Issue: Financial decisions
I’ve suggested that the mind is a bit of an improviser: it’s faced with a problem, and it figures out a solution. It’s not actually looking inside itself. There is …
Course: The Mind is Flat: The Shocking Shallowness of Human Psychology
Choice blindness
Using three examples of research into how people behave when they are offered a clear choice between two options, in this video I present further evidence to suggest that we …
Perception, inference and change blindness
In this video I discuss the limitations of perception; many of which, for the most part, we are unaware of. We also consider a famous experiment by Schacter and Singer, …
The mind as an improviser
If we really could think very carefully about all the things we know and why we think them, there’d just be an enormous trail of justifications and reasons. I think, …
Is mental depth an illusion?
In this opening video I begin to challenge our intuitions about how the mind works; both the intuitive perspective that we know our own minds and why we do or …
Talking Point and Summary: Week 6
It has been a huge pleasure for me to have been part of this online course. I hope I have been able to help you look at your own mind …
Talking Point and Summary: Week 5
This week we have considered the idea that there is a special type of thinking that allows people to engage in complex coordinated activities, including communication: ’we-thinking’. In this video …
Talking Point and Summary: Week 4
We started this course by thinking about individual thoughts and decisions and how unstable and inconsistent these can be. One reason that stories are so important, when we think about …
Talking Point and Summary: Week 3
This week, we have thought about rationality and some of the reasons why we seem to depart from rationality, caused ultimately by the comparative, rather than absolute, focus of the …
Talking Point and Summary: Week 2
It always seems amazing to me just how bad we are at judging absolute magnitudes. You might think our lives would depend on it, but it seems that they do …
Talking Point and Summary: Week 1
I hope to have shaken up your assumptions about the reality of our ‘mental depth’ and started you thinking about the possible consequences. In this video I talk with Jess …
How our minds work
Most of the time, we tend to think that our thoughts, feelings, and desires well up from within. They’re lurking there is a mysterious inner, mental world, and occasionally they …
Week 2 round-up
In the week 2 round-up video we will look at some of the most popular topics, and Nick and Jess will be discussing some of the most frequently asked questions …
Week 1 round-up
We look at some of the most popular topics, and Nick and Jess discuss some of the most frequently asked questions from the previous week.
These articles are from the online course:
The Mind is Flat: The Shocking Shallowness of Human Psychology