Psychologyspeaking topic
“The only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love: this act transcends thought, it transcends words.”
— Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
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- Do someone's political views tell you whether they are a good person or worth being friends with?
- Schema theory: we always understand, and distort, new information through our existing mental templates. Is memory a recording device or an interpreter?
- Babies learn the melody of their mother's language before they're even born: German newborns cry with a falling pitch, French newborns with a rising one, matching each language's intonation. We carry the fingerprint of a language from our very first breath. Does language belong to us, or are we born into it?
- The representativeness heuristic: when someone fits a stereotype, why do we throw probability out the window? How do we forget the statistics the moment we think 'he's exactly the librarian type'?