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The evolution of universal cooperation
Humans work together in groups to tackle shared problems and contribute to local club goods that benefit other group members. Whereas benefits from club goods remain group bound, groups are often nested in overarching collectives that face shared problems like pandemics or climate change. Such challenges require individuals to cooperate across group boundaries, raising the…
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David Krakauer Lecture on What is Complexity?
David Krakauer • What is Complexity? is a great and enlightening talk sectioning the concept of complexity and exploring complexity epistemology and emergence. (Also to be found on Sante Fe Institute website: The Complexity Explorer)
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Brain-Behavior relationships
“Improving the study of brain-behavior relationships by revisiting basic assumptions” discusses how scientific communities tacitly agree on assumptions about what exists (called ontological commitments), what questions to ask, and what methods to use. All assumptions are firmly rooted in a philosophy of science that need not be acknowledged or discussed but is practiced nonetheless. In…
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The Art of Abduction
Abductive reasoning typically begins with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation for the set. Abductive reasoning yields the kind of daily decision-making that does its best with the information at hand, which often is incomplete. A medical diagnosis is an application of abductive reasoning: given this set of symptoms,…
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As a human it would be quite easy to spot
Man beats machine at Go in human victory over AI A human player has comprehensively defeated a top-ranked AI system at the board game Go, in a surprise reversal of the 2016 computer victory that was seen as a milestone in the rise of artificial intelligence. Kellin Pelrine beat the machine by taking advantage of…
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The complexities of knowledge co-production
Practical wisdom and virtue ethics for knowledge co-production in sustainability describes how since antiquity, philosophers in the Western tradition of virtue ethics have declared practical wisdom to be the central virtue of citizens involved in public and social life. Practical wisdom is of particular importance when values are conflicting, power is unequal and knowledge uncertain.…
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“Average is good, extremes are bad”
Traditionally, studies emphasize differences in neural measures between pathological and healthy groups, assuming a binary distinction between the groups, and a linear relationship between neural measures and symptoms. A continuous relation across the divide of normal and pathological states between neural measures and mental functions shows a relation which can be characterized by a nonlinear…
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The Capital Order
In The Capital Order, political economist Clara E. Mattei explores the intellectual origins of austerity to uncover its originating motives: the protection of capital—and indeed capitalism—in times of social upheaval from below. For more than a century, governments facing financial crisis have resorted to the economic policies of austerity— rise in interest rates, privatisation, cuts to…
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Beware the “lure of models”
Scientists cannot help but use models says Mark Buchanan. Models help to clarify the consequences of theoretical assumptions, or to draw out complex lines of cause and effect … Without simplified conceptual models, scientific communication itself would be largely impossible.Of course, mathematical models also underlie some of the sciences’ most impressive achievements, like e.g. today’s…
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How mathematics invented new realities
Although Euclid’s ideas about geometry in 300 BC were rooted in physical reality, the field became ever more abstract throughout the twentieth century.In her new book, historian Alma Steingart reveals how this push for abstraction was mirrored by, and often triggered, parallel trends in economics, sociology, psychology and political science. (Axiomatics: Mathematical Thought and High Modernism…
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Awe brings Health
Awe as a Pathway to Mental and Physical Health describes how experiences in nature or in spiritual contemplation or in being moved by music or with psychedelics promote mental and physical health. The article is define awe at its core. Awe engages five processes that benefit well-being:(1) shifts in neurophysiology, (2) a diminished focus on…
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Stats don’t show enough
Same Stats, Different Graphs: Generating Datasets with Varied Appearance and Identical Statistics through Simulated Annealing has some great figures I want to share. They show datasets which are identical over a number of statistical properties, yet produce dissimilar graphs, are frequently used to illustrate the importance of graphical representations when exploring data. As a geo-scientists,…
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Intellectual humility
Intellectual humility involves recognizing that there are gaps in one’s knowledge and that one’s current beliefs might be incorrect. For instance, someone might think that it is raining, but acknowledge that they have not looked outside to check and that the sun might be shining. Research on intellectual humility offers an intriguing avenue to safeguard…
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Language influences perception and concept formation
A neurobiologically constrained model of semantic learning in the human brain was used to simulate the acquisition of concrete and abstract concepts, either with or without verbal labels. Concept acquisition and semantic learning were simulated using Hebbian learning mechanisms. The network’s category learning performance is defined as the extent to which it successfully: (i) grouped…
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Cognitive Computational Neuroscience
Cognitive science has developed computational models that decompose cognition into functional components. Computational neuroscience has modeled how interacting neurons can implement elementary components of cognition. It is time to assemble the pieces of the puzzle of brain computation and to better integrate these separate disciplines. Modern technologies enable us to measure and manipulate brain activity…
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“CAUSEME” to benchmark causal methods
The heart of the scientific enterprise is a rational effort to understand the causes behind the phenomena we observe. In large-scale complex dynamical systems such as the Earth system, real experiments are rarely feasible. However, a rapidly increasing amount of observational and simulated data opens up the use of novel data-driven causal methods beyond the…
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Paleodiet becoming a reality again:
Nature Briefing of December 13 2022 tells you about the oldest cooked meal ever found: a tasty-sounding seed flatbread that might have been cooked by Neanderthals 70,000 years ago. Readers had to see that recipe, and palaeoecologist Chris Hunt did not let us down. Here are the edited details: Neanderthal ‘flatbread’Based on an analysis by archaeobotanist Ceren Kabukcu,…
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