Tag: #TheInformationLens
-
What If – Causal Inference (free)
Miguel Hernán made a revision of book “Causal Inference: What If” is available for download. The book provides a cohesive presentation of concepts of, and methods for, causal inference. Much of this material is currently scattered across journals in several disciplines or confined to technical articles. The authors expect that the book will be of…
-
A top-down, bottom-up model of circuit function for anxiety and depression.
A great review article describes the bottom-up and top-down processing from Marr’s computational-algorithmic-implementation perspective to understand depressive and anxious disease states. The review illustrate examples of bottom-up processing as basolateral amygdala signaling and projections and top-down processing as medial prefrontal cortex internal signaling and projections. Understanding these internal processing dynamics can help us better model…
-
“Fitness” Beats “Truth”
The “Fitness-Beats-Truth Theorem” provides a quantitative measure of the extent to which the fitness-only strategy dominates the truth strategy, and of how this dominance increases with the size of the perceptual space. The FBT Theorem supports the Interface Theory of Perception. The Interface Theory of Perception is discussed and described in detail in 2015 by…
-
The Physics of Survival
Please enjoy the fascinating discussion of the free energy principle with Dr. Maxwell Ramstead, a leading thinker exploring the intersection of math, physics, and philosophy and Director of Research at VERSES. The 2 hour discussion includes great details on FEP. The FEP was proposed by renowned neuroscientist Karl Friston, this principle offers a unifying theory…
-
AI can distort human beliefs
Without a zone of uncertainty plus other troubling features, generative AI is poised to amplify bias and falsehoods, distort human perception. Individual humans form their beliefs by sampling a small subset of the available data in the world. Once those beliefs are formed with high certainty, they can become stubborn to revise. Fabrication and bias…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Facts are not enough
Claude Garcia & Patrick Waeber developed a framework based on behavioural and cognitive sciences, game theory, and set theory that helps us understand decisionmaking in the context of uncertainty. It was published recently in a nice article on the researchfeatures of researchoutreach. Every single day we make thousands of decisions. Even if it is unclear…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
How Capitalism WASTES Billions
Mariana Mazzucato’s Tour De Force Professor Mariana Mazzucato is one of the world’s most exciting economic thinkers.Her new book – THE BIG CON – exposes how consultancy firms are eating up billions upon billions of pounds working on government projects and using the capitalism game-rules. You won’t think of our economic system the same way…
-
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…
-
Symmetry–simplicity–complexity
A number of (the 15) contributions to a theme issue ‘Making and breaking symmetries in mind and life’ have some interest to be referred. Symmetry is a motif featuring in almost all areas of science. Symmetries appear throughout the natural world, making them particularly important in our quest to understand the structure of the world…
-
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…
-
Bayesian Nonlinear Models
The review article Bayesian Nonlinear Models for Repeated Measurement Data gives a valuation of the use for the Bayesian Model to solve complex problems. Nonlinear mixed effects models have become a standard platform for analysis when data is in the form of continuous and repeated measurements of subjects from a population of interest, while temporal…
-
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…
