HOW "GOD" WORKS by Marshall Brain

• Human beings have to make decisions about the truth of information constantly.
• Statistically speaking, if you live in the United States, there is a 75 percent chance that you are a Christian believer. Seventy-five percent of adults living in the United States today—an overwhelming majority—claim to be Christian and to believe in God and Jesus Christ.
• A 75 percent majority represents an unprecedented level of agreement and approval.
• If something from the world of alternative medicine were to show compelling evidence that it is effective, it stops being categorized as alternative medicine and becomes evidence-based, scientifically proven medicine.
• For reasons that are not completely clear yet, human beings sometimes report feeling better simply through the effects of having someone care for them.
• An anecdotal story about the experiences of one friend is absolutely meaningless.
• Critical thinking is a response to a rather bizarre and unexpected fact about the way human beings naturally think. It turns out that typical human beings, left to their own untrained devices, are not very good thinkers at all. In fact, the average human being who is not provided with any training in critical thinking skills may, potentially, be terrible at logical, precise thinking.
• Critical thinking is logical thinking that is free from biases, fallacies, misinterpretations, fears, and superstitions. As such, critical thinking leads people toward the truth when answering any particular question or when understanding the way the world really works.
• Double-blind testing is one tool in the critical thinking toolbox.
• The average human brain appears to have a natural affinity for superstitions unless it is trained to recognize, understand, and disregard them.
• People tend to put a great deal of faith in stories that are personally told to them by people they trust.
• In reality, the effects of homeopathy are completely, provably imaginary.
• More than half of adults in America believe that the Bible is literally true
• The claims for the effectiveness of prayer in the Bible contradict the reality that we see in the real world here on Earth. Therefore, the claims are false.
• A critical thinker simply looks at the evidence and understands what it indicates.
• Christians and other believers are especially susceptible to something called the post hoc fallacy.
• When the post hoc fallacy combines with confirmation bias, where only positive correlation is noted, a person who suffers from the post hoc fallacy acquires a completely erroneous view of what is happening in the real world.
• Just because you do X and then Y happens (correlation), that does not mean that X causes Y to happen (causation). Causation must be proven scientifically.
• Just because something happened following a prayer, it does not mean that the prayer caused it to happen.
• The problem with groups of human beings is that, if they are not critical thinkers, they tend to create echo chambers amongst their members.
• Given that prayer is such an important part of the definition of God, the fact that prayer is not working tells us something essential about God.
• If prayer actually works, there are a number of things we would expect to see happening, on a statistical basis, in the real world.
• The facts are simple and straightforward. When critical thinkers apply modern statistical methods and use them to understand if prayer works, there is no valid evidence that it does.
• Amputated limbs are never restored through prayer.
• Every answered prayer of intercession is nothing more than a coincidence.
• every prayer fails when the possibility of coincidence has been eliminated
• This is a simple fact about human beings: Our expectations tend to influence our behavior.
• The ability to recognize scams is an important skill for any critical thinker, and it’s also important for consumers in the marketplace.
• The thing to understand is that Yes/No/Wait is always true.
• no matter what you do or who you pray to. No matter what a person prays to, “Yes,” “No,” and “Wait” are the only three possibilities. Therefore, like the sunrise, it’s guaranteed to happen.
• If you insist that prayer works, then simply pray for something impossible and watch it not happen. You have proven conclusively that prayer does not work.
• God is declared to be omniscient. But if God is omniscient, then there clearly is no reason to pray, because God already knows what you want and need.
• a God who is hidden cannot answer prayers without exposing Himself.
• When Jesus talks about the power of prayer in the Bible, none of what he says is true.
• Prayer’s effects have never been demonstrated in any valid statistical sense.
• Belief in prayer is a superstition.
• Lacking any evidence, the default position of any critical thinker is to assume that God is in fact imaginary.
• The God defined by the Bible answers prayers. A person who wants to claim that God exists but does not answer prayers is inventing an entirely new god-concept that stands completely separate from the God of the Bible.
• A person who goes around redefining God on a whim is a person who is inventing imaginary beings.
• IF POSITIVE CLAIMS ARE MADE, IT’S POSSIBLE TO PROVE WHETHER THOSE CLAIMS ARE REAL OR IMAGINARY.
• To create certainty, we perform many different kinds of experiments, gather lots of data, and create an interlocking web of evidence that all points to the same conclusion.
• Why is the Bible so divergent from reality? The myths in the Bible have no basis in reality because the people writing the myths had no scientific knowledge, nor any access to omniscience.
• There is the huge ego boost and reassurance that comes from the belief that the all-powerful creator of the universe is on your side.
• In logic there is a principle called the Law of Noncontradiction that is one of the three Classic Laws of Thought. The Law of Noncontradiction, according to Aristotle, says that “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.”
• A being who set out to murder nearly every living thing on an entire planet is evil, plain and simple.
• A critical thinker looks at evidence, then evaluates it.
• How do we know that something is real in our universe? It is very simple: There must be evidence demonstrating it to be real.
• One of the hallmarks of religious delusion is a refusal by believers to process straightforward evidence and reach logical conclusions from that evidence.
• If God were imaginary, we would expect to see events happen at exactly the same statistical rates to believers and nonbelievers after controlling for confounding factors.
• Any animal is an intricate multicellular chemical machine, nothing more.
• One reason that Christians buy into the idea of souls and heaven is because most started hearing about the soul as toddlers and they never think about the concept rationally after that.
• Things like anecdotal evidence, confirmation bias, cherry-picking, the post hoc fallacy, doublethink, groupthink, the regression fallacy, and the placebo effect combine together to create a powerful and convincing illusion for people who don’t think critically.
• The God of the Bible is unethical, immoral, evil, and often nonsensical.
• The chosen beliefs of a religious believer are extremely persistent and usually immune to evidence, discussion, common sense, questioning, rational thinking, etc., despite the fact that the believer can so easily see the irrationality in other religions.
• As a general rule, human beings are not very good at thinking unless they’re trained to be critical thinkers.
• As human beings, we have to come to grips with the fact that evolution has imprinted our brains with a strong tendency toward super-irrationality in certain areas.
• Decisions should be based on empirical evidence, experimental results, and critical thinking that indicates the best course of action rather than anecdotes, emotional whim, dogma, or political party lines.
• It’s telling that Christians in developed nations of the world reject misogyny and slavery even though the Bible fully supports both.
• The fact is, human thinking is the source of all ethical behavior, for everyone.

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO 3D MODELING by Cameron Coward

• 3D printing technologies have revolutionized the engineering world.
• We can categorize today’s 3D modeling software into two broad types: parametric modeling and mesh modeling.
• In mesh modeling software, you push and pull a virtual mesh to create a 3D model like a sculptor.
• In contrast, parametric modeling software like SolidWorks, Creo, Inventor, and Fusion 360 (which we’ll use in this book) rely on parameters,
• Virtually all modern CAD software is parameter based (though many include some mesh modeling capabilities), and in most cases it’s the best option for designing real physical parts.
• The single most important part of the drafting profession is the ability to create drawings that can be interpreted in only one way.
• Fusion 360 is a fully featured parametric CAD program that has nearly all of the features one would find in costly professional CAD software.
• The key to understanding how parametric modeling software works is in its name: with parametric modeling, you define every single feature by a collection of characteristics called parameters.
• The building blocks of parametric modeling are called features.
• Individual features are often just primitive polygons—basic shapes that you put together with other features to end up with a complex part.
• One of the fundamental skills you’ll learn as a designer is how to break the complex part you envision into a series of basic features.
• One of the major factors that holds hobbyists back from jumping into computer-aided design (CAD) is the complexity of the software.
• A 2D plane can only exist as either a surface or as reference geometry, which means it isn’t part of the solid model.
• This is because a 2D model has no thickness, so it isn’t physically possible to create in the real world.
• A fillet (pronounced “fill-it”) is a frequently-used tool for rounding a sketch’s corner.
• Creating a cube is like the “Hello, World!” of 3D modeling.
• The most direct way to produce parametric 3D objects is through manipulating 2D sketches.
• You should leave a 0.5 mm gap between the edge of the lip and the box, because when you’re designing parts that mate together, it’s important to think about how they’ll actually fit in the real world.
• In engineering terms, the room you allow for some error is called tolerance.
• Formal drafting has hundreds of rules about everything from the thickness of different lines to the typefaces used for text. Luckily, in the real world, few people care about the vast majority of those rules.
• Scale, or the relationship between the size of your drawing and the size of the object, is one of the most crucial details of a technical drawing—and one that many novices overlook.
• A tolerance tells the manufacturer how precisely it needs to adhere to the dimensions shown on your drawing (called nominal dimensions).
• There are two kinds of technical drawings: part drawings, which show the specific dimensions of an individual part, and assembly drawings, which show how multiple parts fit together.
• Rendering is the process by which your computer converts a 3D model into a 2D image that displays on a screen.

THE LITTLE BOOK OF TALENT by Daniel Coyle

• Talent begins with brief, powerful encounters that spark motivation by linking your identity to a high-performing person or group. This is called ignition, and it consists of a tiny, world-shifting thought lighting up your unconscious mind: I could be them.
• STARE AT WHO YOU WANT TO BECOME
• Studies show that even a brief connection with a role model can vastly increase unconscious motivation.
• SPEND FIFTEEN MINUTES A DAY ENGRAVING THE SKILL ON YOUR BRAIN
• What’s the best way to begin to learn a new skill?
• Many hotbeds use an approach I call the engraving method. Basically, they watch the skill being performed, closely and with great intensity, over and over, until they build a high-definition mental blueprint.
• The key to effective engraving is to create an intense connection: to watch and listen so closely that you can imagine the feeling of performing the skill.
• STEAL WITHOUT APOLOGY
• All improvement is about absorbing and applying new information, and the best source of information is top performers. So steal it.
• When you steal, focus on specifics, not general impressions.
• BUY A NOTEBOOK
• A high percentage of top performers keeps some form of daily performance journal.
• What matters is not the precise form. What matters is that you write stuff down and reflect on it.
• Results from today. Ideas for tomorrow. Goals for next week.
• BE WILLING TO BE STUPID
• Feeling stupid is no fun. But being willing to be stupid—in other words, being willing to risk the emotional pain of making mistakes—is absolutely essential, because reaching, failing, and reaching again is the way your brain grows and forms new connections.
• CHOOSE SPARTAN OVER LUXURIOUS
• luxury is a motivational narcotic: It signals our unconscious minds to give less effort.
• Simple, humble spaces help focus attention on the deep-practice task at hand: reaching and repeating and struggling.
• When given the choice between luxurious and spartan, choose spartan.
• BEFORE YOU START, FIGURE OUT IF IT’S A HARD SKILL OR A SOFT SKILL
• The first step toward building a skill is to figure out exactly what type of skill you’re building.
• Every skill falls into one of two categories: hard skills and soft skills.
• HARD, HIGH-PRECISION SKILLS are actions that are performed as correctly and consistently as possible, every time. They are skills that have one path to an ideal result; skills that you could imagine being performed by a reliable robot.
• Hard skills are about repeatable precision, and tend to be found in specialized pursuits, particularly physical ones.
• Hard skills are about ABC: Always Being Consistent.
• SOFT, HIGH-FLEXIBILITY SKILLS, on the other hand, are those that have many paths to a good result, not just one.
• These skills aren’t about doing the same thing perfectly every time, but rather about being agile and interactive; about instantly recognizing patterns as they unfold and making smart, timely choices.
• Soft skills tend to be found in broader, less-specialized pursuits, especially those that involve communication,
• Soft skills are about the three Rs: Reading, Recognizing, and Reacting.
• TO BUILD HARD SKILLS, WORK LIKE A CAREFUL CARPENTER
• To develop reliable hard skills, you need to connect the right wires in your brain. In this, it helps to be careful, slow, and keenly attuned to errors. To work like a careful carpenter.
• When you learn hard skills, be precise and measured. Go slowly. Make one simple move at a time, repeating and perfecting it before you move on.
• Pay attention to errors, and fix them, particularly at the start.
• Learning fundamentals only seems boring—in fact, it’s the key moment of investment.
• TO BUILD SOFT SKILLS, PLAY LIKE A SKATEBOARDER
• While hard skills are best put together with measured precision (see Tip #8), soft skills are built by playing and exploring inside challenging, ever-changing environments.
• In other words, to build soft skills you should behave less like a careful carpenter and more like a skateboarder in a skateboard park: aggressive, curious, and experimental, always seeking new ways to challenge yourself.
• When you practice a soft skill, focus on making a high number of varied reps, and on getting clear feedback. Don’t worry too much about making errors—the important thing is to explore.
• HONOR THE HARD SKILLS
• Prioritize the hard skills because in the long run they’re more important to your talent.
• DON’T FALL FOR THE PRODIGY MYTH
• Early success turns out to be a weak predictor of long-term success.
• If you have early success, do your best to ignore the praise and keep pushing yourself to the edges of your ability, where improvement happens.
• Great teachers, coaches, and mentors, like any rare species, can be identified by a few characteristic traits.
• Avoid Someone Who Reminds You of a Courteous Waiter
• Seek Someone Who Scares You a Little
• Seek Someone Who Gives Short, Clear Directions
• Most great teachers/​coaches/​mentors do not give long-winded speeches.
• Instead, they give short, unmistakably clear directions; they guide you to a target.
• Teaching is not an eloquence contest; it is about creating a connection and delivering useful information.
• Seek Someone Who Loves Teaching Fundamentals
• Great teachers will often spend entire practice sessions on one seemingly small fundamental—for
• Other Things Being Equal, Pick the Older Person
• Great teachers are first and foremost learners, who improve their skills with each passing year.
• The key to deep practice is to reach. This means to stretch yourself slightly beyond your current ability, spending time in the zone of difficulty called the sweet spot. It means embracing the power of repetition, so the action becomes fast and automatic. It means creating a practice space that enables you to reach and repeat, stay engaged, and improve your skills over time.
• FIND THE SWEET SPOT
• Deep practice is not measured in minutes or hours, but in the number of high-quality reaches and repetitions you make—basically, how many new connections you form in your brain.
• Instead of counting minutes or hours, count reaches and reps.
• BREAK EVERY MOVE DOWN INTO CHUNKS
• No matter what skill you set out to learn, the pattern is always the same: See the whole thing. Break it down to its simplest elements. Put it back together. Repeat.
• EACH DAY, TRY TO BUILD ONE PERFECT CHUNK
• Deep practice has a telltale emotional flavor, a feeling that can be summed up in one word: “struggle.”
• CHOOSE FIVE MINUTES A DAY OVER AN HOUR A WEEK
• DON’T DO “DRILLS.” INSTEAD, PLAY SMALL, ADDICTIVE GAMES
• The governing principle is this: If it can be counted, it can be turned into a game.
• Whenever possible, create a vivid image for each chunk you want to learn. The images don’t have to be elaborate, just easy to see and feel.
• PAY ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOU MAKE A MISTAKE
• People who pay deeper attention to an error learn significantly more than those who ignore it.
• Develop the habit of attending to your errors right away.
• Take mistakes seriously, but never personally.
• Smaller practice spaces can deepen practice when they are used to increase the number and intensity of the reps and clarify the goal.
• SLOW IT DOWN (EVEN SLOWER THAN YOU THINK)
• Super-slow practice works like a magnifying glass: It lets us sense our errors more clearly, and thus fix them.
• One of the quickest ways to deepen practice is also one of the simplest: Close your eyes.
• Removing everything except the essential action lets you focus on what matters most: making the right reach.
• WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT, MARK THE SPOT
• TAKE A NAP
• The science: Napping is good for the learning brain, because it helps strengthen the connections formed during practice
• TO LEARN A NEW MOVE, EXAGGERATE IT
• Always focus on the positive move, not the negative one.
• TO LEARN FROM A BOOK, CLOSE THE BOOK
• The biggest problem in choosing a practice strategy is not that there are too few options, but that there are too many.
• Small changes in method can create large increases in learning velocity.
• STOP BEFORE YOU’RE EXHAUSTED
• PRACTICE IMMEDIATELY AFTER PERFORMANCE
• JUST BEFORE SLEEP, WATCH A MENTAL MOVIE
• END ON A POSITIVE NOTE
• Use the First Few Seconds to Connect on an Emotional Level
• Effective teaching is built on trust, and when it comes to trust, we humans are consistent: We decide if we’re going to trust someone in the first few seconds of the interaction. This is why good teachers use the first few seconds to connect on an emotional level, especially on the first encounter.
• Avoid Giving Long Speeches—Instead, Deliver Vivid Chunks of Information
• Be Allergic to Mushy Language
• One of the most common mistakes teachers and coaches make is using mushy, imprecise language.
• All good teaching follows the same blueprint: Try this concrete thing. Now try this concrete thing. Now try combining them into this concrete thing. Communicate with precise nouns and numbers—things you can see and touch and measure—and avoid adjectives and adverbs, which don’t tell you precisely what to do.
• Make a Scorecard for Learning
• Maximize “Reachfulness”
• Reachfulness is the essence of learning. It happens when the learner is leaning forward, stretching, struggling, and improving.
• Aim to Create Independent Learners
• Your long-term goal as a teacher, coach, or mentor is to help your learners improve so much that they no longer need you.
• EMBRACE REPETITION
• Repetition is the single most powerful lever we have to improve our skills, because it uses the built-in mechanism for making the wires of our brains faster and more accurate (see the Appendix, this page).
• Embracing repetition means changing your mindset; instead of viewing it as a chore, view it as your most powerful tool.
• FOR EVERY HOUR OF COMPETITION, SPEND FIVE HOURS PRACTICING
• A five-to-one ratio of practice time to performance time is a good starting point; ten to one is even better.
• DON’T WASTE TIME TRYING TO BREAK BAD HABITS—INSTEAD, BUILD NEW ONES
• TO LEARN IT MORE DEEPLY, TEACH IT
• GIVE A NEW SKILL A MINIMUM OF EIGHT WEEKS
• WHEN YOU GET STUCK, MAKE A SHIFT
• Grit is that mix of passion, perseverance, and self-discipline that keeps us moving forward in spite of obstacles.
• Grit isn’t inborn. It’s developed, like a muscle, and that development starts with awareness.
• KEEP YOUR BIG GOALS SECRET
• Telling others about your big goals makes them less likely to happen, because it creates an unconscious payoff—tricking our brains into thinking we’ve already accomplished the goal.