Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• Young Muscles and Immune Systems in Aging Cyclists.

  I pass on the technical abstracts of two striking papers referenced by a Gretchen Reynolds article showing that the leg muscles and immune systems of 55-79... Read more

  Posted on 30 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How is Tech Dividing Us?

  Comments by David Autor during an interview by Nancy Scola: ...it's definitely the case that automation is raising the demand for skilled labor. And the work... Read more

  Posted on 29 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Logic in Babies.

  Halberda does a commentary on work of Cesana-Arlotti et al. showing that one essential form of logical inference, process of elimination, is with the toolkit... Read more

  Posted on 28 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Different Kinds of Smiles Elicit Different Physiological Responses

  Martin et al. show that our stress chemistry (HPA, or hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis) is augmented or dampened by different kinds of smiles: When people ar... Read more

  Posted on 27 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• YouTube's A.I. Finds That Radicalization Gets More Ad Revenue.

  Tufekci points to yet another pathological social consequence of A.I. algorithms designed to make people stay on a website longer, and thus generate more... Read more

  Posted on 26 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Reputation Age.

  I would like to point to this brief essay by Italian philosopher Gloria Origgi, which offers, after its beginning paragraphs (below), several examples of... Read more

  Posted on 23 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Think You’re Not a Competitor? Think Again.

  From Raghabendra et al.: We report a series of experimental studies that investigate the influence of a competition on noncompetitors who do not participate in... Read more

  Posted on 22 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Brain Coupling During Holding Hands Correlates with Pain Reduction

  From Goldstein et al.: The mechanisms underlying analgesia related to social touch are not clear. While recent research highlights the role of the empathy of th... Read more

  Posted on 21 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Being What We Think We Are.

  Gretchen Reynolds points to an interesting article in Health Psychology by Zahrt and Crum. Following up on an earlier article in which Crum and her co-author... Read more

  Posted on 20 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Rationalizing Undesired Change as Soon as It Takes Effect.

  Lauren does interesting work illustrating how our psychological immune system acts to rationalize and make us feel better about changes we don’t like. Read more

  Posted on 19 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Dying for the Group - a Theory of Extreme Self-sacrifice

  I'm on Behavioral and Brain Sciences' mailing list of potential commentators on its forthcoming articles, and now pass on the abstract of a forthcoming article... Read more

  Posted on 16 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• We Project Our Own Spatial Bias onto Others.

  Graziano's group has done an experiment suggesting that our spatial bias in processing objects in the right visual field better than the left (or vice versa,... Read more

  Posted on 15 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Slow Thought Manifesto

  I am on Aeon’s mailing list to receive three essays from its archive each day, three more items to scan in a daily stream of emails from aggregators that... Read more

  Posted on 14 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• On Social Media Lies Spread Faster, Deeper, and More Broadly Than the Truth.

  Here is the link to the widely reported open access Science Magazine article by Vosoughi et al. showing that social media propagate false news more rapidly and... Read more

  Posted on 13 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Critical Comment on Pinker's "Enlightenment Now"

  In this final post on Pinker’s new book, “Enlightenment Now” I want to note several reviews that offer reservations about the book (and offer a few responses),... Read more

  Posted on 12 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Pinker on Humanism and Human Flourishing.

  These clips from the last chapter (chapter 23) of Pinker's new book "Enlightenment Now" conclude my passing on of some of the ideas from the book. Please read... Read more

  Posted on 09 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Pinker on Reason, and Our Presumed Post-truth Era

  The last section, part III, of Pinker's new book "Enlightenment Now" is titled Reason, Science, and Humanism. Here I pass on a few clips from Chapter 21,... Read more

  Posted on 08 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Future of Progress - Return to the Middle Ages, Or Continuing Upward Curve?

  Continuing the series of posts on Pinker's new book "Enlightenment Now", I want to pass on clips from the last chapter (Chapter 20) of part II of the book,... Read more

  Posted on 07 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Pinker on Progress

  This post is my third installment of summarizing or passing on bits of Pinker’s new book “Enlightenment Now”. The previous installments dealt with Pinker’s... Read more

  Posted on 06 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Progressophobia

  In this post I continue to pass on brief clips from Pinker's new book "Enlightenment Now" that I found most fascinating. The following is from Part II of the... Read more

  Posted on 05 March 2018 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE