Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2549 )

• Unification of Physics and Biology by "Assembly Theory"

  An international collaboration of researchers in an open source article in Nature Magazine, has developed a new theoretical framework that bridges physics and... Read more

  Posted on 11 October 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What Your Brain is Doing After the Light Turns Green.

  Gandhi and collaboratores show that if you step out to cross the street without looking right or left the neural activity in the brain is different than if you... Read more

  Posted on 09 October 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Anthropic Claude's Version of My Writing on the Mind

  This post describes the first of my personal encounters with AI that has left me completely in awe of its capabilities. Since 1993 I have been placing the... Read more

  Posted on 04 October 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Fluid Fogs and Fixed Flows

  For the MindBlog readers who may have have noted my  "This is the New 'Real World' post and followed me down the rabbit hole of Ventkatesh Rao’s narrative... Read more

  Posted on 02 October 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• AI, a Boon for Science and a Disaster for Creatives

  The Sept. 16 issue of the Economist has two excellent articles: How artificial intelligence can revolutionise science and How scientists are using artificial... Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Memory for Stimulus Sequences Unique to Humans?

  Continuing the never-ending quest to find fundamental human abilities or behaviors lacking in other animals (many, like the mirror recognition test, have... Read more

  Posted on 27 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Emergent Analogical Reasoning in Large Language Models

  Things are moving very fast in AI development. From Webb et al: The recent advent of large language models has reinvigorated debate over whether human... Read more

  Posted on 25 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• This is the New Real World

  For my own later reference, and hopefully of use to a few MindBlog readers, I have edited, cut and pasted, and condensed from 3960 to 1933 words the latest... Read more

  Posted on 22 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Chemistry That Regulates Whether We Stay with What We're Doing Or Try Something...

  Sidorenko et al. demonstrate that stimulating the brain's cholinergic and noradrenergic systems enhances optimal foraging behaviors in humans. Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Does "situational Awareness" in AI's Large Language Models Mean Consciousness?

  The answer to that question would be no, for a number of reasons I won't go into, but Berglund et al. provide an interesting nudge in the direction of sentiece... Read more

  Posted on 18 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What We Seek to Save When We Seek to Save the World

  

  Yet anoather fascinating set of ideas from Venkatesh Rao that I want to save for myself by doing a MindBlog post of some clips from the piece. ... Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Constructing Self and World

  There is a strong similarity between the predictive processing brain model that has been the subject of numerous Mind Blog Posts, and the operations that ChatGP... Read more

  Posted on 13 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Open Access Articles on Consciousness (Thomas Metzinger and Others)

  I am overwhelmed by how much good stuff comes flooding into my email inbox, even after I have deleted 90% of it unopened. A newsletter from the Journal of... Read more

  Posted on 08 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Mapping the Physical Properties of Odorant Molecules to Their Perceptual...

  I pass on parts of the editor's summary and the abstract of a foundational piece of work by Lee et al. that produces a map linking odorant molecular structures... Read more

  Posted on 06 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Inhalation Boosts Perceptual Awareness and Decision Speed

  From Ludovic Molle et al. (open source): Significance Breathing is a ubiquitous biological rhythm in animal life. However, little is known about its effect on... Read more

  Posted on 04 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Fragility of Artists’ Reputations from 1795 to 2020

  Zhang et al. do an interesting study using natural language processing to measure reputation over time: Significance This study uses machine-learning... Read more

  Posted on 01 September 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Neuron–astrocyte Networks Might Perform the Core Computations Performed by AI...

  Fascinating ideas from Kozachkov et al. Their text contains primers on Astrocyte biology and the transformers found in AI Generative Pre-trained Transformers... Read more

  Posted on 30 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Shared Novelty-seeking Basis for Creativity and Curiosity

  I pass on the abstract of a target article having the title of this post, sent to me by Behavioral and Brain Science. I'm reading through it, and would be... Read more

  Posted on 28 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Promise and Pitfalls of the Metaverse for Science

  A curious open-sourse bit of hand waving and gibble-gabble about the metaverse. I pass on the first two paragraphs and links to its references. Read more

  Posted on 25 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Why Citizens Vote Away the Democracies They Claim to Cherish.

  Here is an interesting bit of research from Braley et al. reported in Nature Human Behaviour. Their abstract: Around the world, citizens are voting away the... Read more

  Posted on 23 August 2023 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE