Joseph St Charles

“Skilled readers are probably worse at identifying faces, since jury-rigging the relevant brain areas impinges on the fusiform gyrus, an area that specializes in face recognition. In fact, the well-established neurological asymmetry in face processing, favoring the right side of the brain, may be due to the effects of learning to read, which drives face processing out of the left side and shifts what it can to the right side.5 I was personally glad to hear this, as I now have an excuse for why I forget faces so often—I’ve recycled some of my facial recognition neuronal firmware to support my reading addiction.”
― Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

“As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to.”
― Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story

“I understood then that it takes a powerful imagination to see a thing for what it really is.”
― Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story: A Memoir

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism