Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• This Year's Ig Nobel Prizes.

  

  If you want a few chuckles, have a look at this link. The prize winning work this year shows that cats can be simultaneously solid and liquid because of their... Read more

  Posted on 02 October 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Does It Matter Whether We Believe in Free Will Or Not?

  From Genschow et al.: Significance The question whether free will exists or not has been a matter of debate in philosophy for centuries. Recently, researchers... Read more

  Posted on 29 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Greater Internet Use Does Not Correlate with Faster Growth of Political...

  Continuing a topic from MindBlog's April 20 post...Most writing on the increase in political polarization over the past decades argues that it is facilitated... Read more

  Posted on 28 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• “No Problem” Vs “you’re Welcome”

  My daughter pointed me to this piece by Gretchen McCulloch, which gives me some insight into what I have considered the annoying habit of younger people to... Read more

  Posted on 27 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Science of Emotion - Now at Least 27 Categories of Emotional States.

  So...I guess we knew emotions are complicated. There has been intense debate on how to describe them in semantic and geometric dimensions such as valence and... Read more

  Posted on 26 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Will You Be Above Or Below “the API” in the Emerging Economy?

  An application programming interface (API) is a set of subroutine definitions, protocols, and tools that are building blocks for application software... Read more

  Posted on 25 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Color Naming Across Languages Reflects Color Use

  Gibson et al. do a study showing that warm colors are communicated more efficiently than cool colors, and that this cross-linguistic pattern reflects the color... Read more

  Posted on 22 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Separate Prefrontal Areas Code Desirability Versus Availability.

  When we make a decision, we calculate its “expected value,” by multiplying the value of something (how much we want or need it) with the probability that we... Read more

  Posted on 21 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How We See What We Expect to See.

  Kok et al. show that expectations can induce the preactivation of stimulus templates in our brain that resemble the neural signals actually generated when the... Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Computer Design Cues Taken from Human Brains

  Metz does an interesting article on the waning of do-it-all chips, central processing units of the sort that are running my MacBook Air as I type this, in... Read more

  Posted on 19 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• It’s All About Tribes - Not Ideas, Morals, Or Principles.

  

  Thomas Edsall does another excellent piece on what is happening in our politics. I suggest you read it...here are a few clips: Since the advent of Trump, ... Read more

  Posted on 18 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Intractability of Racial Discrimination

  Sobering findings from Quillian et al.: Significance Many scholars have argued that discrimination in American society has decreased over time, while others... Read more

  Posted on 15 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Neuroforecasting Crowd Funding Outcomes

  Genevsky et al. find that directly measuring brain activities in the nucleus accumbens of individuals while they decide whether to fund proposed projects... Read more

  Posted on 14 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Do Americans Care About Rising Inequality?

  Interesting ideas from McCall et al.: Significance Although rising economic inequality in the United States has alarmed many, research across the social science... Read more

  Posted on 13 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How to Regulate Artificial Intelligence

  As a postscript to MindBlog's Aug. 23 post on Artificial Intelligence (AI), I pass on chunks from Oren Etzioni's more recent piece on how to artificial... Read more

  Posted on 12 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How “ought” Exceeds but Implies “can”

  From John Turri: This paper tests a theory about the relationship between two important topics in moral philosophy and psychology. Read more

  Posted on 11 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Debate Over a Scientific Wellness Study.

  Ryan Cross discusses reactions to a new "Scientific Wellness" pilot study set up by distinguished biologist Lee Hood and their recent report on the effort in... Read more

  Posted on 08 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Oxytocin Reduces Xenophobic Outgroup Rejection.

  This work from Marsh et al. suggests that it might be useful to spritz a bit of oxytocin up the noses of alt-right, alt-left, fascist, and antifa... Read more

  Posted on 07 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Evaluation of Brain Training Programs.

  By now there is a consensus that most claims about brain training making improving mental agility have no scientific basis. Most brain training only makes you... Read more

  Posted on 06 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• American Nirvana

  I've been meaning to point to an engaging article by polymath Adam Gopnik reviewing Robert Wright's recent book "Why Buddhism Is True." (Wright has written... Read more

  Posted on 05 September 2017 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE