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The 7 Most Popular Ideas of Summer 2013

Today we are celebrating 7 of the most popular – and indeed they turn out to be among the most interesting – ideas of the summer of 2013.
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Happy Labor Day weekend! Today we are celebrating 7 of the most popular – and indeed they turn out to be among the most interesting – ideas of the summer of 2013.


Here goes (in no particular order):

1. How being called smart can actually make you stupid
Counterintuitively, it has been repeatedly demonstrated thatpraising people for their intelligence rather than their effort can actually make people perform drastically worse over time, avoid future challenges and form negative attitudes to learning and towards themselves. 
Man of Steel is all about Plato’s Republic, something that would hit you immediately if you had actually read that great book.
The frailty of human rationality is well known, but it was on particularly poignant display during the Oklahoma City tornado.
Just imagine the possibilities if Musk really is right. What if it’s really possible to build a Hyperloop? 
People have the tendency in negotiation to focus on the facts and the figures, ignoring the emotional component. 
China is in full gears to becoming a cultural superpower, and its 400 million micro-bloggers have a huge stake in creating the future society. 
Many neuropsychiatric ailments that are assumed to have a major genetic component don’t seem to have one.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
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