If everything in the environment is utterly predictable, you become bored. If it's utterly unpredictable, you become frustrated.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that a balance between predictability and unpredictability is essential for engagement and satisfaction in life.
In this quote, Daniel Levitin expresses the idea that human psychology requires a certain amount of both predictability and unpredictability to thrive. If everything around us is completely predictable, we experience boredom; conversely, when everything is unpredictable, it leads to frustration. The balance between these two extremes is crucial for maintaining interest and emotional well-being, highlighting the complex nature of our experiences in relation to our environment.
In practice
During a lecture on psychology, one can use this quote to illustrate the importance of balance in human experience.
As soon as you hear a proposition, the creative brain in humans assumes for the moment that it's true, and starts trying to find evidence. It's what computer scientists in the old days used to call 'Fifo:' first in, first out. The first piece of information that gets in has a privileged position, even if it's misinformation.
What music is better able to do than language is to represent the complexity of human emotional states.
Information overload refers to the notion that we're trying to take in more than the brain can handle.
That walk around the block, that fresh air, is going to help you work more quickly and effectively when you get back.
There are a lot of books about how to get organized and a lot of books about how to be better and more productive at business, but I don't know of one that grounds any of these in the science.
There's an ancient connection between movement and music. Most languages don't make a distinction between the words 'music' and 'dance.' And we can see that in the brain. When people are lying perfectly still but listening to music, the neurons in the motor cortex are firing.
He who made thee is made in thee. He is made in thee through whom you were made.... Give milk, O mother, to him who is our food; give milk to the bread that comes down from heaven.
Where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible.
The Lord has blessed you with a testimony of the truth. You have felt His influence and witnessed His power. And if you continue to seek Him, He will continue to grant you sacred experiences. With these and other spiritual gifts, you will be able not only to change your own life for the better but also to bless your homes, wards or branches, communities, cities, states, and nations with your goodness.
Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence.
The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens.
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
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