September 2011
1 post
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Computer-Generated Articles Are Gaining Traction
“The clever code is the handiwork of Narrative Science, a start-up in Evanston, Ill., that offers proof of the progress of artificial intelligence — the ability of computers to mimic human reasoning. (…)
The Narrative Science software can make inferences based on the historical data it collects and the sequence and outcomes of past games. To generate story “angles,” explains...
July 2011
1 post
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Why we must remember to delete – and forget – in...
Human knowledge is based on memory. But does the digital age force us to remember too much? Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argues that we must delete and let go.
“In his book Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, Victor Mayer-Schönberger, professor of internet governance and regulation at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, writes: “Time is quite simply a...
June 2011
6 posts
4 tags
Collective intelligence and the “genetic”...
“Do groups have genetic structures? If so, can they be modified? Those are two central questions for Thomas Malone, a professor of management and an expert in organizational structure and group intelligence at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. (…)
The smart group
First is the question of whether general cognitive ability — what we think of, when it comes to individuals, as...
3 tags
The importance of practicing handwriting
Not only does it help the brain develop, it can also improve grades and confidence.
“Handwriting increases brain activity, hones fine motor skills, and can predict a child’s academic success in ways that keyboarding can’t. (…)
Handwriting aids memory. If you write yourself a list or a note — then lose it — you’re much more likely to remember what you wrote than if...
1 tag
Of Data Scientists, Big Data, the City and Dancers
“In order to grasp and analyze rhythms, it is necessary to get outside them, but not completely: be it through illness or a technique. A certain exteriority enables the analytic intellect to function. However, to grasp a rhythm it is necessary to have been grasped by it; one must let oneself go, give oneself over, abandon oneself to its duration. Like in music and the learning of a language...
4 tags
Exploring how the brain helps you keep a grip on...
“How can you be sure that you’re remembering a faithful representation of what happened, as opposed to a fictitious recollection of an event that might have been entirely imagined? In short, how do we determine whether our memories are real? (…)
Our aim is to understand how the brain supports our capacity to distinguish what is real from what we imagined, an ability that...
5 tags
New evidence for innate knowledge | Ecole...
(Neuron connexions © Blue Brain EPFL)
“Do we have innate knowledge? Neuroscientists working on Blue Brain Project at EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) are finding proof that this is the case. They’ve discovered that neurons make connections independently of a subject’s experience. (…) We have known for a long time that neuronal...
2 tags
Mind-reading scan identifies simple thoughts | New...
“Once the algorithms had established the brain activity necessary for each task, Michael Greicius asked 10 new volunteers to think in turn about each of the four tasks. Without knowing beforehand what each volunteer was thinking, the system successfully identified 85 per cent of the tasks they were engaged in. “Out of 40 scans of the new people, we could identify 34 mental states...
May 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to...
“The nothing-to-hide argument (…) is not of recent vintage. One of the characters in Henry James’s 1888 novel, The Reverberator, muses: “If these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn’t pity them, and if they hadn’t done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people...
4 tags
People in threatened societies are more conformist...
“Societies facing a host of dangers are more likely to have strict social norms and be intolerant of people who deviate from them. The more secure a society, the more liberal and tolerant its people.
To find out how strict social norms are in different places, Michele Gelfand of the University of Maryland in College Park, and colleagues, surveyed 6800 people in 33 countries. They used...
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The Spaces We Create: Our spaces shape us as much...
“A large part of how we know ourselves is in relationship to the places we inhabit and the way in which we inhabit them.
We shape our homes and places of work. When we change them - move to another town - remodel - empty out - our lives change. When our spaces are destroyed, we grieve. We have lost a part of ourselves that we struggle to understand and recapture.
Our spaces are...
April 2011
3 posts
7 tags
Massimo Pigliucci on ignorance and the need of...
“Ignorance is the root of all evil, according to Plato, who also famously gave us a still-current definition of its opposite: knowledge. For Plato, knowledge is “justified true belief.” That definition is worthy of consideration as we reflect on the perils of ignorance in the twenty-first century. Plato thought that three conditions must be met in order...
5 tags
Neuroaesthetics and beyond: new horizons in...
Abstract
Throughout history, dance has maintained a critical presence across all human cultures, defying barriers of class, race, and status. How dance has synergistically co-evolved with humans has fueled a rich debate on the function of art and the essence of aesthetic experience, engaging numerous artists, historians, philosophers, and scientists. While dance shares many features with other...
4 tags
Hans Rosling: What people need isn’t more data but...
Hans Rosling has maintained a fact-based worldview – an understanding of how global health trends act as a signifier for economic development based on hard data. Today, he argues, countries and corporations alike need to adopt that same data-driven understanding of the world if they are to make sense of the changes we are experiencing in this new century, and the...
March 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Frederick Grinnell: Discovery in the lab: Plato’s... →
“The question how it happens that a new idea occurs to a man—whether it is a musical theme, a dramatic conflict, or a scientific theory—may be of great interest to empirical psychology; but it is irrelevant to the logical analysis of scientific knowledge. This latter is concerned … only with questions of justification or validity.” — Karl Popper, Austro-British...
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A glove on your hand can change your mind |...
“Unconsciously, right-handers associate good with the right side of space and bad with the left. But this association can be rapidly changed, according to a study published online March 9, 2011 in Psychological Science, by Daniel Casasanto (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) and Evangelia Chrysikou (University of Pennsylvania). Even a few minutes of using the left hand more...
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After the Show: The Many Faces of the Performer |...
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” - Walt Whitman
”(…) Creative people are complex. Almost by definition, creativity is complex. Creative thinking is influenced by many traits, behaviors, and sociocultural factors that come together in one person. It would be surprising if all of these factors...
6 tags
The power of lonely. What we do better without...
“There is even research to suggest that blocking off enough alone time is an important component of a well-functioning social life — that if we want to get the most out of the time we spend with people, we should make sure we’re spending enough of it away from them. Just as regular exercise and healthy eating make our minds and bodies work better, solitude experts say,...