Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• The End of Democratic Delusions

  I think George Packer's writing in the current Atlantic Magazine provides a good overview and historical perspective on our current times. I'm archiving it in... Read more

  Posted on 03 December 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MindBlog's Brain Hacks

  Introspective awareness and modulation of both ancient and more recently evolved aspects of our cognition: Brain Hack #1-The reptilian brain (whose modern... Read more

  Posted on 29 November 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Amazing.....the AI Effect: Nearly 1 Billion Threats a Day

  I have to pass on this piece from today's WSJ. Makes me increasingly wonder when all of my financial savings held in electronic form in the cloud might... Read more

  Posted on 25 November 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Election is Over. How Do We Feel Now?

  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 22 November 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Tokens of Sanity for Anxious Times

  -Being the space in which nothing can hurry -An animal body that pretends to be human -Dissociating from the word cloud and emotional reactivities of self an... Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Networks of Connectivity Are the Battleground of the Future.

  From Nathan Gardels, editor of Noema Magazine: "From Mass To Distributed Weapons Of Destruction" : The recent lethal attacks attributed to Israel that exploded... Read more

  Posted on 28 September 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Review of Yuval Harari's "Nexus"

  I pass on the very cogent opinions of Dominic Green, fellow of the Royal Historical Society, that appeared in the Sept. 13 issue of the Wall Street Journal. Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Fear of Diverse Intelligences Like AI

  I want to suggest that you read the article by Michael Levin in the Sept. 3 issue of Noema Magazine on how our fear of AI’s potential is emblematic of humanity’... Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Delusions of Transhumanists and Life Span Extenders

  One futurist story line is that we all will be seamlessly integrated with AI and the cloud, and bioengineered to live forever. Read more

  Posted on 30 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Regulating Our Subjective Well Being - Our Brain's Axes of Arousal, Valence,...

  

  I've now read several times through a daunting review article by Feldman et al. in the July issue of Trends in Cognitive Science titled "The Neurobiology of... Read more

  Posted on 28 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Brain Simulates Actions and Their Consequences During REM Sleep

  During REM sleep our brains make up and work though simulated scenarios, while putting our bodies into paralysis so we don't thrash about dangerously....... Read more

  Posted on 26 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An Epilogue

  I want to pass on a clip from the epilogue of Jim Holt's 2012 book "Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story" in which he describes his attendin... Read more

  Posted on 23 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Human Distinctiveness and Artificial Intelligence

  I pass on some random thoughts occasioned by the previous post. What is distinctive about humans? -There are millions of humans, there can be only a few LLMs,... Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Human Distinctiveness in Different Cultures

  

  I want to pass on a clip of text from Samuel Arbesman's recent Substack email, on the path dependence of fundamental ideas about ourselves. Read more

  Posted on 12 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Selections from the Proceedings of the National Academny of Sciences (PNAS.org)

  Below are URLs of journal articles I find interesting and think might be of interest to some MindBlog readers. Most are open source. Email me if you hit a... Read more

  Posted on 09 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Art of Pretending to Govern

  Venkatesh Rao's most recent installment of his RibbonFarm Breaking Smart series has comments on the seminal ideas of James Scott, a writer who recently died. Read more

  Posted on 07 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Psilocybin Desynchronizes Our Brains During Ego Dissolution

  From Siegel et al (open source).:A single dose of psilocybin, a psychedelic that acutely causes distortions of space–time perception and ego dissolution,... Read more

  Posted on 05 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Ooze is Growing

  In case you haven't seen enough pessimistic predictions about the next ~10-20 years, I pass on the following clips from a recent installment of my email... Read more

  Posted on 02 August 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How We Got to Where We Are

  In the beginning was the cosmos, fundamentally as incomprehensible to our human brains as quantum chemistry is to a dog’s brain. Read more

  Posted on 31 July 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Positive Effects of Aging on Cognition and Emotion Regulation

  After I returned to Austin Texas in late 2017 to live in the family house of my childhood I started a discussion group (The Austin Rainbow Forum) that meets on... Read more

  Posted on 29 July 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE