Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Is liberal democracy still viable in our complex world?

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I pass on the background reading for this Sunday's (8/3/25)Austin Rainbow Forum, which I host at my house on the first Sunday of every m...
Monday, July 28, 2025

An epilogue from Glaude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) at 90 years of age

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I want to pass on a clip from the epilogue of Jim Holt's  2012 book "Why Does the World Exist?  An Existential Detective Story...
Friday, July 25, 2025

The optimistic brain - fMRI reveals shared thought patterns.

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From Yanagisawa et al .:   Significance Optimism, defined as maintaining positive expectations for the future, is a crucial psychological ...
Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Losing Loneliness

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Paul Bloom has written an insightful article on the use of A.I. ‘companions’ to solve the problem of loneliness.  I pass on a few clips: Fo...
Monday, July 21, 2025

The cultural construction of “executive function”

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Fascinating work from Kroupin et al:   Significance “Executive function” (EF) refers to a suite of cognitive control capacities, typical...
Friday, July 18, 2025

How the attention economy is devouring us. - A conversation between Ezra Klein and Kyla Scanlon

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Again, I archive for myself and also pass on to readers a ChatGPT4o summary of a NYT Opinion article by Ezra Klein , this time on his interv...
Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Stagnation, disruption, and the future - A conversation between Ross Douthat and Peter Thiel

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A r ecent NYT Opinion article that I read through carefully when it appeared has occasioned aa lot of comment, so I have decided to use Min...
Monday, July 14, 2025

Tokens of Sanity

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My latest edit of the instruction set I live by:    TOKENS OF SANITY   -Being the calm space in which nothing can hurry  --A animal awarenes...
1 comment:
Friday, July 11, 2025

AI sees you in ways you can’t see yourself.

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My last 7/9/25 post offered a summary of 9 recent articles in the WSJ and NYT. I did not incude in this group one of the NYT articles with t...
Wednesday, July 09, 2025

Promises and Perils of AI: A Mid-2025 Reading Roundup

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Here is MindBlog's  (Deric'c) prompt to ChatGPT4o:      "I have uploaded to Chat GPT one paragraph summaries of 9 articles  fr...
Monday, July 07, 2025

The Monster Inside ChatGPT

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I think this cautionary article from Cameron Berg (research director) and Judd Rosenblatt (CEO) of AE Studio in the 6/27/2025 issue of the W...
Friday, July 04, 2025

Emotional synchrony among sports fans.(Will Elon Musk's android army be able to do this?)

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From Xygalatas et al :  Abstract Sporting events are powerful social phenomena that extend beyond the game itself, offering a unique lens ...
Wednesday, July 02, 2025

Why is jogging an antidepressant?

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I pass on this brief description by Sarah Lemprière of work by Xia et al :  Physical exercise can reduce depressive symptoms, and sever...
Monday, June 30, 2025

Global coordination of brain activity by the breathing cycle

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A fascinating review by Tort et al. that I have enjoyed reading. Motivated readers can obtain a copy of the article by emailing me.  Abstrac...
Friday, June 27, 2025

Take caution in using LLMs as human surrogates

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Gao et al. point to problems in using LLM's as surrogates for or simulating human behavior in research (motivated readers can obtain a P...
Wednesday, June 25, 2025

A critique of the MIT AI and cognitive debt study - confusion of "cognitive debt" with "role confusion"

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Here I am passing on a commentary on and critique of the work pointed to by the previous MindBlog post. It was written by Venkatehs Rao in...
1 comment:
Monday, June 23, 2025

MIT study - Our brains can accumulate cognitive debt by using AI for writing tasks

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I pass on the abstract of a multiauthor work from MIT. Undergrads, EEG caps on, wrote three 20-minute essays. Those who leaned on GPT-4o sh...
Monday, June 16, 2025

Rejecting blind builder and helpless witness narratives in favor of constitutive narratives

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I want to pass on this concise ChatGP4o summary of a recent piece by Venkatesh Rao  titled "Not Just a Camera, Not Just an Engine"...
Saturday, June 14, 2025

AI ‘The Illusion of Thinking’

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  I want to pass on this interesting piece by Christopher Mims in todays Wall Street Journal: A primary requirement for being a leader in ...
Friday, June 06, 2025

Benefits and dangers of anthropomorphic conversational agents

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Peter et al. offer an interesting open source essay. They ask: "should we lean into the human-like abilities, or should we aim to dehu...