Matilda's Lab

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Consciousness is stubornly difficult to define, and that is because it is not a thing, it is an experience. What’s more it is not the only type of experience out there. It may be that trying to understanding what consciousness is, is asking the wrong kind of question. The wealth of knowledge that humanity has unlocked is truly staggering. Despite this, some of the most everyday aspects of our…

What is more accessible in mind becomes more probable in action Robert B. Cialdini, Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade.2016 The subjects covered in this book are so universal that they should be of use to anyone, regardless of what their goals in life are. I have found that being mindful of all these points does help me in the day to day. It’s not possible to carry an…

Already, every day, millions of us are needled and outraged by the hysterically stated views of those with whom we don’t agree. Our irritation pushes us into a place of fiercer opposition. The more emotional we become, the less rational we become, the less able to properly reason. In an attempt to quieten the stress, we begin muting, blocking, de-friending and unfollowing. And we’re in an echo…

Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character Ayn Rand. The Mike Wallace Interview. February 25, 1959 When every rung of the ladder of…

Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer. Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. 1984 There’s a critical insight in all this for those of us who want to learn to be more influential. The best persuaders become the best through pre-suasion – the process of…

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy”. Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar. 1963 As we are drawing to the close of this book, we shall come almost full circle. We started off by talking about the theory of evolution because we were about to embark upon a journey that would attempt to better understand the biological…

In Japanese pottery, there’s an artful form of repair called kintsugi. When a piece of ceramic pottery breaks, rather than trying to restore it to its original condition, the artisan accentuates the fault by using gold to fill the crack. This beautifully draws attention to where the work was broken, creating a golden vein. Instead of the flaw diminishing the work, it becomes a focal point, an…

4,500 years after we looked at the oldest boats, we turn our attention to a development that transformed what the humble boat was capable of. Sailing elevated movement over water from a limited means of moving a short distance, to a ticket around the world. Even my non-specialist eye can detect that we are acknowledging this technology far later than it had been conceived. If it was hard enough…

Ye live not for yourselves; ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects. – Rev. Henry Melvill. Golden Lectures: Sermon on “Partaking in Other Men’s Sins”. 1855 In most cases, in order to achieve any level of influence or control over another…

Things are always different than what they might be…If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything. – Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady. 1881 Don’t sweat the small stuff. I hear it a lot, and whilst it may be useful in some scenarios (it chimes with my mantra of not letting perfect be the enemy of good) I feel that the focus of the statement is wrong. Sometimes it is very important…

…inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened. – Terry Pratchett. Moving Pictures. 1990 Finding new solutions to problems that we’ve already solved is a reliable way to generate a decent amount of frustration. Whilst frustration is a sign that we are learning, the feeling may be more acute in this context, because we know that we can already achieve the solution through a…

Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile. – Richard P. Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character. 1985 Think twice before taking advice from comedians. That’s not a slur on comedians in general. Specifically, I mean beware of acting on points made for comedic effect. When I was at school, I heard a comedian joking about Pythagoras…

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages. – Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Own…

I am, as I’ve said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary. – Billy Joel, Appearing on ‘60 Minutes’, 1998 One way to mitigate the issue that we’ve just covered is to know your business. If you are confident that your knowledge base is reliable then that saves a lot of self questioning. It is what we would refer to as competence. The problem with competence…

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. – Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays. 1928 He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other…

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. – Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895 Welcome to the second part of the book. Now that we have covered the basic elements of what makes humans tick we can now start to consider how we get the most out of this human condition and how we can make the tools that we were born with work in our favour.  The first point is brief, but it is…