Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Large-scale Cortical Functional Networks Are Organized in Structured Cycles

  Interesting work from Mats et al. (open source) in Nature Neuroscience. It has some interesting graphics. Their abstract:The brain seamlessly performs a... Read more

  Posted on 08 October 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Why Depolarization is Hard: Evaluating Attempts to Decrease Partisan Animosity i...

  A very revealing piece of work from Holiday et al. Their abstract: Affective polarization is a corrosive force in American politics. Read more

  Posted on 06 October 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Platforms Like X and TikTok Are Destroying Our Culture.

  I pass on most of a recent Sam Harris piece:Charlie Kirk was a political prodigy on the Right and adored by a younger generation of Republicans... Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Evolved Mental Errors That Underlie Our Current Cultural and Political Malaise

  

  I recently looked back at a book I read in 2019, “ Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think” written by... Read more

  Posted on 26 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Could Humans and AI Become a New Evolutionary Individual?

  This PNAS opinion piece (open source) by Rainey and Hochberg is well worth a read. It suggests that as different AI implementations suffuse into cultures,... Read more

  Posted on 24 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Enlightenment, Habituation, and Renewal - Non-dual Awareness as the Opiate of th...

  Enlightenment traditions in Abrahamic, Buddhist, Hindu, or other schools of meditative insight have a common issue. How can the central canon or dogma of the wa... Read more

  Posted on 22 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Value, Purpose, Meaning, Futures

  Value, purpose, and meaning vary between religions and cultures, and are best viewed as emergent properties supporting altruistic behaviors bonding us into... Read more

  Posted on 19 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Humans Work - an Integrated Model

  I was ruminating this morning over a number of books I have read, and decided to send the following prompt to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Deep Seek, and Claude... Read more

  Posted on 17 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Brain Fires up Immune Cells When Sick People Are Nearby

  When people view virtual avatars with coughs or rashes, their brains their brains trigger an immune response. Serino and collaborators (open source) outfitted... Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Chants Across Seven Traditions Share Acoustic Traits That Enhance Subjective...

  From Canessa-Pollard et al.: For over 5,000 y, chanting has been practiced across many Western and Eastern traditions. However, there is hardly any empirical... Read more

  Posted on 12 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Rethinking How Our Brains Work.

  

  After reviewing Hoffman's mind-bending ideas that were the subject of the previous post, I decided to look back at another post on changing our perspective on... Read more

  Posted on 08 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Resetting My Brain…

  After a jolt of caffeine or intense exercise I sometimes feel a sudden quiet - a mind reset or emptying during which a quiet space appears that is not the... Read more

  Posted on 03 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Selected MindBlog Posts on Defining What Our Human Self Or "I" Is.

  This post collects the titles and texts of selected posts on what a human self is that I have composed since June 2022, and this link takes you to a list of... Read more

  Posted on 01 September 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Why You Are Probably An NPC (Non Playing Character)

  I want to pass on this outstanding piece of writing from Gurwinder on Substack, in which he describes five different robotic human character types that include... Read more

  Posted on 29 August 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• AI is a Mass-Delusion Event - and - Gen Z and the End of Predictable Progress

  I want to recommend two articles whose titles are this post's title, the first by Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic and the second by Kyla Scanlon in her Substack... Read more

  Posted on 27 August 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Gaze Patterns Can Serve as a Sensitive Marker of Cognitive Decline

  From Wynn et al.: AbstractEye movements are closely linked to encoding and retrieval processes, with changes in viewing behavior reflecting age- and... Read more

  Posted on 25 August 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Predictability and the Pleasure of Music

  Mas-Herrero et al. do an interesting study on how predictive processes shape individual musical preferences .SignificanceUsing a novel decision-making task, we... Read more

  Posted on 22 August 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Brain-computer Interface That Reads Inner Thoughts.

  Inampudi does a description of work by Kunz et al., who isolated signals from a brain implant so people with movement disorders could voice thoughts without... Read more

  Posted on 20 August 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Polarization May Be Inherent in Social Media

  Science news reports on a fascinating recent study suggesting that just the basic functions of social media—posting, reposting, and following—inevitably... Read more

  Posted on 18 August 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Why Does AI Hinder Democratization?

  Here is the abstract from the open source article of Chu et al in PNAS: This paper examines the relationship between democratization and the development of AI... Read more

  Posted on 21 May 2025 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE