Rick's blog

Discussion Thread: Week 7

Here's a place to discuss the content of the chapter: "Hot Heads".

Week 6: Discussion Thread

This is an open thread for discussion of topics related to Pinker's chapter titled: "Good Ideas." Please let us know what's on your mind.

The "extended-contact effect"

In some new studies, psychologists have been able to establish a close relationship between diverse pairs — black and white, Latino and Asian, black and Latino — in a matter of hours. That relationship immediately reduces conscious and unconscious bias in both people, and also significantly reduces prejudice toward the other group in each individual's close friends.

This extended-contact effect, as it is called, travels like a benign virus through an entire peer group, counteracting subtle or not so subtle mistrust.

"It's important to remember that implicit biases are out there, absolutely; but I think that that's only half the story," said Linda R. Tropp, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts. "With broader changes in the society at large, people can also become more willing to reach across racial boundaries, and that goes for both minorities and whites."

Read more.

Discussion Thread: Week 5

Here is an open thread to post seminar questions pertaining to the reading for week 5, i.e., The Mind's Eye. Please post thoughts or questions that you'd like to follow up on.

Starting points

I'm going to provide some links here that folks can use to get started on their project. I'll break it down by topic, but there are a few general links that you all may be interested in:

Now for some topic specific links:

  • With respect to the tolerance of difference/racism group, you may be interested in Kurzban, R., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased?: Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387-15392. Also see: Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. & Kurzban, R. (2003). Perceptions of race. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(4), 173-179 (April).
  • For the diet/nutrition topic, there are a couple of books you might start with: Nestle, Marion 2002 Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. University of California Press, and Counihan, Carole and Van Esterik, Penny (eds) 1997 Food and Culture: A Reader.
  • On the topic of education and learning styles, here's a nice primer. I also mentioned Jerry Fodor and Howard Gardner as resources.
  • For altruism/belief/morality/religion, the work of Marc Hauser should get you a lot of good references. Hauser has a recent book: Moral Minds, and that will have all the references you'll need.
  • With respect to depression/happiness, I mentioned one author: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (I notice that his wiki entry is pretty thin -- hint, hint.) Another possible source is: Hagen EH (under review) Gestures of despair and hope: A strategic reinterpretation of deliberate self-harm. (You may be able to get a copy by emailing the author.)

Discussion Thread: Week 4

Here is a thread to post seminar questions pertaining to the reading for week 4, i.e., Revenge of the Nerds. You can also post about any questions that you'd like to follow up on.

Banjo playing during brain surgery


Now you can truly call Eddie Adcock the Bionic Banjo Player --and don't forget Gearhead Guitarist-- as he recovers from some remarkable brain surgeries to control a right-hand tremor.

The three-part surgery, termed Deep Brain Stimulation, involved implantation of electrodes into the brain as well as insertion of a palm-sized battery-powered generator within the chest wall, plus lead wires to connect the two. The technologically-advanced procedure was performed in multiple stages over the month of August in Nashville, Tennessee, at Vanderbilt Medical Center, a teaching and research hospital which is a world leader in neurological studies and surgeries.

Those neurosurgeons were eager to operate on Eddie, with his life-long high level of musical accomplishment and the unique requirements related to his fine motor skills. During the brain-implantation stage of the surgery, he was kept conscious in order to be able to play his Deering GoodTime banjo and assist the team of surgeons in directing the fine-tuning of their placement of electrodes in the brain -- an operating-room 'first'.

Read more.

Discussion Thread: Week 3

Here is a thread to post seminar questions pertaining to the reading for week 3, i.e., the second half of the chapter: Thinking Machines (p. 98-148). You can also post about any questions that you'd like to follow up on.

Topics for Projects

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design a project that addresses some aspect of the human experience and improves it based on information about the evolution of the human mind. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

  1. Tolerance of difference/discrimination/racism
    • Liza/Roger/Bob
  2. Diet/nutrition
    • Eamonn/Alysha/Lindsay
  3. Education/learning styles
    • Matt/Kara/Ashley
  4. Criminality/punishment
  5. Altruism/belief/morality/religion
    • Ashley/Kendall/Tim/Lesley
  6. Depression/happiness
    • Kimberly/Scott/Kristine/Erik/Judy/Su
  7. ...

Week 2 Reading

Here is a thread to post seminar questions pertaining to the reading for week 2, i.e., the first half of the chapter: Thinking Machines (p. 59-98). You can also add any initial thoughts you're having about the material.

The Urge for Punishment

From the NYT:

Last month a Georgia woman named DeShan Fishel was driving near a school and saw a Jeep rush past a stop signal on a school bus, clipping a 5-year-old boy. The other driver sped away.

Ms. Fishel whipped a U-turn and gave chase. She stayed with the Jeep on surface streets and caught the driver on a highway in Dawson County, Ga., making him pull over. She watched the driver until police officers arrived.

"All I could think about was that little kid, getting hit, and this person getting away with it," Ms. Fishel said at a news conference. "It just really upset me."

The public urge for punishment that helped delay the passage of Washington's economic rescue plan is more than a simple case of Wall Street loathing, according to scientists who study the psychology of forgiveness and retaliation. The fury is based in instincts that have had a protective and often stabilizing effect on communities throughout human history. Small, integrated groups in particular often contain members who will stand up and — often at significant risk to themselves — punish cheaters, liars and freeloaders.

The Turing Test

From The Observer

Can machines think? That was the question posed by the great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later six computers are about to converse with human interrogators in an experiment that will attempt to prove that the answer is yes.

In the 'Turing test' a machine seeks to fool judges into believing that it could be human. The test is performed by conducting a text-based conversation on any subject. If the computer's responses are indistinguishable from those of a human, it has passed the Turing test and can be said to be 'thinking'.

No machine has yet passed the test devised by Turing, who helped to crack German military codes during the Second World War. But at 9am next Sunday, six computer programs - 'artificial conversational entities' - will answer questions posed by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognised 'thinking' machine. If any program succeeds, it is likely to be hailed as the most significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence since the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be 'conscious' - and if humans should have the 'right' to switch it off.

Darwin @ Home

From Darwin @ Home:

Darwin at Home is an open source software project that aims to bring the process of evolution into your computer at home so that you can see it working. From the initial projects to evolve locomotion it is now moving towards a more generic framework for evolution in general.

Week 1 Reading

Let's use this thread for talking about the "Standard Equipment" chapter. Any thoughts or flashes of insight occurring to anyone? Has anything resonated or repelled? Let's hear the details!

Dawkins: Middle World

Richard Dawkins describes why evolution has shaped our mind to perceive only objects and events that are in the range of our experience.



Link to mp3 audio.

Study Detects Recent Instance of Human Evolution

New York Times

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently.

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