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You wanted a second part of the 40 key concepts to understand the world. Here you have it. Another 40 more. With much more information and sources.

In your life you will have received so much counterintuitive information in such a short time. 15 minutes equal to a year. Guaranteed. Welcome to this hyper-mega-compressed pill for your brain.

1. Look for causes, not villains

When something goes wrong, don't try to find one person or group to blame for everything. Bad things can happen even if no one wants them to happen.. It is more productive to dedicate your energy to understanding the multiple interrelated causes or system that has created the situation.

2. Glorify systems, not heroes

What makes the world a better place are the systems, the procedures, the regulations, the firewalls, the checklists, the ecosystems. However, we prefer to look for geniuses, heroes or charismatic politicians because our brain understands the world better by individualizing. Don't let him do it. Even the best innovations are the result of a system, not an isolated brain.

In Xataka Science

40 key concepts to improve your understanding of the world

3. Be careful with popular culture

Sentences, proverbs, apothegms... even these same concepts can be reviewed, challenged and questioned. Getting carried away by them is a bad idea. TOOtherwise, we will almost always find another equally popular idea that contradicts the first one..

Also be careful with what everyone says without checking it. Because no, Napoleon was not shorter than average. No, Frankenstein's monster was not green. No, in the Sherlock Holmes novels he never dressed like that, nor did he smoke a pipe, nor did he say "elementary dear Watson."

Nor has it been documented that a real pirate ever drew a treasure map (let alone marked the location of the treasure with an X). Oh, and the pirates didn't have a peg leg or a parrot on their shoulder either. The Vikings' helmets also did not have horns. Chastity belts have never existed. Brown sugar is usually worse than white, orange juice is as harmful as soda...

In the following video you can see the rest of the key concepts to improve your understanding of this very complex world:

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The news

40 other key concepts to improve your understanding of the world

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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Intelligence, in part, is determined by genes. Skin color, however, does not influence intelligence because the genes involved in skin pigmentation are very few, so it is not precisely the skin that distinguishes us from each other.

Studying these kinds of things should not be anathema. There is always genetic influence, there is always environmental influence, and both genetic and environmental influence feed off each other in ways that we are not yet able to distinguish.

Censorships

What we should not demand is the dismissal of a professor for his ideas or approaches, as happened to Edward O. Wilson. Nor should we give a letter of nature to the harassment that they also suffered in 2017 Sergei Tabachnikov and Theodore Hill after publishing a study in Mathematical Intelligencer where a mathematical model was proposed to explain that there was more variability in intelligence between men and women (that is, that there are more geniuses among the male gender, but also more idiots).

In Xataka Science

Putting ourselves in the shoes of others does not help to eliminate prejudices: it is much more effective to talk to them

The study was accepted after peer review, but its publication was finally withdrawn due to pressure from the Women in Mathematics association at Pennsylvania State University, among others. A scientific article is only withdrawn if it is proven that there is academic fraud, not because the ideas it conveys do not fit with our ideology.

Finally, the criticism of poorly understood genetic determinism involves the assumption of an environmental determinism so inflexible that, if true, it would turn us into puppets. Individuals lacking free will manipulated from birth by our parents, the media, culture. It didn't matter what our parents were like, what was on television or what country we were born in: we would never be free to choose. We would just be what they want us to be. We would not be responsible for our actions. We would kill others or decide to have children because we have been manipulated into it.

In Xataka Science

'Deaths of despair' are increasing in non-Hispanic whites in the US, but decreasing in Hispanics, blacks and women

Those who should be imprisoned would be the promoters of those ideas and not ourselves (who, in fact, ironically, would become those who would democratically decide how to manipulate the next generation based on how we have been manipulated).

It doesn't sound even remotely less terrifying than genetic determinism.
Fortunately, things are not that simple. Neither in terms of genes, nor in terms of the environment.

To better understand this whole great debate, I recommend the following video, which analyzes the assumption of what would happen if we found a lost tribe of people with green skin who... are more intelligent than us:

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The news

We should not censor research on the importance of genes in intelligence or other abilities, but rather their political use

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

.

Pay attention to the first seconds of the following video. Depending on what you are thinking, depending on what your brain is focused on, you may hear one phrase or another. The phrase will always be the same, but every time you listen to the video you will hear a different phrase if you change your thought.

It's not a Matrix bug. It is not magic or witchcraft. It is just one more example of how sloppy our brains sometimes are, and that evolution is blind and random. Welcome to McGurk effect: what researchers call a 'perceptual phenomenon' and which arises from a mismatch between sound and visual signals.

Bike or Rental?

Before watching the following video, think about the word "bike" or "rental." Every time you play it, you will hear one word or another, just changing your thinking:

He McGurk Effect suggests that, in a multisensory conversation (that is, in which information reaches us from different senses), the brain is governed by a principle of 'causal inference'. From a pair of syllables, one visual and the other auditory, the brain calculates the probability that they come from the same speaker, and based on that one sound is perceived and another. That's why in the video you can hear "bike" or "rental" depending on whether you are thinking of one word or the other.

Michael Beauchamp, professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine, explains the McGurk effect in a study: If we visually see lips pronouncing the syllable 'ga' and simultaneously hear the sound 'ba', our brain will 'hear' the 'da'. That is, what the eyes see can change what the ear perceives.

If you want to feel the magic again, here is the video again (sometimes the effect is not as powerful if you use headphones, by the way):

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The news

Every time you watch the following video you will hear something different even if nothing changes: the McGurk effect

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

.