[marginalium]

The entangled brain

30 May 2025

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The entangled brain. I liked this one, as an intro into the frontiers of how we think about cognitive neuroscience (i.e. how does the brain do thinking):

When thousands of starlings swoop and swirl in the evening sky, creating patterns called murmurations, no single bird is choreographing this aerial ballet. Each bird follows simple rules of interaction with its closest neighbours, yet out of these local interactions emerges a complex, coordinated dance that can respond swiftly to predators and environmental changes. This same principle of emergence – where sophisticated behaviours arise not from central control but from the interactions themselves – appears across nature and human society.

As in abstractions as gods, looking at things at the level of near-agentic systems often seems like the right level at which to consider the really complicated stuff, brain included. Pretty article.

Anthologies: Gratification, Thought Architecture, On the Nature of Things, Neurotypica

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