How Google Is Making Us Smarter: Humans are "natural-born cyborgs," and the Internet is our giant "extended mind."
posted by homunculus on Jan 15, 2009 - 50 comments

Overcoming Bias [via]
posted by fantabulous timewaster on Sep 10, 2008 - 26 comments

A New State of Mind. "New research is linking dopamine to complex social phenomena and changing neuroscience in the process."
posted by homunculus on Aug 12, 2008 - 25 comments

"Over and over he scoops up a chick with his left hand, expels its droppings with a squeeze of his thumb, opens its vent with his fingers, peers through the magnifying lenses attached to his spectacles and determines its sex." It's a dirty job (YT). Sexing chicks early is important so that the cockerels can be separated and culled^ or fed to be broilers^. The obvious differences take weeks to develop, so when the vent sexing method was developed in Japan in the 1920s, professional chicken sexers became sought after. [more inside]
posted by parudox on Nov 19, 2007 - 37 comments

Online videos of philosophical lectures. Chomsky, Pinker, Dennet, Hofstadter, Searle, the Churchlands...
posted by Wolfdog on Aug 31, 2006 - 7 comments

I am John's brain. Amusingly written, yet astutely raising an important point. What exactly are we to do about consciousness? Although clearly different theories abound, one must still ponder whether or not the problem is even solvable in the first place. Where then can we turn to for our solution? Why, bicamerality, of course.
posted by cohappy on Jun 23, 2003 - 24 comments