Whenever humans come together for any reason, music is there: weddings, funerals, graduation from college, men marching off to war, stadium sporting events, a night on the town, prayer, a romantic dinner, mothers rocking their infants to sleep ... music is a part of the fabric of everyday life.
Daniel LevitinMost of what we know we don't really know first hand. I've never seen a cancer cell. But I trust this community of experts who have, so I believe that cancer exists. But we trust these experts, and we trust that the experts have a system of checks and balances and self-correction. And we have to insist that experts have certain certifications. They're not perfect. Every once in awhile there's an engine falls off the wing of a plane, or a tax audit happens and you find out your expert made a mistake. But it's a pretty good system. It's the best system we've got.
Daniel LevitinLove is about feeling that there is something bigger than just ourselves and our own worries and existence. Whether it is love of another person, of country, of God, of an idea, love is fundamentally an intense devotion to this notion that something is bigger than us. Love is ultimately larger than friendship, comfort, ceremony, knowledge, or joy. Indeed, as the Four Wise Ones once said, it may be all you need.
Daniel LevitinDecision-making is difficult because, by its nature, it involves uncertainty. If there was no uncertainty, decisions would be easy! The uncertainty exists because we don't know the future, we don't know if the decision we make will lead to the best possible outcome. Cognitive science has taught us that relying on our gut or intuition often leads to bad decisions, particularly in cases where statistical information is available. Our guts and our brains didn't evolve to deal with probabilistic thinking.
Daniel Levitin