I want to pass on a few clips from a recent Thomas Edsall essay, followed by a condensed version of the longer piece provided by Chat GPT 4: Why is it that a substantial body of social science research finds that conservatives are happier than liberals?...psychologists and other social scientists have begun to dig deeper into the underpinnings of liberal discontent — not only unhappiness but also depression and other measures of dissatisfaction. One of the findings emerging from this research is that the decline in happiness and in a sense of agency is concentrated among those on the lef ..read more

I've finished reading through Fareed Zakaria’s recent magisterial book: “Age of Revolutions Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present.” I was so impressed with the concluding pages of the book, titled "The Infinite Abyss" that I have re-read it several times, and was about to attempt a summary of its main points before checking and finding, sure enough, that Chat GPT4 and Anthropic Claude saved me at least an hour of work by performing their quite adequate responses to my prompt: "Writing as professional historian please write an approximately 1000 word summary of the conclusion of Fareed ..read more

Interesting work from Charbonneau et al. in macaque monkeys on the affective (gentle, pleasant) touch pathways that in humans use a different neural network than pathways of discriminative touch: Significance Affective touch is thought to be a critical substrate for the formation of the social relationships which exist as a foundation for primate societies. Although grooming behavior in monkeys appears to recapitulate features of affective touch behavior in humans, it is unknown whether affective touch activates the same neural networks in other primate species and whether this activation requ ..read more

A fascinating model for collective behavior from Heins et al.: Significance We introduce a model of collective behavior, proposing that individual members within a group, such as a school of fish or a flock of birds, act to minimize surprise. This active inference approach naturally generates well-known collective phenomena such as cohesion and directed movement without explicit behavioral rules. Our model reveals intricate relationships between individual beliefs and group properties, demonstrating that beliefs about uncertainty can shape collective decision-making accuracy. As agents update ..read more

When I wake up in the morning, I frequently remind myself to be grateful for the luck of having been born in 1942, and being able to ride the crest of a number of fortunate external circumstances that made my generation vastly better off than those who followed. I was in high school in the late 50s when Sputnik happened, fueling a huge increase in federal research funding that, powered my laboratory research career how our vision works. Both my parents and myself were clients of state governments or universities that offered generous retirement plans and pensions, and and the ability to set as ..read more

This opinion piece by Frank Bruni in the NYTimes motivated me to download and read Nicholas Christakis' Magnum Opus “Blueprint” (very much in the 'everything you need to know about humans' spirit of Sapolsky's "Behave" and Harari's "Sapiens," and "Homo Deus," and "21 Lessons," all books that I have made the subject of previous posts.). It echoes Pinker's emphasis on the more positive aspects of human nature and progress. It is a very engaging read, and not amenable to a simple summary, but here is a bit from his introduction: How can people be so different from—even go to war with—one ano ..read more

Alas, I usually end up reading reviews of books rather than the books themselves. Here I want to pass on clips from Shulevitz's review in The Atlantic: of Joseph Henrich's theory-of-everything type book: "The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous." Henrich directs Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. Consider this the latest addition to the Big History category, popularized by best sellers such as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History o ..read more

One of the questions posed by Yuval Harari in his writing on our possible futures is "What are we to do with all these humans who are, except for a small technocratic elite, no longer required as the means of production?" Esther Leslie, a professor of political aesthetics at Birkbeck College, University of London, does an essay on this issue, pointing out that our potential futures in the pastures of digital dictatorship — crowded conditions, mass surveillance, virtual reality — are already here. You should read her essay, and I passon just a few striking clips of text: ...Cows’ bodies have hi ..read more

I want to pass on an essay by Sam Harris updating his 2011 book "The  Moral Landscape."   I'm doing this mainly so that I can look back to this post when I want to firm up recall of some of its points,  and I would recommend that readers interested in this area have a look.  I largely agree with his positions with respect to distinctively human minds and culture that:  Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds—and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe. Conscious minds and ..read more

Here is the abstract from a PNAS perspectives article by Slominski et al.  with the title "Photo-neuro-immuno-endocrinology: How the ultraviolet radiation regulates the body, brain, and immune system." MindBlog readers can request a PDF of the article from me.   Abstract  Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) is primarily recognized for its detrimental effects such as cancerogenesis, skin aging, eye damage, and autoimmune disorders. With exception of ultraviolet B (UVB) requirement in the production of vitamin D3, the positive role of UVR in modulation of homeostasis is underapprecia ..read more