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The Universe Learning Itself
“The Universe Learning Itself: On the Evolution of Dynamics from theBig Bang to Machine Intelligence” We develop a unified, dynamical-systems narrative of the universe that traces a continuous chain of structure formation from the Big Bang to contemporary human societies and their artificial learning systems. Rather than treating cosmology, astrophysics, geophysics, biology, cognition, and machine…
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Decoding the architecture of living systems
“Decoding the architecture of living systems“, by Manlio De Domenico The possibility that evolutionary forces — together with a few fundamental factors such as thermodynamic constraints, specific computational features enabling information processing, and ecological processes — might constrain the logic of living systems is tantalizing. However, it is often overlooked that any practical implementation of…
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Mapping interactions between adversity and neuroplasticity across development
“Mapping interactions between adversity and neuroplasticity across development” Highlights: The human brain undergoes a protracted course of development that provides prolonged opportunities to be sculpted by experience. Yet, persistent definitional and measurement challenges have complicated efforts to understand how experience interacts with neuroplasticity during human development. Here, we synthesize previously siloed perspectives to propose an…
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Statistics is not measurement
“Statistics is not measurement: The inbuilt semantics of psychometric scales and language-based models obscures crucial epistemic differences” This article provides a comprehensive critique of psychology’s overreliance on statistical modelling at the expense of epistemologically grounded measurement processes. It highlights that statistics deals with structural relations in data regardless of what these data represent, whereas measurement…
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Why collective behavioursself-organize to criticality
“Why collective behaviours self-organize to criticality: a primer on information-theoretic and thermodynamic utility measures” Collective behaviours are frequently observed to self‑organize to criticality. Existing proposals to explain these phenomena are fragmented across disciplines and only partially answer the question. This primer compares the underlying, intrinsic, utilities that may explain the self‑organization of collective behaviours near…
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The ‘made-up mind’.
“The ‘made-up mind’. Deriving new hypotheses on delusions from general psychological models of belief maintenance” Highlights Contemporary definitions of delusions highlight their resistance to conflicting evidence as the core feature, but there has been little progress in understanding why even explicit confrontation with contradicting evidence seldom leads to belief revision. This review aims to generate…
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Social networks affect redistribution decisions and polarization
“Social networks affect redistribution decisions and polarization” “Whom you observe in your daily life alters your willingness to tax the rich” Recent research suggests that the visibility of extreme wealth within a person’s social circle drives their support for economic redistribution but simultaneously fosters political polarization and personal dissatisfaction. A study published in PNAS Nexus combines computational…
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Nature on the balance sheet …
“Putting nature on the balance sheet: how to account for the ecological costs of our actions” Economists should consider forests and wetlands as well as factories and farms. A book review of “On Natural Capital: The Value of the World Around Us“, Partha Dasgupta (2025) On Natural Capital recaps the roaring economic advances of the past 75…
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Becoming Nature Positive
“Becoming Nature Positive: Transitioning to a Safe and Just Future “, an open access book from the Nature Positive Initiative Becoming Nature Positive: Transitioning to a Safe and Just Futureis a collaborative effort from a wide range of authors, covering many sectors of society. ‘Nature Positive’ is a recently agreed upon global goal to “halt and…
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The immorality of too much money
“The immorality of too much money” Study across 20 countries shows extreme wealth seen as more immoral in richer, equal societies — tied to moral purity beliefs. “Filthy rich” takes new meaning. In Fast Company: ow.ly/zJBe50XsSWx In PNAS Nexus: ow.ly/JyJ950XsSWy In some societies, people find excessive wealth immoral, while others are structured so that having…
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Stubborn Goals: the adaptive value
“The adaptive value of stubborn goals” Humans exhibit a striking tendency to persist with chosen goals. This strong attachment to goals can often appear irrational – a perspective captured by terms such as perseverance or sunk-cost biases. In this review, we explore how goal commitment could stem from several adaptive mechanisms, including those that optimise…
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Decisions: Studying and Supporting
“Decisions: Studying and Supporting People Facing Hard Choices“ A lively, authoritative insider’s account of how we make decisions and how decision-making research has developed over the last half century. Decisions describes the evolution of decision science (also called behavioral decision research and related to behavioral economics) through its application to challenging personal and public policy decisions,…
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Harmony in the brain
“Harmony in the brain: A narrative review on the shared neural substrates of emotion regulation and creativity” The contribution of creativity in overall well-being through regulating emotions has sparkled research interest in employing artistic interventions recently for the improvement of mental health. Although the behavioural links between emotion regulation and creativity have been established, the neural networks reflecting…
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Blocking of associative learning by explicit descriptions
“Blocking of associative learning by explicit descriptions” People given written descriptions often learn and decide differently from those learning from experience, even in formally identical tasks. This paper presents two experiments detailing how telling participants about the value of one stimulus impacts a keystone learning effect – blocking. The paper investigates if descriptions can be…
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October 7, 2025
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves” William Shakespeare Dear Friends and Fellow Humans, I turn 70 today. For 7 decades I’ve had the privilege of living out my childhood dream, which was simply to UNDERSTAND. After spending more than half a century meeting people from all over the world…
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End GDP mania
“End GDP mania: how the world should really measure prosperity” Last week’s United Nations General Assembly, held in New York City, generated no shortage of headlines. But one notable policy initiative from the world body was not discussed by world leaders when it should have been. UN secretary-general António Guterres has put together a high-level…
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Fast, slow, & metacognitive
“Fast, slow, and metacognitive thinking in AI” Inspired by the ”thinking fast and slow” cognitive theory of human decision making, we propose a multi-agent cognitive architecture (SOFAI) that is based on ”fast”/”slow” solvers and a metacognitive module. We then present experimental results on the behavior of an instance of this architecture for AI systems that…
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From Soundwaves to Brainwaves: “Music”
“From Soundwaves to Brainwaves: The Transformative Power of Music” The human brain physically embodies rhythmic sound in a remarkablesymphony that has the power to heal. People resonate to music. They respond positively in ways that suggest that the rhythms of the brain and body, like neurons, breathing, or cardiac rhythms, are engaged when you listen…
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