brains
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A tour of “Newcomb’s Paradox,” in which philosophers who ought to know better argue about the best way to behave in a nonsensical, world-hopping dilemma.
Sometimes, only an irrational choice can help us make the world as good as it could possibly be.
anonymity, anonymous, anonymous action, Blood Test, brains, Charles Baxter, choice, consciousness, Daniel Dennett, emotion, emotions, ensemble behavior of matter, free will, game theory, Hamlet, irrational behavior, irrational choices, irrationality, magical thinking, neural firing, neurons, neuroscience, Newcomb’s Paradox, philosophy, physics, prediction, predictive neuroscience, prisoners’ dilemma, prophecy, quantum computers, quantum mechanics, rational behavior, rational choices, rationality, revenge, Robert Frank, Robert Sapolsky, Roko’s basilisk, Sabine Hossenfelder, science, social opprobrium, storytelling, superposition, The Lion King, The Prisoners’ Dilemma, trust, uncertainty, uncertainty principle
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On ‘The Overstory.’
Trees made our world livable. Will we show gratitude … or destroy all the forests, wrecking our own chances of survival in the process?
AI, algorithms, artificial intelligence, atmosphere, bees, biomass, book review, brains, carbon, carbon cycles, chemical communication, climate, climate change, cognition, Collapse, communication, computers, consciousness, cycle of life, deforestation, Earth, environmentalism, environmentalist, evolution, extinction, forest, Fruitful Labor, global warming, Go, greenhouse gases, Jared Diamond, Mike Madison, nature, neural networks, neurology, neurons, old growth forest, origin of consciousness, oxygenation, plant communication, Richard Powers, robots, science fiction, smartphones, speed of life, sunlight, tech, technology, technology addiction, The Overstory, The Overstory review, tree communication, tree talk, trees, vegan, Walden, woodlands, woods
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On Charles Foster’s ‘Being a Beast’ and battling the empathy gap.
If Charles Foster can learn, & care, what it’s like to be a badger, all citizens should be able to empathize with the experience of Homo sapiens from other ethnic backgrounds.
agricultural revolution, all lives matter, Being a Beast, Black Lives Matter, brains, Charles Foster, civil forfieture, common ancestors, Donald Trump, empathy, empathy gap, evolution, family first, faulty roadside drug tests, Hungary, incarceration crisis, injustice, Jeneen Interlandi, jeremy betham, John Oliver, living as a badger, natural selection, Neil Gaiman, neurological basis of empathy, Peter Singer, power racing, psychology, reading fiction develops empathy, river otters, Roma, swift, The View from the Cheap Seats, tofu, utilitarianism, vegan, vegetarian
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On octopus literature, a reprise: what would books be like if we didn’t love gossip?
Of all intelligent species I know of, only the octopus evolved its mind for purposes other than keeping track of gossip.
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On Mat Johnson’s Loving Day and wanting to fit in.
My condolences to those who feel as though it’s their heritage never to fit in. Growing up, I didn’t fit either. But I had no expectation of fitting in. I was an outlier by virtue of who I was, not who my parents were. And presumably I could’ve learned to talk differently, to act differently,…
ancestry, brain imaging, brains, Caitlyn Jenner, choosing our identity, contemporary literary fiction, Danzy Senna, differences between male and female brains, differences between men’s and women’s brains, Elinor Burkett, feminism, feminist, Gina Rippon, identity politics, Loving Day, Mat Johnson, mixed-race, multicultural, nail polish, race, review of Mat Johnson’s Loving Day, rudely claiming that all black art is “urban”, The Mulatto Millennium, The Sympathizer, tribes, urban, urban fiction, urban graphic novels, Viet Nguyen, what does it mean to be black, What Makes a Woman, what should a black man look like, who is black
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On mental architecture and octopus literature.
I might spend too much time thinking about how brains work. Less than some people, sure — everybody working on digital replication of human thought must devote more energy than I do to the topic, and they’re doing it in a more rigorous way — but for a dude with no professional connection to cognitive…
Frank Brown Cloud 