” Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom`s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.” That may have been fine advice for the 20th century, but to survive in 2011 and beyond we need to step it up – a lot. We need to, say, embrace the concepts that many mental illnesses are just extremes of personality traits, that humans tend to accept credit for their successes but not blame for their failures, and that ” wholes have properties not present in the parts, ” as sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University writes on the online salon Edge (edge.org). ” Our poor cognitive toolkits are always missing a screwdriver when need it.” „You could know everything about isolated neurons and not be able to say how memory works, or where desire originates. … randomness is as much a property of the universe as atoms are. Don`t be surprised when you`re outlived by the overweight, cigar-smoking, speed-fiend motorcyclist.”
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