scientific method
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On octopuses and family gatherings.
Octopuses are brilliant! They solve puzzles, use tools, and plan ahead. And they’re no closer to us than worms??
all babies are scientists, anglerfish, blanket octopus, cartoon, cartoon earthworm, cartoon family reunion, cartoon octopus, cartoon worm, deuterostome, earthworm cartoon, family reunion, jellyfish stingers, jellyfish whip, octopus, octopus at a family reunion, octopus brains, octopus cartoon, octopus tool use, octopus tools, octopus using jellyfish stingers, octopus using tools, octopuses, our ancestors were scientists, protostome, science, scientific method, tool use, we are all scientists, what is science, who is a scientist
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On Tao Lin’s ‘Trip,’ targeted advertising, and finding scraps of life in books.
Psychedelics could help you change your life, but our government insists that they have “no accepted medical use.”
A Really Good Day, abusive relationships, addiction, advertising, Ayelet Waldman, Best of Photojournalism, better living through chemistry, body, book review, business cards, capitalism, corporations, dimethyl tryptamine, ditch your phone, DMT, domestic violence, drug rehab, drug use, drugs, entheogens, finding shit in books, hallucinogens, healing power of nature, healing power of psychedelics, incarceration, inner space, jail, jail poetry, LSD, lysergic acid, lysergic acid diethyl amide, magic mushrooms, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, mind, murder, mushrooms, nature, Pages to Prisoners, Perdue Meats, pharmacology, photography, prison, psilocin, psilocybin, psychedelics, psychonaut, recovery, rehab, rehabilitation, relapse, review, scientific method, self-discovery through drugs, sending books to prisoners, shrooms, slaughterhouse, smartphone addiction, spirit, state-mandated rehab, stuff inside books, Tao Lin, teaching in jail, Terrance McKenna, trip, tripping, tryptamines
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On ethics and Luke Dittrich’s “Patient H.M.”
When scientists act unethically, it undermines trust in science … which breaks my heart, since the scientific method is awesome.
A Story of Memory Madness and Family Secrets, Arieh Warshel, biochemistry, brain surgery, cell biology, data, enzymology, epilepsy, ethics, fraud, GCC185, graduate school, human experimentation, immunofluorescence, ketosteroid isomerase, KSI, lobotomy, Luke Dittrich, medial temporal lobe, membrane trafficking, memory, MIT, MPR, Patient H.M., primary data, psychosurgery, publish or perish, reproducibility crisis, research, research ethics, RhoBTB3, science, scientific method, shredding files, Stanford, Suzanne Corkin
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On perception and learning.
We adults can’t fix the world until we learn from children that it’s okay to be wrong.
analytical philosophy, animal cognition, automated image analysis, Brendan Wenzel, Bring me a slab, childhood development, children’s books, chimpanzee learning, computer learning to find cats, computer science, data clustering, David Lancy, falsifiable theories, Google, human development, identification, language acquisition, learning, Liu Cixin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, mental filters, neural networks, New York Times, parenting, perception, personhood, Philosophical Investigations, principal component analysis, Quoc Le, science, scientific method, Slab!, Stanford, teaching, The Anthropology of Childhood, The Three-Body Problem, They All Saw a Cat, unsupervised learning, Upshot, what is a cat, what is red, Youtube cat videos
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On watchful gods, trust, and how academic scientists undermined their own credibility.
Despite my disagreements with a lot of its details, I thoroughly enjoyed Ara Norenzayan’s Big Gods. The book posits an explanation for the current global dominance of the big three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Instead of the “quirks of history & dumb luck” explanation offered in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, Norenzayan suggests…
Abrahamic faiths, Abrahamic religions, animal cognition, Ara Norenzayan, atheism, Automaticity of Social Behavior, Bargh, Big Gods, climate change, credibility, Daniel Dennett, experimental psychology, false positive, False-Positive Psychology, Freedom Evolves, Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond, John Bargh, Joseph Simmons, Jurgen Osterhammel, Kanesh, Leonard Wantchekon, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Nathan Nunn, priming, religion, replication, scientific method, scientific publishing, social psychology, statistical significance, statistically significant, survivor bias, The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa, The Transformation of the World, trust, truth, unethical research
Frank Brown Cloud 