The advocacy film Forks Over Knives focuses on the work of Drs. Caldwell Esselstyn and T. Colin Campbell. These protagonists argue that many common human ailments such as heart disease, cancer, and obesity are caused by the animal product-heavy Western diet. They contend that many of these issues would be greatly diminished or resolved if…
Upon learning IMT, I felt inclined to go back and view the TED Talk, “How to Make Choosing Easier” by Sheena Iyengar, again. When I originally viewed the video, I was deeply interested in the management techniques she mentioned, but the IMT ideas I have now are giving me even more insight. The insight I…
Last year as an assignment for my positive psychology class I had to watch a TED talk that Barry Schwarts gave in 2005 on the paradox of choice. Barry explains how the presence of too many options paralyzes us and breeds unhappiness in our lives. We waste time making lengthy decisions about things that…
1. What is randomness? Does it exist? Give an example. Randomness is a series of events that occur without a predictable pattern. The does it exist question is one that every combat veteran who has lost someone deals with every day. Why, did he get shoot by the sniper, when I was standing next him?…
I believed that love is something that one only finds once in their lifetime or else it isn’t pure. I believed in what I had been told and trusted in the wrong sources. My view of growing up was limited to the marketing schemes of corporate America from television to print. My relationship examples were…
To the uninitiated, jazz seems to revolve around several musicians instantaneously coming up with notes that somehow manage to appeal to the audience’s ears. Even as a student of the genre, the spontaneity at which professional jazz musicians improvise beautiful solos can be baffling. When there is quite literally an infinite number of musical…
I was recently introduced to a concept called the paradox of choice, a new term coined by Psychology professor Barry Schwartz after his new book fittingly titled The Paradox of Choice. We have learned through this class that making decisions is ultimately bad—IMT states that by making decisions we increase our risk. Risk is…
For people like me, making a travel plan is a nightmare. You have to decide when you are going to leave, where to stay, what to do, and what the budget is. Visiting a new place is always very exciting, but the planning part is not as much fun. Thousands of options to choose from…
In the video “Do We Have Free Will?” free-form philosopher Jason Silva ponders the concept of free will and consciousness. In Silva’s opinion, people view themselves as autonomous individuals who believe that they are not influenced because they have free will. This belief is similar to that of the ideas of the Information Measurement…
The purpose of this video is to reinforce the idea that people find what they are looking for. In the video, we have a professor and a media correspondent. The media correspondent is adamant that the world is falling apart and that is the job of the media to present this information to the…