> Practical Wisdom By Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe The premise of this book, written by a psychologist (Barry Schwartz, also author of Paradox of Choice) and a political scientist (Kenneth Sharpe), is that we have a society with too many rules and perverse incentives that discourage the cultivation and use of practical wisdom. This…
>I agree with a lot of what David Eagleman has to say in “The Brain on Trial” in this month’s Atlantic, and I find him an interesting and provocative thinker. But I had a few reservations.First, let me say that I have been reading a lot about him lately, and I read his book about…
>One final thought about evolutionary psych, in the wake of the Kanazawa debacle.I spend a lot of time thinking about how to get generally smart and educated people to understand the nature of science. Despite many people’s eagerness to dismiss young earth creationists as either deluded or cranks, I think their beliefs are built upon…
>Two of my goals this summer are to write more and to run more. Since I don’t run with headphones, it gives me a good chance to turn over some ideas in my head. Even if no one reads them, I figured regular writing here after my runs would help me get the writing juices…
>For part 3, we evaluate the history of the third kind of evidence in cognitive neuroscience:A normal subject is asked to do a task. While they are doing the task, a scientist observes their brain in action.For many readers, this will sound like fMRI, where a person lies down in a huge machine, is instructed…
>Ok, so last post I described the first part of the history of methods in the cognitive neurosciences, when behavior goes wrong, then finding out what’s wrong with the brain. For this section, I’ll be discussing when we intentionally damage, or directly zap the brain. Before you get too creeped out, this has mostly (the…
>Recently, spurred on by the Kanazawa business, Ta-Nehisi Coates asked about Evo psych in general in one of his special “Talk to Me Like I’m Stupid” sessions. This spurred on a lively discussion (mostly piling on about how terrible it is) but led down an interesting road, when a commenter named neocortex noted that evo…
> Over at TNC’s blog, there was a big discussion about evolutionary psych, which bled into me defending cognitive psych as a real science not dependent on neuroscience. I volunteered to try to explain the links between cognition and neuroscience for any given topic. Here is my response to the first brave soul to shout:…
> One of the reasons I treated myself to an iPad last year was that I saw great potential for educational (and fun) games for kids. I was hoping we could further delay getting a Wii or DS or other console, and nudge the kids into some educational games to boot.I have been pleased so…
>A month ago, I finished “Remarkable Creatures” by Sean Carroll (biologist Sean Carroll, not physicist Sean Carroll). It was a wonderful review of all of the scientists who have contributed to our evolving understanding of … animal evolution. Beginning with Darwin and Wallace, this book relates the tales of these explorers and adventurers, some leaving…
