Are highlights worth it?

Sam Harrelson on August 9, 2023

One of the biggest revelations I’ve had this summer doing in-depth research on Mind Body Education (thanks to the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning and Wilson Hall for introducing me to current educational psychology research these past few months) is the value of retrieval practices in classroom learning.

A particular eye-opening part of that summer learning for me is how we process information as learners immediately and in the long-term. This quote from Willingham’s Outsmart Your Brain hit me particularly hard as someone who has been a highlighter for the last 20 or so odd years! I’ll be writing more about these topics in the next few days. Thanks to Readwise for resurfacing this quote from my readings earlier this summer!

Do fish feel pain?

Sam Harrelson on April 12, 2021

Puts a different spin on that fishing trip after I’ve always told myself “it’s ok, fish don’t feel pain” (to paraphrase Kurt Cobain)…

I was the first to identify the existence of nociceptors in a fish, the rainbow trout, in 2002. These are specialised receptors for detecting injury-causing stimuli, and their physiology is strikingly similar to those found in mammals, including humans. Since then, my laboratory and others across the world have shown that the physiology, neurobiology, molecular biology and brain activity that many fish species show in response to painful stimuli is comparable to mammals.

Source: There is ample evidence that fish feel pain | Fish | The Guardian

“Persistent beliefs which are not just demonstrably false…”

Sam Harrelson on January 1, 2021

Must read here. I won’t summarize the article as you need to read the entire piece for yourself, but the implications for things I care about very deeply (such as marketing, politics, technology, religion, and education) are serious.

Take some time and read:

Sloman and Fernbach see this effect, which they call the “illusion of explanatory depth,” just about everywhere. People believe that they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. In the case of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. This is something humans are very good at. We’ve been relying on one another’s expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together, which was probably a key development in our evolutionary history. So well do we collaborate, Sloman and Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others’ begins.

Source: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds | The New Yorker