NotionWave

Living in a concrete jungle doesn't necessarily make us civilized. If there ever was a time when humanity didn't distinguish itself on the basis of caste, colour, race, country, and religion then it must have been the most civilized era since the dawn of human civilization.  But, what is the definition of discrimination...? We'll come back to that. There was a time when a study, known as the "Black Baby Test" was conducted in which kids were put to a test to determine which doll out of two, one black and one white, was the ugly one. Surprisingly, the results were skewed in one direction. Most of the kids claimed the black doll to be the ugly one. When asked about their reasoning for picking the black doll, the kids replied with the color of the doll which made them think that black is bad and white is good. So, what was the reason for such a horrific perspective? The researchers concluded that this perspective developed in children as a consequence of the entertai...

If you had the power to change everything, how much would you have changed? What if I told you that in your entire life you have unknowingly been taught to not to take control. This is called learned helplessness and was given by Martin E.P. Seligman in the 1960s. It is a psychological phenomenon that basically trains your mind to accept things as they are even when you have the power to change them for the better. A sense of being powerless against the tide even when you have the power to control it. Process of Learned Helplessness As usual, the phenomenon of learned helplessness was best explored by scientists/researchers from the past and their studies which could genuinely be regarded as cruel if I am being completely honest. These studies had experiments that included testing the effects of learned helplessness on dogs. All the dogs were divided into two separate groups and dogs from both groups were treated with electric shocks individually. Basically, in the first group, a lever...

"Exclusion of an important entity from a specific dataset is the precursor to untrue interpretations." - Mayank Mishra. The above statement induces a thought inside of me. A thought for the concept of Survivorship Bias. A bias that limits our critical thinking and pushes us towards illogical interpretations. What is survivorship bias you ask? Survivorship bias or survival bias is the phenomenon in which untrue or false conclusions are drawn because of the exclusion of an entity from a specific list or a group of similar entities because the excluded entity failed to survive in the long run, and hence, was not included in the said list or a group thereby resulting in an illogical interpretation of the dataset. Let's understand it with an example, we often hear that classical music is way better than today's music. This generalization might be because only the best music from older times is played today while today's music, no matter how good or bad it may be, is re...

How many times have you been told that time doesn’t stop for you? Well, it actually doesn’t stop for you unless you are the Big Bang. So, is there something bigger than the time itself? And if it stops, is it truly eternal? Can something eternal have a beginning? And if it does, then should it have an end as well? And if it begins and ends, then how can it be eternal? According to the theory of the Big Bang, time began to tick along with the expansion of the universe about 13.8 billion years ago. So, if we hop in our hypothetical time machine and go back to the moment of the Big Bang, can we actually witness the birth of time itself? And, is it possible for us to travel beyond the Big Bang? To answer both of the questions; Yes, we can witness the birth of time, and no, we cannot travel beyond the Big Bang as our super-advanced locomotive which can travel through time will not work when there is no time to travel through. How can we go back to the moment which doesn’t exist? I know ...