Category: Life Ideas

• The self is an illusion

  The truth is that your left brain has been interpreting reality for you your whole life, and if you are like most people, you have never understood the full implications of this. This is because we mistake the story of who we think we are for who we truly are.  “Why are you unhappy?Because 99.9 percent of…

  walterstiers

  2023-06-16

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• I must admit … meditative walking is, indeed, a practice.

  The next time you feel stuck or have a problem you can’t solve, I encourage you to try a productive meditation. Occupy yourself with a routine activity and contemplate a well-defined problem, with the precise goal of finding a solution. The change of pace allows you to access big-picture thinking, a chance to mentally step…

  walterstiers

  2023-06-08

  #sense-making, Life Ideas, Walking

  #TheInformationLens

• Decoding reward–curiosity conflict in decision-making from irrational behaviors

  Humans and animals are not always rational. “Decoding reward–curiosity conflict in decision-making from irrational behaviors” discusses the fact humans not only rationally exploit rewards but also explore an environment owing to their curiosity. However, the mechanism of such curiosity-driven irrational behavior is largely unknown. The article develops a decision-making model for a two choice task…

  walterstiers

  2023-05-19

  #Sensemaking, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens

• Creativity in Motion

  Some publications related to this topic: Embodiment and Human Development It is becoming increasingly accepted that the study of cognitive, social, and emotional processes must account for the embodiment of these processes in living, acting people. Within cognitive science, how bodily factors play a role in mental life is often considered through the lens of…

  walterstiers

  2023-05-09

  #sense-making, #Sensemaking, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Uncategorized

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Legs move, thoughts flow : Physical exercise influences creative thinking

  I only give a summary of the article, lacking the capability to understand and read the native language. Still, the summary is very interesting: Creative thinking is the ability to generate novel and useful solutions to a problem, of which divergent and convergent thinking are two common types. Evidence shows that physical exercise may influence…

  walterstiers

  2023-05-09

  Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Walking

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence

• Social and Affective Neuroscience of Everyday Human Interaction

  I found – rather serendipitous – this recent, open access and very interesting book “Social and Affective Neuroscience of Everyday Human Interaction“, edited by Springer 2023. This Open Access book presents the current state of the art knowledge on social and affective neuroscience based on empirical findings. Some highlights as appetiser: Molecular Imaging of the…

  walterstiers

  2023-05-09

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Design Thinking, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Walking

  #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• “gone too far”

  The history of movement has faced a crisis relationship between two elemental human phenomena: 1. On one hand there is the principle of economy—the human aspiration to reduce physical and mental efforts to a minimum, 2. and on the other hand there is the adaptation principle—the natural dependence of human beings on movement. The principle…

  walterstiers

  2023-04-25

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Science, Social-Technical, Walking

  #TheInformationLens

• Consciousness begins with feeling, not thinking

  A new theory of embodied consciousness has been described by Antonio Damasio and Hanna Damasio  in Consciousness begins with feeling, not thinking. Forget ‘I think therefore I am’.  feelings are the source of consciousness. Long dismissed as secondary to reason, feelings are where consciousness begins. Without them, consciousness is impossible – with radical implications for the ‘hard…

  walterstiers

  2023-04-21

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens

• States of Mind (SoMs): TD:BU balance

  Noa Herz, Shira Baror, and Moshe Bar discuss in a 2020 opinion article the Overarching States of Mind.We all have our varying mental emphases, inclinations, and biases. These individual dispositions are dynamic in that they can change over time and context. The opinion article proposes that these changing states of mind (SoMs) are holistic in…

  walterstiers

  2023-04-16

  Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• The innovation and intelligence of goats …

  Goats have not (yet) earned a reputation for their problem-solving abilities. But if you hide food in a strange cup and put a lid on it, a goat may find a way, a new study finds. And not just any goat. Animals that functioned like outsiders in their social group were best at tackling and…

  walterstiers

  2023-04-06

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Whatever the Problem, It’s probably solved by walking.

  The title of this NYT opinion tells it all… Andrew McCarthy is the author of “Walking With Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain.” Walking is the worst-kept secret I know. Its rewards hide under every step. “walking is man’s best medicine.”“If you are in a bad mood, gofor a walk.…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-27

  Creative Thinking, Life Ideas, Sustainability, Walking

  #TheInformationLens

• Peter Pan ?

  There is controversy around the mechanisms that guided the change in brain shape during the evolution of modern humans. It has long been held that different cortical areas evolved independently from each other to develop their unique functional specializations. Some recent studies suggest that high integration between different cortical areas could facilitate the emergence of…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-20

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Native language & connectome of the brain

  Investigation towards the question if the neuroanatomy of the language structural connectome is modulated by the life-long experience of speaking a specific language are presented. The current study compared the brain white matter connections of the language and speech production network in a large cohort of native speakers of two very different languages: an Indo-European…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-20

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical

  #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Human innovation depends on our collective brains

  A recent study investigates hunters’ causal understandings of bow design and mechanics among the Hadza, one of the last remaining foraging populations. The results suggest that sophisticated technology can evolve without complete causal understanding. Human innovation depends not on our individual brainpower but on our collective brains, on networks of diverse minds sharing information, lucky…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-17

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #emergence, #TheInformationLens

• 4 kinds of creativity

  HBR just published a nice article on 4 kinds of creativity.In the decades to come, creativity will be key to doing most jobs well. Gabriella Rosen Kellerman and Martin E.P. Seligman offer a new typology that breaks creative thinking into four types:  – integration, or showing that two things that appear different are the same; – splitting, or seeing how…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-03

  Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

  #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• “A New Evolutionary Law”

  Revisiting Leigh Van Valen’s “A New Evolutionary Law” (1973) by Ricard Solé, (Biological Theory (2022) 17:120–125) Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass Leigh Van Valen was an American evolutionary biologist who made major contributions to evolutionary theory. He is…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-25

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Science

  #Ecosystem, #emergence, #Entanglement, #TheInformationLens

• Ecosystems – Mutualism – Synthetic biology

  Synthetic Mutualism and the Intervention Dilemma describes how ecosystems are complex networks of interacting individuals co-evolving with their environment. As such, changes to an interaction can influence the whole ecosystem. However, to predict the outcome of these changes, considerable understanding of processes driving the system is required. Synthetic biology provides powerful tools to aid this…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-25

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Science

  #Ecosystem, #Mutualism, #TheInformationLens

• The Niche theory : Compete, Facilitate & Mutualisme

  From competition to facilitation and mutualism: a general theory of the niche by Koffel, Daufresne and Klausmeier explores the niche theory. Niche Theory is a central framework in ecology based on the recognition that most interactions between organisms are indirect, mediated by the biotic and abiotic dynamical environment these organisms live in. Despite its potential…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-25

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Science

  #Ecosystem, #Mutualism, #TheInformationLens

• Neuroplasticity enables bio‑cultural feedback

  The scientific reports article “Neuroplasticity enables bio‑cultural feedback in Paleolithic stone‑tool making” elaborates on the idea described in articles like The comparative neuroscience and neuroarchaeological evidence indicate that functional systems supporting stone tool making have undergone substantial change over human evolution, and that these changes may be relevant to a much wider range of distinctively…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-22

  #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Science, Social-Technical

  #Analogy, #downcausation, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• 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…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-21

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• 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.…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-10

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas, Policy, Science, Sustainability

  #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• “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…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-10

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

• 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…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-10

  #stakeholder economy, Life Ideas, Policy

  #EconomicBehavior

• 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…

  walterstiers

  2023-01-12

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas