Son of Timatollah

Leo Chalupa's dangerous idea, from responses this years Edge "What Is Your Dangerous Idea?" question. Link via Boing Boing.

My dangerous idea is that what's needed to attain optimal brain performance — with or without prior brain exercise — is a 24-hour period of absolute solitude. By absolute solitude I mean no verbal interactions of any kind (written or spoken, live or recorded) with another human being. I would venture that a significantly higher proportion of people reading these words have tried skydiving than experienced one day of absolute solitude.

I'm skeptical that it would lead to "optimal brain performance" -- how do you measure that in the first place? -- but I'm comfortable that it would lead to an improvement in the quality of life. (Okay, okay. That's hard to measure, too.)

Maybe one could start with 10 minutes of silence and solitude a day and then work up to 30 minutes or so on a regular basis!