Our unconscious brain makes the best decisions possible
http://www.physorg.com/news149345120.html

Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that the human brain—once thought to be a seriously flawed decision maker—is actually hard-wired to allow us to make the best decisions possible with the information we are given.

Probability

!! digital information을 세번쩨 replicator로 규정. 그런데 그것이 copy,mutation,natural selection을 모두 충족하는가? 글쓴이에 의하면 현재의 컴퓨터들은 웹 상에서, 인간의 통제를 벗어나 스스로 복제하고, 정보를 수집하며, 편집하고, 뭐..그런말을 하는데.. / / mutation은 없고 summary만 있을뿐 아닌가? 그리고 natural selection은 혹시 virus에 의한것을 말하는가? 그렇다면 너무 유치하고.. 검색순위 상단에 오르는 것을 말한다면 그것은 인간에 의한것인데?

There's a new type of evolution going on and it may not be to our liking, says Susan Blackmore

Memes are a new kind of information - behaviours rather than DNA - copied by a new kind of machinery - brains rather than chemicals inside cells. This is a new evolutionary process because all of the three critical stages - copying, varying and selection - are done by those brains. So does the same apply to new technology?

Susan Blackmore: Consciousness Paul Broks: What should I do? David Buss: Overcoming irrationality Robert Cialdini: Over-commitment Marilyn Davidson: Lost opportunities Elizabeth Loftus: Nightmares Paul Ekman: Death and forgiveness Sue Gardner: Dark places Alison Gopnik: Parenthood Jerome Kagan: Methodological flaws Stephen Kosslyn: Satiators and addicts Ellen Langer: Optimism David Lavallee: Sporting rituals Chris McManus: Beauty Robert Plomin: Nature, nurture Mike Posner: Learning difficulties Stephen Reicher: Who am I? Steven Rose: The explanatory gap Paul Rozin: Time management Norbert Schwarz: Incidental feelings Martin Seligman: Self-control Robert Sternberg: Career masochism Richard Wiseman: Wit

The email edition of the British Psychological Society's Research Digest has reached the milestone of its 150th issue. That's over 900 quality, peer-reviewed psychology journal articles digested since 2003. To mark the occasion, the Digest editor has invited some of the world's leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don't understand about themselves. Their responses are by turns candid, witty and thought-provoking. Here's what they had to say:

Psychologist writes about what they don't understand about themself

Artikel med länksamling där ett antal personer på 150 ord ska beskriva "one nagging thing" de inte förstår med sig själva.

"The email edition of the British Psychological Society's Research Digest has reached the milestone of its 150th issue. That's over 900 quality, peer-reviewed psychology journal articles digested since 2003. To mark the occasion, the Digest editor has invited some of the world's leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don't understand about themselves." Via Mind Hacks.

the Digest editor has invited some of the world's leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don't understand about themselves. Their responses are by turns candid, witty and thought-provoking. Here's what they had to say:

...mirror neurons fire when you merely watch another person perform a similar act. It's as if the neuron (more strictly the network of which the neuron is part) was using the visual input to do a sort of "virtual reality simulation" of the other person's actions—allowing you to empathize with her and view the world from her point of view.

Brain stuff from VS Ramachandran

Ramachandran - recent piece (Jan. 09) on what various bizarre neurological disorders might imply about the self.

Is this what Antony is saying when he writes about Epilepsy? "Now imagine these same circuits become hyperactive as sometimes happens when you have seizures originating in the temporal lobes (TLE or temporal lobe epilepsy). The result would be an intense heightening of the patient's sensory appreciation of the world and intense empathy for all beings to the extent of seeing no barriers between himself and the cosmos—the basis of religious and mystical experiences. (You lose all selfishness and become one with God.) Indeed many of history's great religious leaders have had TLE. My colleague, the late Francis Crick, has suggested that TLE patients as well as priests may have certain abnormal transmitters in their brains that he calls "theotoxins"."

Bernard d'Espagnat: What we call 'reality' is just a state of mind http://hub.tm/dkmur

Quantum reality

Great article

Must read: excellent post on "the media hologram" and existence

A bit naive in his discussion of free markets, but otherwise a great article.

First you will experience boredom, then comes an internal psychic violence and anger, much like the experience of zazen, or sitting meditation, as the layers of your mind conditioning peel away. Don't quit, keep at it, endure it, to the end. And when you return you will find that deeply experiencing a non-conditioned reality changes things forever. What you have experienced will animate whatever intellectual life you have developed. Or negate much of it. But in serious, intelligent people, experiencing non-manufactured reality usually gives lifelong meaning and insight to the work. You will have experienced the eternal verities of the world and mankind at ground zero. And you will find that the healthy social structures our well intentioned Western minds seek are already inherent in the psyche of mankind, but imprisoned. And the startling realization that you and I are the unknowing captors.

And what I write about is Americans, and why we think and behave the way we so. To do that here today I am forced to talk about three things -- corporations, television and human spirituality.

Psychology and what it might be good for considering the state of the world

Keepers at Furuvik Zoo found that the chimp collected and stored stones that he would later use as missiles. Further, the chimp learned to recognise how and when parts of his concrete enclosure could be pulled apart to fashion further projectiles.

This is fascinating. Experts say this shows that the chimp was "anticipating a future mental state - an ability that has been difficult to definitively prove in animals."

Chimps behaviour shows they are more intelligent than it seems

This made me wonder if story telling (or writing) is just helping others get as much out of your imagination as you do.

Our main leisure activity is, by a long shot, participating in experiences that we know are not real. When we are free to do whatever we want, we retreat to the imagination—to worlds created by others, as with books, movies, video games, and television (over four hours a day for the average American), or to worlds we ourselves create, as when daydreaming and fantasizing. The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Beliefs are attitudes that we hold in response to how things are. Aliefs are more primitive. They are responses to how things seem. In the above example, people have beliefs that tell them they are safe, but they have aliefs that tell them they are in danger."

"First, fictional people tend to be wittier and more clever than friends and family, and their adventures are usually much more interesting. I have contact with the lives of people around me, but this is a small slice of humanity, and perhaps not the most interesting slice. My real world doesn't include an emotionally wounded cop tracking down a serial killer, a hooker with a heart of gold, or a wisecracking vampire. As best I know, none of my friends has killed his father and married his mother. But I can meet all of those people in imaginary worlds."

The Pleasures of Imagination - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education http://goo.gl/c7t8 [from http://twitter.com/dcouturepdx/statuses/16164664745]