Patricia Marx: 'Let's Be Less Stupid' (2015)

Patricia Marx, Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties (2015). Very quick read. Marx, a wiseacre philosopher and pragmatist, takes us through an idiosyncratic jaunt in the ways and means of human cognition.

I read it via Kindle; now it's on retainer for future memory jogging. A few "takeaways:"

"Ninety percent of all the data in the world has been produced in the last two years . . ."  (Location 317: 20%)

"The ability of the brain to reorganize itself as a result of learning and new experience is called plasticity. My typing this sentence, for instance, changed my neural wiring, and your reading my words changed yours. Reading a novel, new research has found, may cause heightened connectivity in the brain that lasts five days . . ." (Location 368: 24%).

"OK, let's get back to me now . . ." (Location 457: 29%).

You get the idea -- or do you? In any case, a fun little book to add to the library of musings and findings about learning, thinking, sleeping, memory formation and interconnectivity. That's to say, journeying through life as a human being while still playing with a (more or less) full set of marbles. Can you grok?

Today's Rune: Signals.