Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Chemistry That Regulates Whether We Stay with What We're Doing Or Try Something...

  Sidorenko et al. demonstrate that stimulating the brain's cholinergic and noradrenergic systems enhances optimal foraging behaviors in humans. Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Does "situational Awareness" in AI's Large Language Models Mean Consciousness?

  The answer to that question would be no, for a number of reasons I won't go into, but Berglund et al. provide an interesting nudge in the direction of sentiece... Read more

  Posted on 18 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What We Seek to Save When We Seek to Save the World

  

  Yet anoather fascinating set of ideas from Venkatesh Rao that I want to save for myself by doing a MindBlog post of some clips from the piece. ... Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Constructing Self and World

  There is a strong similarity between the predictive processing brain model that has been the subject of numerous Mind Blog Posts, and the operations that ChatGP... Read more

  Posted on 13 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Open Access Articles on Consciousness (Thomas Metzinger and Others)

  I am overwhelmed by how much good stuff comes flooding into my email inbox, even after I have deleted 90% of it unopened. A newsletter from the Journal of... Read more

  Posted on 08 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Mapping the Physical Properties of Odorant Molecules to Their Perceptual...

  I pass on parts of the editor's summary and the abstract of a foundational piece of work by Lee et al. that produces a map linking odorant molecular structures... Read more

  Posted on 06 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Inhalation Boosts Perceptual Awareness and Decision Speed

  From Ludovic Molle et al. (open source): Significance Breathing is a ubiquitous biological rhythm in animal life. However, little is known about its effect on... Read more

  Posted on 04 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Fragility of Artists’ Reputations from 1795 to 2020

  Zhang et al. do an interesting study using natural language processing to measure reputation over time: Significance This study uses machine-learning... Read more

  Posted on 01 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Neuron–astrocyte Networks Might Perform the Core Computations Performed by AI...

  Fascinating ideas from Kozachkov et al. Their text contains primers on Astrocyte biology and the transformers found in AI Generative Pre-trained Transformers... Read more

  Posted on 30 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Shared Novelty-seeking Basis for Creativity and Curiosity

  I pass on the abstract of a target article having the title of this post, sent to me by Behavioral and Brain Science. I'm reading through it, and would be... Read more

  Posted on 28 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Promise and Pitfalls of the Metaverse for Science

  A curious open-sourse bit of hand waving and gibble-gabble about the metaverse. I pass on the first two paragraphs and links to its references. Read more

  Posted on 25 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Why Citizens Vote Away the Democracies They Claim to Cherish.

  Here is an interesting bit of research from Braley et al. reported in Nature Human Behaviour. Their abstract: Around the world, citizens are voting away the... Read more

  Posted on 23 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Never-Ending Stories - a Survival Tactic for Uncertain Times

  I keep returning to clips of text that I abstracted from a recent piece by Venkatesh Rao. It gets more rich for me on each re-reading. Read more

  Posted on 21 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Born Rich

  I want to pass on a few slightly edited clips from an interesting essay in The Dispatch by conservative writer Kevin Williamson that a friend pointed me to. Read more

  Posted on 17 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Human History Gets a Rewrite.

  I want to point to two articles I have enjoyed reading, both describing the recent book by Graeber and Wengrowa; “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of... Read more

  Posted on 15 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Immaturity of America's Therapeutic Culture

  I recommend reading the most recent NYTimes David Brook's piece, and pass on here ChatGPT 4's response to my request to summarize the main its 1,472 words. Read more

  Posted on 11 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What is Intelligence?

  I want to share a message sent by Clint Sprott to the Chaos and Complexity seminar group at the University of Wisconsin which he started many years ago - it is... Read more

  Posted on 09 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• America's Legacy of Poverty - The Injustice of Place.

  Having moved back into the house in which I grew up in Austin Texas, and watching the city inexorably move towards becoming a dystopian metroplex, the analysis... Read more

  Posted on 07 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• 18-month Old Humans Discriminate Moral Violations from Disobedient Or...

  Fascinating studies from Kassecker et al. (open source) have used multiple methods (eye-tracking, observations of expressive behaviors) to probe the... Read more

  Posted on 04 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Work as War...and Pritzker's Formulae To Spot An Idiot

  

  Too fascinating pieces on how in the areas of politics and business our more recently evolved primate capabilities for empathy and compassion are being subverte... Read more

  Posted on 02 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE