Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2547 )

• Is It a Fact? The Epistemic Force of Language in News Headlines.

  From Chuey et al. in PNAS (open source): Significance Headlines are an influential source of information, especially because people often do not read beyond... Read more

  Posted on 07 June 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Impact of Our Built Environment on Our Microbiome and Health

  Bosch et al. do a perspective in PNAS (open source) pointing out that: ...contemporary built environments are steadily reducing the microbial diversity essentia... Read more

  Posted on 05 June 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Ancient Origins of Aspects of Instrumental and Song Melodies Distinctive from...

  A global collaboration from many cultures shows that songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech, suggesting... Read more

  Posted on 27 May 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Think AI Can Perceive Emotion? Think Again.

  Numerous MindBlog posts have presented the work and writing of Elizabeth Feldman Barrett (enter Barrett in the search box in the right column of this web page). Read more

  Posted on 24 May 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Happiness Gap Between Left and Right

  I want to pass on a few clips from a recent Thomas Edsall essay, followed by a condensed version of the longer piece provided by Chat GPT 4: Why is it that a... Read more

  Posted on 22 May 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Age of Revolutions

  I've finished reading through Fareed Zakaria’s recent magisterial book: “Age of Revolutions Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present.” I was so impresse... Read more

  Posted on 20 May 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Evolutionarily Conserved Neural Responses to Affective Touch Transcend...

  Interesting work from Charbonneau et al. in macaque monkeys on the affective (gentle, pleasant) touch pathways that in humans use a different neural network tha... Read more

  Posted on 17 May 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Collective Behavior from Surprise Minimization

  A fascinating model for collective behavior from Heins et al.:SignificanceWe introduce a model of collective behavior, proposing that individual members within ... Read more

  Posted on 15 May 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How the US is Destroying Young People's Future.

  

  When I wake up in the morning, I frequently remind myself to be grateful for the luck of having been born in 1942, and being able to ride the crest of a number... Read more

  Posted on 13 May 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Blueprint - Nicholas Christakis on the Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

  This opinion piece by Frank Bruni in the NYTimes motivated me to download and read Nicholas Christakis' Magnum Opus “Blueprint” (very much in the 'everything yo... Read more

  Posted on 10 May 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Can There Be Scientific Criteria for What is Moral Behavior?

  I want to pass on an essay by Sam Harris updating his 2011 book "The Moral Landscape." I'm doing this mainly so that I can look back to this post when I want... Read more

  Posted on 03 May 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Blue Light Regulates the Body, Brain, and Immune System

  Here is the abstract from a PNAS perspectives article by Slominski et al. with the title "Photo-neuro-immuno-endocrinology: How the ultraviolet radiation... Read more

  Posted on 01 May 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An Expanded View of Human Minds and Their Reality.

  

  I want to pass on this recent essay by Venkatesh Rao in its entirety, because it has changed my mind on agreeing with Daniel Dennett that the “Hard Problem” of... Read more

  Posted on 29 April 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The World of Decentralized Everything.

  Following up on my last post on the Summer of Protocols sessions, I want to pass on (again, to my future self, and possibly a few techie MindBlog readers) a... Read more

  Posted on 10 April 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• New Protocols for Uncertain Times.

  I want to point to a project launched by Venkatest Rao and others last year: “The Summer of Protocols.” Some background for this project can be found in his... Read more

  Posted on 08 April 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Seduction by AI’s Believable Human Voice.

  I want to point to an excellent New Yorker article by Patrick House titled “The Lifelike Illusion of A.I.” The article strikes home for me, for when a Chat Bot... Read more

  Posted on 05 April 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Neurons Help Flush Waste out of Our Brains During Sleep

  More information (summarized here) on what is happening in our brains while we sleep is provided by Jiang-Xie et al.,, who show that active neurons can stimulat... Read more

  Posted on 03 April 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• When Memories Get Complex, Sleep Comes to Their Rescue

  Here I point to a PNAS article by Lutz et al. and a commentary on the work by Schechtman. Here is the Lutz. et al. abstract:SignificanceReal-life events... Read more

  Posted on 01 April 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Communication Technology Has Enabled the Corruption of Our Communication...

  

  I pass on two striking examples from today’s New York Times, with few clips of text from each:A.I.-Generated Garbage Is Polluting Our Culture:(You really... Read more

  Posted on 29 March 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• If You Want to Remember a Landscape Be Sure to Include a Human....

  Fascinating observations by Jimenez et al. on our inherent human drive to understand our vastly social world...(and in the same issue of PNAS note this study... Read more

  Posted on 25 March 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE