Lives 1st

● The elephant interprets and responds to over 40 million nerve impulses per second , while the rider processes about 40 nerve impulses per second . ● As an information processor the elephant is one million times more powerful than the rider. ● The elephant contributes 95% of cognitive activity . ● In the time you consciously processes four nerve impulses, your elephant processes one million. ● So who is making most of your decisions in life, the rider or the elephant ?  The elephant always will make the most, but the rider can become much more involved in the process! Things You Need to Know About Your Elephant ● The elephant ’s top priority is survival. It will go to extremes to keep the body alive. ● The primary way it works to keep the body alive is by making good predictions about what will happen next, so it can make sure the body is ready for any contingency. Studies show that the elephant spends 60 to 80 percent of its energy on making pr...

Remember Skinner’s experiments with rats? That’s what came to mind when I read How Facebook Programmed Our Relatives by Brett Frischmann & Katherine Haenschen on the Scientific American website . Social media platforms encode a range of social behaviors: Facebook notifies us when it is time to wish our friends a happy birthday; LinkedIn prompts us to congratulate contacts on their work anniversaries; Twitter breaks its own chronology to show us tweets that many of our friends have liked. As a result, social interactions are often reduced to the click of a button. Now more than ever, society needs ethical social science at the intersection of technology and humanity. Digital platforms are shaping what it means to be human, and we can't rely on the platforms to police or research themselves. In the meantime, when your birthday rolls around, enjoy the warm feelings from friends sending their regards— but remember that they don't know when your birthday really i...

(This is a handout for the first Lives 1st Realities Tour. It will provide an overview for the discussions between Jeffrey and Jim.)  ● Began a journey over a quarter of a century ago. ○ How did two sects of the same religion become two mutually exclusive monotheistic religions? ● Two guideline were like a GPS that kept us on track: ○ Belief Systems : My belief system will be large enough to include all of the facts, open enough to be examined and questioned, and flexible enough to change if errors or new facts are discovered . ○ Meanings of Words : A word is a symbol or group of symbols with an attached bundle of association, and those associations are a product of the Source’s culture, historical time period, geographical location and personal experiences . ● Our religions changed not only because of religious factors, political and economic factors played major roles too.  ○ Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (Roman Catholic Church) and the...

The following excerpt is adapted from an address given by Pat Sajak ( Host,  Wheel of Fortune ) to the first graduating class of Founders Classical Academy in Leander, Texas, on May 27, 2017; one of 16 classical K-12 charter schools currently operating under the auspices of Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter School Initiative. Pat Sajak gives unique insights about a special class of what we call a specific class of “ weaponized memes ” at the TOV Center Realities Transformations Initiative -- identity politics . “So let me instead suggest a pitfall to avoid going forward, a pitfall not only for this year’s graduates, but for everyone in every corner of American society today. It has altered the way we talk to one another and perceive one another. It has perverted the notion of free speech and poisoned the academic environment. It has turned the American political system on its head, creating a situation where opposing views are not only unwelcome, they are deemed to be si...