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Category: behavior

Book: Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff

Book: Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff

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Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff investigates the impacts of current and emerging technologies and digital culture on individuals and groups and seeks ways to evade or extract ourselves from their corrosive effects. After you read the book, please post your thoughts as comments to this post or, if you prefer, as new posts. There are interviews and other resources about the book online. Feel free to recommend in the comments those you find meaningful. Also, the audiobook is available through…

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the evolution of synergy

the evolution of synergy

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Good quick summary of some of Deacon’s ideas. Deacon: “We need to stop thinking about hierarchic evolution in simple Darwinian terms. We need to think about it both in terms of selection and the loss of selection or the reduction of selection. And that maybe it’s the reduction of selection that’s responsible for the most interesting features” (9:40).

Rushkoff: Team Human

Rushkoff: Team Human

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Mark suggested this book as a future group reading and discussion and I agree. Rushkoff provides a very brief summary of his new book on the topic in the TED talk below. It starts with tech billionaires main concern being: Where do I build my bunker at the end of the world? So what happened to the idyllic utopias we thought tech was working toward, a collaborative commons of humanity? The tech boom became all about betting on stocks and…

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Running on escalators

Running on escalators

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Ideally, automation would yield a Star Trek reality of increasing leisure and quality of choice and experience. Why isn’t this our experience? An article on Medium offers insight into why this is not occurring on any significant scale. Evolved behavioral strategies explained by the prisoner’s dilemma damn the majority of humans to a constant doubling down. We exchange the ‘leisure dividend’ (free time) granted by automation for opportunities to outcompete others. Apparently, the sort of reciprocal social learning that could…

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Lent responds to Harari

Lent responds to Harari

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Lent makes many of the points we had in our discussion of Harari’s book Homo Deus. Lent said: “Apparently unwittingly, Harari himself perpetuates unacknowledged fictions that he relies on as foundations for his own version of reality. Given his enormous sway as a public intellectual, Harari risks causing considerable harm by perpetuating these fictions. Like the traditional religious dogmas that he mocks, his own implicit stories wield great influence over the global power elite as long as they remain unacknowledged….

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Applying artificial intelligence for social good

Applying artificial intelligence for social good

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This McKinsey article is an excellent overview of this more extensive article (3 MB PDF) enumerating the ways in which varieties of deep learning can improve existence. Worth a look. The articles cover the following: Mapping AI use cases to domains of social good AI capabilities that can be used for social good Overcoming bottlenecks, especially around data and talent Risks to be managed Scaling up the use of AI for social good

Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning

Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning

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The abstract from this article: “Going back to Kohlberg, moral development research affirms that people progress through different stages of moral reasoning as cognitive abilities mature. Individuals at a lower level of moral reasoning judge moral issues mainly based on self-interest (personal interests schema) or based on adherence to laws and rules (maintaining norms schema), whereas individuals at the post-conventional level judge moral issues based on deeper principles and shared ideals. However, the extent to which moral development is reflected…

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The death of the invisible hand (job)

The death of the invisible hand (job)

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Speaking of metaphors, article by David Sloan Wilson. Some excerpts: “[Adam] Smith was critical of Mandeville and presented a more nuanced view of human nature in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), but modern economic and political discourse is not about nuance. Rational choice theory takes the invisible hand metaphor literally by trying to explain the length and breadth of human behavior on the basis of individual utility maximization, which is fancy talk for the narrow pursuit of self-interest.” “The…

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Informative neuroscience presentations at NYU Center for Mind, Brain & Consciousness

Informative neuroscience presentations at NYU Center for Mind, Brain & Consciousness

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The NYU Center for Mind, Brain & Consciousness hosts presentations, including topical debates among leading neuroscience researchers. Many of the sessions are recorded for later viewing. The upcoming debate among Joseph LeDoux (Center for Neural Science, NYU), Yaïr Pinto (Psychology, University of Amsterdam), and Elizabeth Schechter (Philosophy, Washington University in St. Louis), will tackle the question, “Do Split-brain patients have two minds?” Previous topics addressed animal consciousness, hierarchical predictive coding and perception, AI ‘machinery,’ AI ethics, unconscious perception, research replication issues,…

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