Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• 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

• Nuances of Non-dual Awareness - Progress After "waking Up" ?

  I want to share clips from a recent exchange at the Waking Up Community that I found very useful. "Sam,":who is mentioned several times, is Sam Harris, whose... Read more

  Posted on 26 July 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Human Machine Writes...

  I think the spookily impersonal paragraph I pass on below - composed while getting back to sleep after a 2 a.m. pee-wake - is the way things work. Read more

  Posted on 24 July 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Blanding and Flattening of Our Culture

  Since I returned to live in my family home in Austin Texas in 2017 I have been sad to see the continuing disappearance of kinky "Keep Austin Weird" coffee shops... Read more

  Posted on 22 July 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• MindBlog Does a Survey of Futurists and Recommends a Few.

  In the wild and wooly world of thinking about futures for the earth, its living forms, and humanity there exists a tier of well know public intellectuals. Read more

  Posted on 19 July 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An Essay on Geopolitics and Globalization

  I want to pass on one complete section, indicating titles of the others, of  a larger essay addressing tribalism versus global consciousness. Read more

  Posted on 17 July 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What About Some Positive News for a Change?

  Doomsaying can become a self-fulfilling prophesy, as David Brooks points out. I want to point to Fix The News, a website curated by Angus Hervey and Amy... Read more

  Posted on 15 July 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Emerging World Order as a Global Version of the pre-Westphalian Middle Ages.

  I would like to pass on this link to an essay by Parag Khanna in Noema Magazine which is one of the best description of the increasing entropy in global... Read more

  Posted on 12 July 2024 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE