[newsletter]
How does the brain 'think'? Pt. II and other things
19 Jul 2024
Hello,
Here’s everything since my last little missive to you:
As a break from tapping out the findings of my PhD, I also returned to an old article, on folie à deux, or ‘shared madness’ and updated it this week. It’s probably not so rare as one might think.
How does the brain ‘think’? Pt. II
Excerpt: In part two of a series explaining my PhD, I talk about one example of the kind of thinking that really does incontrovertably appear to be higher-order, non-routine thought. If you have the word ‘blue’, but the word is coloured red, and I ask you to name the colour, not read the colour-word, you’re going to have trouble. You’ve been told to name colours, but you automatically want to read the words. You have a conflict. Much of my PhD asked how the brain might solve this kind of conflict.
Updated Articles:
Folie à deux: the madness of two
Excerpt: Folie à deux, or the ‘madness of two’, is the kind of psychological phenomenon that occasionally captures the imagination of the media. Two people, otherwise normal, suddenly go insane. It’s a premise that we can ghoulishly enjoy from afar because it seems like it could never happen to us. But I’m not so sure. From intra-family murder to Theranos to our own odder moments, I think shared madness is something that is much more common than you’d think.
Are we in a simulation (pdf)? A head-pounding philosophy paper:
as far as I can tell, the basic thrust of the simulation argument has real philosophical force and interest—especially when interpreted in the Type 2 manner I’ve argued for here (that is, as not resting on the likelihood of any particular set of empirical claims). Perhaps it does not, ultimately, work—but I don’t think its failures are at all obvious
And whether we buy simulation arguments or not, they are a reminder that the world we see and take for granted is only a part of the world; and that in principle, our overall existential situation could in fact be many different ways, not all of which we are accustomed to considering
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The Ju/‘hoansi protocol. Really, a means of exploring different and more organic forms of governance. But echoes of Graeber’s Dawn of Everything.
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A Comprehensive List of Sociological Theories, Concepts, and Frameworks. Like psychology, and maybe even more explicitly, sociology provides frames through which to interpret human behaviour. Here’s a list.
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Why haven’t biologists cured cancer? Reflections of the genomics PhD. Basically, it’s too hard, but interesting throughout.
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A Globally Integrated Islamic State. Reminds me of John Robb’s ‘open source warfare’: low cost and low risk systems dysruption allows for much smaller governance. It is notable that the scarier implications have not come to pass.
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I hope you found something interesting.
You can find links to all my previous missives here.
Warm regards,