Frans de Waal
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On storytelling and social justice.
By telling powerful stories with integrity, we might inspire people to help change the world.
activism, addiction, Bloomington, consciousness as storytelling, Dave Eggers, death in jail, emotions, emotions to compel action, framing your own story, Frans de Waal, free will, incarceration, Indiana, jail, jail poetry, Lindsey Badger, mass incarceration, Max Smith, Michelle Brekke, narrative consciousness, neuroscience of consciousness, neuroscience of free will, New Leaf, New Leaf New Life, overcoming trauma, poetry in jail, prison poetry, rationality, restorative justice, storytelling, storytelling and incarceration, teaching kids to be activists, The Bloomingtonian, The Dimension Mill, the neuroscience of storytelling, The Parade, trauma, writing and incarceration, writing and social justice, writing in prison
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On happiness and mind control.
We could change our brains enough to feel happy with the world as it is … or we could use our unhappiness as a motivation to fix things.
abusive research, addiction, America, animal emotions, animal empathy, asylums, bad medical advice, bioethics, biomedical ethics, brain modification, brain parasites, brain stimulation, brain’s pleasure center, Carl Elliott, cat shit, chemically modulated happiness, cocaine, consciousness, conversion therapy, DCS, deep brain stimulation, depression, direct current stimulation, dopamine, drug abuse, drug crisis, drug use, eating cat shit, electrical brain stimulation, electrochemical stimulation of desire, empathy in rats, evolutionary rationale for pleasure, fighting depression, Frans de Waal, free will, happiness, homosexuality, human choice, human free will, Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, induction of empathy, Lone Frank, love potion, Mama’s Last Hug, mind control, nucleus accumbens, opiate use, painkillers, parasites, parasitic mind control, psychiatric patients, psychiatric wards, psychiatry, psychological crisis, psychology studies, psychosurgery, rat empathy, rats free their friends, research ethics, research subjects, review of The Pleasure Shock, Robert Heath, science, scientific ethics, scientific progress, sex in a laboratory, suicide, toxo, toxoplasma, toxoplasmosis, unethical experiments, unethical research, unethical science, United States
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On Ann Leckie’s ‘The Raven Tower.’
You should read Ann Leckie’s ‘The Raven Tower,’ a beautiful novel set in a fascinating world.
A Century of Denial in Medicine, animal cognition, animal communication, animal language, animal welfare, Ann Leckie, Aristotle, babies, Babies Don’t Feel Pain, battle of the gods, biology, children, circumcision, compliments, confirmation bias, David Chamberlain, difference between gender and biological sex, do fish feel pain, elective surgery, fantasy novels, fish, fish pain, flawed assumptions, Frans de Waal, gender, genital mutilation, gods battling, human infants, hurting infants, hurting newborns, infant, Irad Kimhi, language, Mama’s Last Hug, mathematics, non-human animal cognition, non-human language, objectification, objectification of non-human animals, observational biology, philosophical argumentation, philosophy, prayer, primacy of language use, progressive fantasy, quantum computing, scientific ignorance, set theory, superposition of states, the emotions of babies, The Raven Tower, Thinking and Being, translating mathematics into words, vaccination, world building
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On fish (and their similarities to us).
We so often denigrate the capacities of presumed others. It’s much harder to exploit those whom you know feel.
animal cognition, animal learning, animal models of human psychiatric disorders, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are, brain science, Descartes was wrong, differences between life in water and on land, dogs, fish, fish feel pain, Frans de Waal, Jonathan Balcombe, leopard gecko, mistreatment of animals, neural plasticity, Project Prakash, racism, Sean Carroll, The Big Picture, the evolution of intelligence, the suffering of others, What a Fish Knows
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On Gerry Alanguilan’s “ELMER,” his author bio, and animal cognition.
In ELMER by Gary Alanguilan, chickens suddenly gain intelligence and have to fight against murder, oppression, and prejudice.
abortion rights, Andy Hartzell, animal cognition, chicken, David Duchovny, ELMER, empathy, ethics, evolution, Fox Bunny Funny, Frans de Waal, Gerry Alanguilan, graphic novel, Holy Cow, Homo naledi, live your ethics, Peter Singer, speciest, suffering, teleological misconception, teleology, vegan, vegetarian
Frank Brown Cloud 