014 How to Know
Hello everybody! Here's your weekly Amazing Things & Ideas Newsletter. Find one original idea from my side succeeded by the Amazing Things & Ideas List.
Knowing something as it really is, is generally hard. Most of the time our egos or biases or desires get in the way.
There are various biases in human psychology which become relevant and take their own part in thinking in different situations. There's not enough room to scribble down all of them in this article.
But, the more we know about our hidden thinking, the more we actually know how false it oftentimes can become, and thus, the more we really know what's true.
For example a study showed how people overestimate their knowledge and how they often "over-claim" (pretend knowing something instead of admitting they don't).
In the study, researches asked people to rate their knowledge of some biology topics. Some were normal biological terms like "mammal" or "adrenal gland". But some topics were things that people couldn't have been aware of because they were just not real. Researchers made them up. So they secretly put in terms like "ultra-lipids", "bio-sexual" or "retroplex". And they made people rate their knowledge about these imaginary terms too.
Unsurprisingly, instead of admitting they didn't have any knowledge about the topics, 110 out of 124 people in the study claimed to know about or be familiar with the fake terms, made up for the study.
This is just one of the many ways humans are inclined toward doing certain actions. And the funny part is that we don't usually make these "faults" intentionally. They're deep-rooted, but guide our behavior.
That's why it's so important to be aware of their existence.
Footnotes:
- SciShow (YouTube - Do You Really Know What You Think You Do)
- The study (When Knowledge Knows No Bounds)
The Amazing Things & Ideas List
Membership I'm not regretting buying:
- Audible
Audible just released it's Audible Plus Catalogue in India. Audible members now get access to thousands of audiobooks, Originals and podcasts in addition to their monthly credit system (allowing members to choose any audiobook they wish to buy, once every month)
The new Plus Catalogue broadens the listening experience with an inclusion of bundles of incredible audiobooks and best-sellers. To name just a few;
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection by Arthur Conan Doyle and Stephen Fry , and
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
among many others are all free to listens for Audible members.
That's why I'm loving Audible right now, and I think it's amazing and I'm not regretting buying the relatively cheap membership.
Book I'm reading this week:
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters.
"... doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. Every new creation goes from 0 to 1. This book is about how to get there." - From the book.
This book shows how to really create value. It educates the reader on entrepreneurship, problem-finding and -solving, creating businesses, specifically startups from the ground up. It teaches how startups can stand out. How they can be authentic and innovate new products for the welfare of humanity, and make abundant profits at the same time.Inspiring quote of the week:
“When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.” ― Cherokee Proverb (adopted from Robin Sharma's book - EHM)Commercial space news:
- William Shatner just went to space!
Blue Origin's second human space flight took up William Shatner (Captain James Kirk in Star Trek) on a space ride to low-Earth orbit.
You can read more and watch the replay on Blue Origin's website. Click here to do both.
Thanks for reading!
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Here are all the articles published on (my blog) arjunkhemani.com this week:
Have an amazing week!
Arjun