Exploring Whether History Was Truly Less Violent
Is It True That... the Past Was Less Violent? - Watch the full documentary (but not in the US, unfortunately - seems to be Europe-only). | ARTE in English https://t.co/yxWj1xlBBx
Stewart Brand Shares Life's Core Principle with Ezra Klein
Ever since I bought The Whole Earth Catalogue as a teenager, and again when I read his "ecopragmatist manifesto" and then got to know the man, I've admired Stewart Brand. Here he is in conversation with Ezra Klein: "Silicon...
Animal Concern Unchanged, Meat Consumption Stays High
Most people care about farm animals — but eat lots of meat anyway. (Consistent with the data I cited in The Better Angels of Our Nature 15 years ago. Despite all the vegetarians we know, the proportion in the population...
Gene Therapy Cures Specific Deafness—A Modern Miracle
Another modern miracle: Gene therapy cures a form of deafness. Harvard to USA: You're welcome. https://t.co/mfEzVMGugp
AI's Jagged Intelligence: Powerful Yet Limited by Scope
Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Stupidity: The ‘Jagged Intelligence’ of AI is said to be "reframing" the debate, but many cognitive scientists have noted it from the get-go: any implementation of intelligence is not a magic wand that can solve all...
Genetics Reveal Heritability of Specific Math Ability
Independent evidence, this time directly from the genome rather than twin comparisons, that specific cognitive abilities (in this case, math), not just general intelligence (g), is heritable. By Emily Willoughby, my former student James Lee, Matt McGue, et al. |...
Uta Frith: Autism Isn't a Spectrum
There is no autism spectrum, says expert (esteemed cognitive scientist Uta Frith) who pioneered our understanding of the cognitive deficits underlying autism. https://t.co/a5e8jZzUbF
Genetics Shape Specific Cognitive Skills, Not Just General IQ
An accessible explanation of the new study on by Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill here | Beyond General Intelligence: The Genetics of Specific Cognitive Abilities https://t.co/uRnhKsuJQE
Specific Cognitive Skills Proven Heritable in New Meta‑Analysis
Important new finding: For decades there's been abundant evidence for the existence, importance, & heritability of "general intelligence" (despite massive denial in journalism, ed schools, and among intellectual-cultural elites). That is: if you're above average in verbal skills, you're likelier...
Spinoza Meets Boltzmann Brain in Keating
The Book Spinoza Would Have Written If He Had Boltzmann’s Brain (Review of The Mattering Instinct by physicist Brian Keating) @platobooktour https://t.co/Ji8gHpQFeD
Happiness Grows, Yet Meaningfulness Remains Elusive Through Ages
On happiness and meaningfulness: Overall, across the world, there’s reason to believe that happiness has increased, for obvious reasons: people are living longer, they’re less poor, they’re better educated, and so on. So that would suggest, but not prove, that...
Cosmic Indifference, Human Purpose: Care and Flourish
The fact that the universe doesn’t care about you doesn’t mean that other humans don’t care about you, or that we don’t have to care about other humans. That is, there is a purpose, there is a meaning: that is,...
Male Autism Linked to Evolutionary Reproductive Variance
Why is autism more common in males? Interesting finding here (as with other sex differences, men's lack of a redundant X chromosome has a role), but it's a sign of the lack of Darwinian thinking in medicine that a more...
Our Primal Drive to Matter Fuels Courageous Living
Joshua Steinfeldt and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (@platobooktour) spoke about her new book on Joshua's "The Courageous Life" podcast: https://t.co/lrz8pOY1AR Written introduction on Spotify: "There is a primal drive that in our species alone has been transformed into one of our most...
Reading Defies Evolution; Video Becomes Preferred Learning
Like an appreciation of progress, reading and literacy are among the things that are good but cognitively unnatural. That is, they go against our evolved nature. We didn’t evolve with print; it was a recent invention. Reading, for many of...