Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Evolutionary Models of Financial Markets.

  Levin and Lo's introduction of a PNAS special issue on evolutionary models of financial markets is an interesting read. A few clips: The brilliant evolutionary... Read more

  Posted on 15 July 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Giving Help to Others May Increase Your Life Span.

  An interesting analysis from Chen et al.: Significance Social support is a key contributor to mortality risk, with effects comparable in magnitude (though... Read more

  Posted on 21 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our 'Self' Extends Vastly Beyond Our Brain.

  I want to pass on two interesting articles that review how the self we usually take to be largely inside our heads (somewhere behind the eyes) in fact has... Read more

  Posted on 18 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A.I. Should Be Afraid of Us.

  Alan Burdick does a nice summary of some recent work on interactions between humans and artificial intelligence algorithms designed to appear empathetic:... Read more

  Posted on 17 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Your Blood Proteins Can Tell You the Best Kind of Exercise for Your Body

  Since I am heading into my 80th year, and realizing that any further years must be regarded as a gift from nature, I'm attentive to anything that NYTimes "Phys... Read more

  Posted on 16 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Equality and Equity in the Life Sciences

  After yesterday's heavy post describing 'Four Americas.' - with the last listed being 'Justice America' - rising out of the age of the Millenials and... Read more

  Posted on 15 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Four Americas

  I want to recommend that MindBlog readers have a look at George Packer's essay in the Atlantic presenting a condensed version of arguments in his new book,... Read more

  Posted on 14 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Social Media Isn't the problem...We Are.

  

  Mark Manson is one really smart guy. I have to pass on a precis of a nicely structured item pointed to in his weekly newsletter:He begin his piece by recalling... Read more

  Posted on 11 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Storytelling Increases Oxytocin and Positive Emotions, Decreases Cortisol and...

  From Brockington et al.: Storytelling is a distinctive human characteristic that may have played a fundamental role in humans’ ability to bond and navigate... Read more

  Posted on 10 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Cultural Evolution of Genetic Heritability

  Behavioral and Brain Sciences has accepted an article from Uchiyama et al., whose abstract I copy below, and invites the submission of commentary proposals. Read more

  Posted on 09 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• We’ve Been Great at Extending Our Lives, but Not at Ending Them.

  Steven Pinker does a review of Steven Johnson's recent book "Extra Life - A Short History of Living Longer," whose subject matter overlaps considerably with... Read more

  Posted on 08 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Making the Hard Problem of Consciousness Easier

  

  Yet another morsel of text for consciousness mavens. Melloni et al. (open source) describe efforts to narrow down on which of several current theories better... Read more

  Posted on 07 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Inequality is a Law of Nature

  DeDeo and Hobson do a commentary on a model developed by Kawakatsu et al. (open source) that explains the emergence of hierarchy in networked endorsement... Read more

  Posted on 04 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Optogenetics Used to Induce Pair Bonding and Restore Vision.

  I want to note two striking technical advances that make use of the light activated protein rhodopsin that I spent 36 years of my laboratory life studying. Read more

  Posted on 03 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• I’m Not Scared to Reenter Society. I’m Just Not Sure I Want To.

  I have to pass on a few clips from Tim Kreider's piece in the Atlantic: ...after a year in isolation, I, at least, have gotten acclimated to a different... Read more

  Posted on 02 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Watching Brain Regions That Help Us Anticipate What's Going to Happen Next.

  

  A primary function of the brain is to adaptively use past experience to generate expectations aboutevents that are likely to occur in the future. Lee et al. Read more

  Posted on 01 June 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Will Our American Democracy Collapse?

  An apocalyptic opinion piece by Krugman induces me to ruminations of the sort I’ve been inflicting on MindBlog readers in recent posts (see last paragrapht). Bu... Read more

  Posted on 31 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Latest on Wearable Stress-relief

  Over its 15 year history MindBlog has done several reviews of widgets currently on the market that are meant to monitor and relieve stress. Read more

  Posted on 28 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Bias Is a Big Problem. But So Is ‘Noise.’

  I have to pass on the strong dose of sanity offered by Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues in a recent NYTimes guest essay. They make some elemental... Read more

  Posted on 27 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Darwin’s Insights: How the Evolutionary Perspective Has Come to Permeate the...

  I want to pass on a review article on human evolution by Richerson1,Gavrilets, and de Waal (open source) in a recent issue of Science Magazine. Read more

  Posted on 26 May 2021 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE