Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2559 )

• Oliver Sacks - The Machine Stops

  A slightly edited MindBlog post from 2019 worth another read: I want to point to a wonderful short essay written by Oliver Sacks before his death from cancer, i... Read more

  Posted on 26 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Steven Fry: "AI: A Means to an End Or a Means to Our End?"

  I have to pass on to MindBlog readers and my future self this link to a brilliant lecture by Steven Fry. It is an engaging and entertaining analysis, steeped... Read more

  Posted on 23 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Sculpting New Visual Categories into the Human Brain.

  Fascinating work from Iordan et al. (open source) I pass on the abstract and the first paragraph of the article that makes more clear what they are... Read more

  Posted on 18 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Analysis of the Dumbing Down of Language on Social Media Over Time

  Di Marco et al. (open source) do a comparative analysis of 8 different social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Voat, Reddit, Usenet, Gab, and... Read more

  Posted on 16 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Sustainability of Animal-Sourced Foods - How to Deal with Farting Cows...

  I've just read through a number of articles in a Special Feature section of the most recent issue of PNAS on the future of animal and plant sourced food. After ... Read more

  Posted on 12 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Neurons in the Amygdala Jointly Encode the Status of Interacting Individuals

  From Lee et al.:Highlights-Monkeys infer the social status of conspecifics from videos of dyadic interactions -During fixations, neural populations signal the... Read more

  Posted on 10 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An AI Framework for Neural–behavioral Modeling

  Work of Sani et al. (open access) is reported in the Oct. 2024 issue of Nature Neuroscience. From the editor's summary:Neural dynamics are complex and... Read more

  Posted on 09 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Battle of the Bots - AI Gets Creative with Brain Hacks

  This post is meant to archive my recent exercise of asking ChatGPT 4o, Perplexity, Gemini+ advanced, and Anthropic (which does not offer links to its... Read more

  Posted on 07 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Magnetic Soft Microrobots for Erectile Dysfunction Therapy!

  I can't resist passing on these abstracts describing work reported by a large number of researchers at South China University of Technology, Guangzhou... Read more

  Posted on 06 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Future of Warfare

  Passing on an article from today's WSJ that I want to save, using MindBlog as my personal archive: OpenAI Forges Tie-Up To Defense Industry OpenAI , the... Read more

  Posted on 05 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Have Hope - We're Not There Yet...

  Another clear eyed article on our current political climate that I'm saving in this post to look up later. Trump Will Overplay His Hand. Here’s How to Be Ready.... Read more

  Posted on 03 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The End of Democratic Delusions

  I think George Packer's writing in the current Atlantic Magazine provides a good overview and historical perspective on our current times. I'm archiving it in... Read more

  Posted on 03 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MindBlog's Brain Hacks

  Introspective awareness and modulation of both ancient and more recently evolved aspects of our cognition: Brain Hack #1-The reptilian brain (whose modern... Read more

  Posted on 29 November 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Amazing.....the AI Effect: Nearly 1 Billion Threats a Day

  I have to pass on this piece from today's WSJ. Makes me increasingly wonder when all of my financial savings held in electronic form in the cloud might... Read more

  Posted on 25 November 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Election is Over. How Do We Feel Now?

  I host a monthly discussion group in Austin TX, The Austin Rainbow Forum, that meets at 2 pm on the first Sunday of every month to consider interesting topics... Read more

  Posted on 22 November 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Tokens of Sanity for Anxious Times

  -Being the space in which nothing can hurry -An animal body that pretends to be human -Dissociating from the word cloud and emotional reactivities of self an... Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Networks of Connectivity Are the Battleground of the Future.

  From Nathan Gardels, editor of Noema Magazine: "From Mass To Distributed Weapons Of Destruction" : The recent lethal attacks attributed to Israel that exploded... Read more

  Posted on 28 September 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Review of Yuval Harari's "Nexus"

  I pass on the very cogent opinions of Dominic Green, fellow of the Royal Historical Society, that appeared in the Sept. 13 issue of the Wall Street Journal. Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Fear of Diverse Intelligences Like AI

  I want to suggest that you read the article by Michael Levin in the Sept. 3 issue of Noema Magazine on how our fear of AI’s potential is emblematic of humanity’... Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Delusions of Transhumanists and Life Span Extenders

  One futurist story line is that we all will be seamlessly integrated with AI and the cloud, and bioengineered to live forever. Read more

  Posted on 30 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE