“Almost every cognitive bias and flawed heuristic and logical fallacy I've written about for more than decade plummets in its impact on decision-making when people reason in groups, but only if those groups are allowed to argue freely without social costs for dissent or subversion.

A lot of arguing on the internet doesn't work that way. People retreat into like-minded enclaves where it seems like they are arguing, but it's mostly just people affirming one another that they chose the right group. What usually happens in those communities is that people who think of themselves as moderates will realize that the extreme is much farther along the spectrum than they thought, so to be a true moderate, they must shift their attitudes in the direction of the extreme, dragging their beliefs with them. If everyone is doing that in turn, after a few rounds, the whole group radicalizes.

This is how cults and political and conspiracy theory communities get catalyzed by the internet. It seems to them like they are arguing together while alone, but they are really arguing alone while together. It's a community of people arguing with themselves, coming up with reasons for their own feelings without contest, and when you argue with yourself, you win.”

~ David McRaney

“I’m slowly learning how to bring anthropology and mindfulness together. I think they complement each other beautifully, but how to talk about it is a whole other thing. I think it comes down to excavation – what you do physically to understand where people come from. That’s a process of discovery and insight.”

Dr. Michael J. Kimball

"Stories about gradual improvements rarely make the front page even when they occur on a dramatic scale and affect millions of people. And thanks to increasing press freedom and improving technology, we hear about more disasters than ever before. This improved reporting is itself a sign of human progress, but it creates the impression of the exact opposite." 

~ Hans Rosling

"Meditation practice supports mindfulness, but meditation is not mindfulness; meditation merely helps train the mind to be in a mindful state."

~ Manuel A. Manotas

"The trouble with the present is
that it's always in a state of vanishing.
Take the second it takes to end
this sentence with a period – already gone."

~ Billy Collins

"Do I think one minute is going to be the thing that changes your life? It could be really powerful, but...what I love about one minute is it's a very low-cost option. Very few barriers to entry.

Because if you start saying, Oh, I don't have a minute to meditate, we really got to start evaluating some things going on in your life, because you definitely need more than meditation if you make that argument. 

It's hard to argue yourself out of it."

~ Cory Muscara 

Comparing mindfulness practice to what we already understand about physical fitness can help you adjust your expectations and increase the chances that you will stick with the exploration long enough to experience its numerous beneficial effects.

"I have a very hard time with things, you know, just being quiet. Like, if I sit alone, you know, for ten minutes with nothing happening, you know, which I guess some people would call meditating, I just lose my mind. I'm, like — how does anyone deal with this horrible silence and awareness that everything's almost over?"

~ Marc Maron

What is amazing is that as history unfolded, fictional reality became more and more powerful so that today, the most powerful forces in the world are these fictional entities."

~ Yuval Noah Harari

Dan Harris continues his Attentional Fitness Training friendly mission to demystify mindfulness meditation with a new Challenge Collective app and tips on talking about the practice without scaring people away. 

Mindfulness practice doesn’t eliminate my personal narrative. It gradually changes my relationship to it.

The dilemmas related to attentional fitness are similar to the more familiar dilemmas that make physical fitness easier to discuss than to turn into habits. A mindfulness teacher has to sell you on the possible outcomes, but also has to steer you back again and again to the slippery path that leads to them.

"The dominant story of modernity has been progress. Although still hardwired into our institutions, that story has lost most of its plausibility. new genres are taking its place: apocalypse and nihilism. Apocalypse is the imminent and triumphant conclusion of our most cherished stories. Nihilism is their collapse. Both are stories about the end of stories."

~ David R. Loy

"The significance of the labyrinth is that it forces you — in order to get to the center — to go around the entire space. And familiarity with the entire path is very important when we’re walking a path."

~ Soryu Scott

Nobody wants to learn new coping strategies from the people who they perceive to be orchestrating their immediate discomforts.

How exactly does meditation affect your body?

Mindfulness meditation is extraordinarily simple to describe, but it isn't easy to perform. True mastery might require special talent and a lifetime devotion to the task, and yet a genuine transformation in one's perception of the world is within reach for most of us. Practice is the only thing that will lead to success.

~ Sam Harris

"How do I understand that I am enough for the mere fact that I exist?"

~ Jennifer Moon

"Nightline anchor Dan Harris embarks on an unexpected, hilarious, and deeply skeptical odyssey through the strange worlds of spirituality and self-help, and discovers a way to get happier that is truly achievable."