Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2685 )

• Turing, Von Neumann, and the Computational Architecture of Biological Machines

  I pass on the abstract of a PNAS perspective article by Hashim M. Al-Hashimi (motivated readers can obtain a PDF of the article from me). Read more

  Posted on 21 June 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Psychological Illusion of "The Good Old Days"

  Mastroianni and Gilbert (open access) do a nice study illustrating that the the universal perception of our ongoing moral decline is a psychological illusion... Read more

  Posted on 20 June 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Do We Define Spirituality and What It’s Role is in Our Daily Lives?

  This post is primarily directed to Austin TX people who will be attending the Sunday 2 p.m. July 2 meeting of the Austin Rainbow Forum that is now in its 5th... Read more

  Posted on 10 June 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A New Place for Consciousness in Our Understanding of the Universe

  I want to point MindBlog readers to an article by Thomas Lewton that I enjoyed reading. It describes how theorists are trying to make sense of mysteries like... Read more

  Posted on 09 June 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Negativity Drives Online News Consumption

  Why paying attention to the news can come close to being a receipe for clinic depression... An open source article from Robertson et al. Read more

  Posted on 07 June 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Simple Heuristic for Distinguishing Lie from Truth

  Work by Verschuere et al. shows that a simple heuristic of only judging the level of detail in the message consistently allows people to discriminate lies from... Read more

  Posted on 05 June 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Gender Inequality is Associated with Differences Between the Brains of Men and...

  Sobering but not surprising analysis by Jugman et al.: Significance Gender inequality is associated with worse mental health and academic achievement in women. Read more

  Posted on 02 June 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Some Notes on “Constructing Self and World”

  I’ve just listened to one of Sam Harris’ podcasts in his “Making Sense” series titled “Constructing Self and World.” It is a conversation with Shamil... Read more

  Posted on 31 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• To Fulfill Its Promise, Artificial Intelligence Needs to Deepen Human...

  For MindBlog readers interested in AI, I have to point to another must-read article by Ezra Klein. Below are some clips that try to communicate his central... Read more

  Posted on 29 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• When Their Idea of Liberty Is Your Idea of Death

  This post gives a snapshot of another really excellent Thomas Edsall piece, provided courtesy of Chat GPT-4, making the central points accessible to MindBlog... Read more

  Posted on 26 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Using AI to Decipher Words and Sentences from Brain Scans

  Things are happening very fast in AI, as this work from Huth and his collaborators shows. Previous work has shown that speeh articulation and other signals can... Read more

  Posted on 24 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Multilevel Cultural Evolution - New Theory and Practical Applications

  I want to point to a exceptionally lucid and well written expostion by David Sloan Willson et al. and pass on the opening paragraphs of their article that frame... Read more

  Posted on 22 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity in the Postmodern, Neoliberal Age

  

  I want to share with MindBlog readers the background material prepared by Austin Rainbow Forum member Daniel Owen to support our Sunday June 4 2023 discussion o... Read more

  Posted on 19 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An Evolutionary Psychology Perspective on the Politics of Leadership

  Thomas Edsall does another of his scholarly analyses, this time putting Trump as the wannabe alpha male in a larger evolutionary context. Read more

  Posted on 17 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• People Who Talk Too Much

  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 15 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Virality

  This post is the ninth and final installment of my passing on to both MindBlog readers and my future self my idiosyncratic selection of clips of text from... Read more

  Posted on 12 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MindBlog Paragraphs Bloviating on the Nature of the Self Ask Google Bard and Cha...

  I can’t resist passing on this example of checking out what Google Bard and OpenAI’s Chat GPT-4 might do with some of my opaque paragraphs. Read more

  Posted on 10 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Can a Theory of Events-in-time - Our Future History - Ever Be Crafted?

  I first drafted this as I usually do to pass on clips that attempt to extract the core points from a fascinating brief piece by Venkatesh Rao. Read more

  Posted on 08 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Data Deluge - Dataism

  This post is the eighth installment of my passing on to both MindBlog readers and my future self my idiosyncratic selection of clips of text from O’Gieblyn’s... Read more

  Posted on 05 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Yuval Harari's Vision of the End of Human History.

  I passed on a link to Harai's recent piece in The Economist in Tuesday's post, but I haven't been able to get some of his crystal clear thinking out of my... Read more

  Posted on 04 May 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE