smomara

#Sleep #SleepHealth #BetterSleep #WorkPerformance #WorkLifeBalance #Productivity #Memory #Cognition #BrainHealth #CognitiveFunction #Science

#dopamine #shopping #detox #gibberish

When power is very personal (part 1)

#neuroscience #neuroskyence #neurogrifters #neuro-nonsense #fraud #exploitation

New post up on the loose thinking around brain uploading and downloading; this is the first of a two parter.

Part two will explain why there is no tech, and never will be a tech, to merge human brains and AI. The speculation is based on a simple and obvious misconception.

Don’t believe our tech overlords…!

No, Elon, NO! (part one)

brain downloading and brain uploading are never going to happen

#BrainTechnology #AIIntegration #TechMisconceptions #NeuroscienceDebate #BrainMergeDebunked #TechRealityCheck #ElonMuskViews #TechSpeculations #FutureTechLimits #HumanAIIntegration

…energy conservation, and other metabolic marvels

'Toy models' of metabolism and exercise don't work. Something else is going on.

You’ll have often heard the ‘cure’ for obesity is a twofold, easy to implement, behavioural change: just ‘(i) eat less; (ii) exercise more’.

This ‘cure’ is based on a toy model of our energy use: bring the energy you consume in food plus the energy burned through exercise into a negative balance (less food + more activity), and obesity will be ‘cured’ - because you’ll be burning more calories through activity than you take in through eating.

Economic unfairness, not inequality, is a profound source of people's dissatisfaction in life

Psychological effects of economic inequality are influenced by perceived, rather than objective, inequality

People naturally favour fair distributions over equal ones, and prefer fair inequality over unfair equality.

Biological economics: 'Live fast, die young’; ‘live slow, die old’ Terry Pratchett’s Mayflies and Life History Theory; Star Trek and the Economics of Abundance

thought stickiness; living rent-free in your head; Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom; introspection; maps of meaning

“life was driving at brains—at its darling object; an organ by which it can attain not only self-consciousness but self-understanding.” (GB Shaw: Man and Superman)

Regular essays and other pieces will resume in September. In the meantime, here's a little Summer reading, with some commentaries.

Political Philosophy/Policy

Francis Fukuyama in sparkling form:

One of the great, but understated, scenes in The Godfather occurs at the periphery of the wedding scene. FBI agents are present, taking photos of cars and guests; Sonny hotheadedly confronts them - smashing cameras, throwing some dollars in recompense down (how contemptuous a gesture is that?) , and storming off...

'...our commitment to the policy positions of our preferred political parties is cognitively fragile, and we do not remember what is was that we used to commit ourselves to'

Miss Prism: ‘Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.’

Cecily: ‘Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened, and couldn’t possibly have happened.’

(Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest)

Resilience is built by systems and individuals - approaches from sports science

When you think about your nation, I’m sure lots of things come to mind – good, bad, banal. You might think about...

We cooperate more than we think are likely to - even to very intrusive requests brainpizza.substack.com

#consent #cooperation #lawenforcement #phone #newsletter #signup #brain #social #peer #request #coffeeshop #policeofficer

Writing requires enormous amounts of discipline—turning up and sitting down and working every day, and doing so generally without fail. This much is obvious - but how do you manage conflicting feelings of daily failing with expectations of long-run success?

Voila: RadioGarden! There are more than 30k stations available, a truly beautiful, smile-inducing interface, and complete ease of use. Enjoy!

This situation is so new - we simply need more data. We want to contribute to the ongoing research effort: there will be many who will suffer symptoms for some time to come, and those symptoms will perhaps not even remit, even with further medical care.

Preliminary studies show that symptoms such as extreme fatigue; cough, or shortness of breath; continued loss of taste or smell; headaches and body aches; chest pain, and confusion or ‘brain fog’ can persist in individuals for extended periods of time.

We would be grateful if you could share this newsletter widely to anyone you know who might interested.