treatise on free will while in the fetal position, overthinking our forever past.

Kyle Hill

nothing you reality past

Why would you envy a man who doesn't know the names of all the planets, is a 'high functioning' sociopath, and has no friends? Because Sherlock Holmes thinks in all the ways we wish we could.

Kyle Hill

you man friends wish

The story of Noah is self-contradictory, uncorroborated by independent historical evidence, and is generally at odds with everything we know about our planet's geology, biology, and species diversity.

Kyle Hill

story know biology diversity

I was in China when Pokemon fever hit, and I got it bad. But as I got older, I didn't stay with it. My binder full of rares has since disappeared. I have refused to play the other games like the newest 'Pokemon X/Y' out of some misplaced hipster angst.

Kyle Hill

stay bad fever play

By calling GMOs 'poison' and 'evil,' Bill Maher poisons the well of reasoned scientific discussion with ideologically driven fear mongering.

Kyle Hill

well poison evil fear

As any successful mad scientist will tell you, energy ain't free. Popular culture tends to forget this, instead focusing on the destructive capabilities of our finely crafted death rays without noting the massive energy expenditures required to use them.

Kyle Hill

you forget culture death

Given the weight of an Oscar statuette, one made out of solid gold would be worth $219,000. That twinkle in a winner's eye would be more than just a realization that he or she is a decent actor; it would be the joy of holding a chunk of metal worth a new Lamborghini.

Kyle Hill

winner eye gold joy

Whether we know it or not, each of our decisions is influenced by what we want to see or think.

Kyle Hill

see think know want

We are all cognitive misers. Our brains do not expend mental resources thoroughly examining problems when snap judgments will do.

Kyle Hill

mental problems will resources

Sherlock is a portrait of humanity - he takes nature's gift of thought and runs with it, bringing along all the human struggles, fears, and insecurities. He's the hero we could see ourselves being.

Kyle Hill

gift nature humanity hero

Dragons are basically our pipe-dreams of what birds would be if they still looked liked ancient dinosaurs but followed evolution's flight plan.

Kyle Hill

birds plan flight evolution

No matter how many times you've seen the movies and the TV shows that have a protagonist leaping in the path of a bullet, physics forbids such sacrifice. Because of a bullet's radical speed, you can't jump in front of it, but you could get in its way. It's not as dramatic, but it does save lives.

Kyle Hill

you sacrifice path way

Bullets are fast - even a 9-millimeter handgun launches lead at Mach 1. And the bigger the bullet gets, the more grains of gunpowder it carries, the faster it goes. Modern rifles can fling the small pieces of metal at half the velocity needed to escape the gravitational pull of the Moon.

Kyle Hill

fast escape small moon