Fairy tales are relevant to science
Some evolutionary science for you.
Saturday Subjective
For something a little different to start your weekend, here is a glimpse into one man’s subjective world. He asks himself what consciousness is. He observes, “Life is fear,” yet his mind has found a way to peace. What is the adaptive significance of magical thinking? What is the value of cozying up to ambiguity? CUCLI from Xavier Marrades on Vimeo.
A neuroscience love song
For a change of pace.
Kin and multilevel selection in social evolution
In the “development and evolution” thread on Thompson, Paul dismissed and contrasted him with “people who actually study organisms.” Hence my latest referenced articles are by exactly those people that do. And even among the experts in the know there are differences and disagreements. Another such article confirming this is “Kin and multilevel selection in social evolution: A never ending controversy?” (The abstract is below.) Some adamantly choose one side of the debate, others like this article seeks some semblance…
The evolution of pro-social institutions
From this article in Evonomics (aka evolutionary economics). Some excerpts: “There is something very natural about prioritizing your family over other people. There is something very natural about helping your friends and others in your social circle. And there is something very natural about returning favors given to you. These are all smaller scales of cooperation that we share with other animals and that are well described by the math of evolutionary biology. The trouble is that these smaller scales of…
The Neurohacker Collective
Good article discussing an interview except with Jordan Greenhall on global collapse, with that excerpt also provided. We are headed for collapse unless we as a species upgrade our decision making by “becoming much better at self-organizing into large-scale manifestations of collective intelligence.” Greenhall is co-founder of Neurohacker Collective. Their mission statement: “Our mission is to use the best of what we know about how the brain and mind work from all fields and disciplines in the service of realizing humanity’s deepest…
Why economics needs a new invisible hand
In this clip Hartmann interviews David Sloan Wilson on his new article by the above name. A new economics needs a new foundation from the typical and shopworn invisible hand proposed by Adam Smith. That new hand is applying evolutionary theory to the topic. David S. Wilson is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo. His most recent book is Does Altruism…
A dive into the black waters under the surface of persuasive design
A Guardian article last October brings the darker aspects of the attention economy, particularly the techniques and tools of neural hijacking, into sharp focus. The piece summarizes some interaction design principles and trends that signal a fundamental shift in means, deployment, and startling effectiveness of mass persuasion. The mechanisms reliably and efficiently leverage neural reward (dopamine) circuits to seize, hold, and direct attention toward whatever end the designer and content providers choose. The organizer of a $1,700 per person event…
Neural responses to media a strong predictor of friendship
“The findings revealed that neural response similarity was strongest among friends, and this pattern appeared to manifest across brain regions involved in emotional responding, directing one’s attention and high-level reasoning. Even when the researchers controlled for variables, including left-handed- or right-handedness, age, gender, ethnicity, and nationality, the similarity in neural activity among friends was still evident. The team also found that fMRI response similarities could be used to predict not only if a pair were friends but also the social distance between…
Persuasion: Do you want to be effective or just feel righteous?
A recent article in The Atlantic reports fascinating research on the relative effectiveness of typical and moral-framing based approaches to persuading people of an opposing political orientation to see value in alternative positions. The upshot is that there are verifiably effective methods for getting around entrenched, reflexive opposition.