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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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HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2021-22
The latest Human Development Report, “Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a Transforming World”, launched September 8 by UNDP, argues that layers of uncertainty are stacking up and interacting to unsettle life in unprecedented ways. The last two years have had a devastating impact for billions of people around the world, when crises…
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Can you spot the penguin?
What about hiding a Rockhopper in a scientifically fascinating location? Thus was born the legend that is Leif Penguinson and the very first “Can you spot the penguin?”. Since that day, our penguin protagonist has travelled to dozens of scientifically interesting (and eye-poppingly beautiful) locations around the world. Many more are available on the site…
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Prediction: multi-scale pattern completion of the future
The notion of the brain as a prediction machine has been extremely influential and productive in cognitive sciences.One prominent framework is of a “Bayesian brain” that explicitly generates predictions and uses resultant errors to guide adaptation. The prediction-generation component of this framework may involve little more than a pattern completion process. Brain-like systems can get…
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Over-reliance on English hinders
Several studies report a ‘bilingual advantage’ for cognitive control: the ability to plan, focus, and execute a wide array of tasks is better among bilinguals compared with monolinguals, in particular among older adult bilinguals. Nonetheless, this bilingual advantage is not replicated consistently, as the effect is heavily modulated by task, age of participants, and bilingual…
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Designing Ecosystems of Intelligence from First Principles
Karl Friston joins VERSES as Chief Scientist to Lead New Era in Artificial Intelligence.VERSES published its research paper to arxiv.org to explore the applications and implications of Active Inference on the future of Artificial Intelligence. “Designing Ecosystems of Intelligence from First Principles” lays out a vision of research and development in the field of artificial intelligence…
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Take your time to consider the possibilities and options
Representations of possible actions pervade human high-level cognition, and shape how we plan, attribute causal responsibility, comprehend language, and make moral judgments.There are too many ‘possible actions’ for us to consider them all. Recent studies offer a strikingly convergent picture of how we call to mind a limited, useful set of possible actions to consider.This…
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Statistical inference links data and theory in network science
The number of network science applications across many different fields has been rapidly increasing. Surprisingly, the development of theory and domain-specific applications often occur in isolation, risking an effective disconnect between theoretical and methodological advances and the way network science is employed in practice. . In this work, we will focus on three intimately related…
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Information theory: A foundation for complexity science
Amos Golan and John Harte published a perspective paper, consolidating the insights and research on knowledge and models from incomplete information in complex environments, based on MaxEnt Modeling and inference are central to most areas of science and especially to evolving and complex systems. Critically, the information we have is often uncertain and insufficient, resulting…
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