Humans have probably changed dog genes in this arena. A new study shows that "even 8-week-old puppies with little exposure to humans can understand pointing and show sophisticated levels of social cognition in other tests. On top of that, the study found that each fluffball’s genetic makeup was a strong predictor of its ability to follow a pointed finger...
You can already see a divide in the literature - positive stories about people with ALS or locked-in syndrome learning to use neural transmitters to control movement; negative stories about the threat of law enforcement "reading" our intentions before we do. It's the same tech, so what's the real story? - Three Quarks Daily
It goes way - way - beyond dopamine. "You could say that dopamine is to happiness what petrol is to a car; it’s an integral part of making it work, but if you were to literally fill your car with petrol, to the point where it’s leaking out the windows, that wouldn’t help anyone." - Psyche
The facts just don't bear it out. "It’s questionable that there ever really was a ‘movement’ other than in the mind of 19th- and early 20th-century historians." Perhaps one conclusion is that classifications like "the Renaissance" are not great mechanisms for understanding the world of ideas, or the historical world either. - Aeon
Or else it's something else. But it's no mere city. "Los Angeles fits the city-state frame well, certainly better than it does a lot of other possibilities—if we update the model a bit. In 2010, Forbes suggested that if the criteria for a place to be considered a city-state were modernized for the 21st century, certain global capitals might qualify thanks to...
Eataly is not actually Italy, despite the advertising tagline. "Eataly celebrates agricultural life, but its urban stores feel miles away from a rural idyll. It champions hyper-local produce, while being wedded, not least through its name, to the idea of a national cuisine. Eataly presents itself as the whole nation in microcosm; the best of Italian cuisine, all conveniently collected under...
This is an entirely new concept for many researchers. "For more than a century, researchers who study sleep have looked for its purpose and structure in the brain. They have explored sleep’s connections to memory and learning. They have numbered the neural circuits that push us down into oblivious slumber and pull us back out of it. They have recorded...
Are there biological or other scientific causes for our moral beliefs? If so, how does that affect our moral beliefs and choices? It's a bit complex: "Our evolutionary conditioning might have made it impossible for us to acquire knowledge of objective moral truths, even if they exist. The other is that our evolved psychology might make it impossible in any...
Here’s the dirty little secret that few of my fellow economics professors will admit: As those “perfect” research papers have grown longer, they have also become less relevant. Fewer people — including academics — read them carefully or are influenced by them when it comes to policy. - Bloomberg
"Despite the often blood-soaked history of the use of the term ‘magic’, we must remember that Western history is filled with thinkers who have defended its honour as good natural science – a tried-and-true technology for harnessing interactions between minds and bodies, human and otherwise. And their empirical claims were never tested more than during the centuries of plague."...
Concerns around social media have become mainstream, but researchers have yet to elucidate the specific cognitive mechanisms that explain the toll it takes on our psychological wellbeing. New advances in computational neuroscience, however, are poised to shed light on this matter. - Aeon
In 2018, New York State’s Office for the Aging launched a pilot project, distributing Joy for All robots to sixty state residents and then tracking them over time. Researchers used a six-point loneliness scale, which asks respondents to agree or disagree with statements like “I experience a general sense of emptiness.” They concluded that seventy per cent of...
Any decisional mechanism, whether human- or machine-operated, will generate errors. An individualised appeals mechanism might reduce the volume of errors. But it might also increase it. - Psyche
A poll by the Best Practice Institute and reported in Newsweek found that some 83 percent of CEOs want employees back full-time, while only 10 percent of workers want back in. A seismic standoff is building. “There is a belief in our culture that we’ve proven that most jobs can be done virtually. But that’s not the belief within...
