🎨 Spice up your creativity - with a placebo ⋆ 🌎 Things are getting hot in here ⋆ 🧬 Why live longer

Crazy week. Zuck and Elon are planning a cage fight. There was a coup attempt in Russia. Things are getting hot.

Thing 1 - Placebo can enhance creativity

You already know placebos work. So let's put them to good use.

Photo by Mae Mu

A recent study did just that, using cinnamaldehyde - the thing that makes cinnamon smell like cinnamon.

• Participants took a whiff.
• They told half of the participants it would boost their creativity.
• This 'informed' group cranked up their originality and flexibility, shining in tasks like the Creative Foraging Game and Alternate Uses Test.

But, the Torrance Test, a more comprehensive measure of creativity, didn't show similar results.

The lack of effect in some tests may be due to low sensitivity of these tests to the subtle effects of placebo on creativity, or to the fact that these tests measure different aspects of creativity that are less affected by placebo.

The secret ingredient behind this boost?

Not cinnamon.

placebo increased motivation and self-efficacy, psychological factors that are known to enhance creativity. Placebo may have increased motivation by creating positive expectations of success, and self-efficacy by reducing performance anxiety.

You're capable of more than you think. And sometimes just believing you are is enough to be able to do it. Life's weird.

(source)

Thing 2 - Things are getting hot in here

I'm sitting here, staring at these graphs on the screens for the last hour - and words are not coming to me.

The whole 40,000,000 km² of the North Atlantic Ocean is 0.7°C warmer than ever on this date!

And 1.3°C warmer than average!

- Leon Simons (climate researcher) [emphasis mine]

For the visual types

Red line represents temperatures this year. Blue lines - darker are older.

We've never been in this situation before. Strap in.

(source, full chart)

Thing 3 - Why live longer

After billions of years of evolution, we are steps away from creating super intelligence. It will be perhaps the most extraordinary moment in the history of the galaxy.  I’m trying to earn my admissions ticket by staying alive. I hope you do too.

- Bryan Johnson

Bryan is talking about all the extraordinary things he's been doing with his health.

This is also a good reason to avoid all the noise. Not just literal. Is it gonna matter in 20 years?

Cheers, Zvonimir