The truth is that everything you do changes your brain. Everything. Every little thought or experience plays a role in the constant wiring and rewiring of your neural networks. So there is no escape. Yes, the internet is rewiring your brain. But so is watching television. And having a cup of tea. Or not having a cup of tea. Or thinking about the washing on Tuesdays. Your life, however you live it, leaves traces in the brain. Psychology World originally shared this post: Does the internet rewire your brain? By Tom Stafford, +BBC News Being online does change your brain, but so does making a cup of tea. A better question to ask is what parts of the brain are regular internet users using. Read here: http://goo.gl/oAQlV

Bowerbirds are one of my favorite animal cyborgs! Consider the fact that peacocks and other birds grow elaborate feathers to attract mates. For them, it might take generations for an attractive feature to work its way into the gene pool. Bowerbirds use their bowers for the same purpose (to attract mates), but because their resources are external objects, bowerbirds can switch them around as often as they like to develop just the right mix to attract mates. In some species of bowerbird, the characteristics of the bowers will differ between individual birds of the same species, and those birds might entirely redecorate their bowers multiple times a season! The bowers are so elaborate that early Western explorers routinely mistook bowers to be the homes of tiny people! Bowerbirds have literally extended their reproductively salient characteristics into their bowers. This externalization has some surprising consequences: bowerbirds have become extraordinarily cunning and deceptive. Instead of fighting each other (as male peacocks tend to do), theivery and vandalism are common among mature male bowerbirds. It’s a great example of the use of technology in nature, and how it augments the drive for biological fitness. Some great links below. David Attenborough has also done a few bowerbird specials that are worth finding and watching. Thanks for the link +John Baez! Rajini Rao originally shared this post: BUILDING A BOUDOIR Who knew that gardening was an act of seduction? Male bowerbirds are famed for their elaborate nests, decorated over the years with colorful trinkets and flowers. Researchers have now learned that Australian bowerbirds are gardeners with a flair for genetic engineering. • They noticed that bowers were always surrounded by a lush garden of potato bushes (Solanum ellipticum), with bright purple flowers and round green fruits. Observation showed that the birds were not choosing areas […]

This is just embarrassing. Krauss got destroyed by a scientifically-trained philosopher in the Times, and instead of swallowing his pride he goes on a rant against the discipline. His understanding of the relations between science and philosophy is so full of errors and presumption that I don’t even know where to start. Here’s a big hint: if your argument requires going through some of the most important thinkers of the 20th century and determining whether they were “scientists” or “philosophers”, you are doing it wrong. Bruno Gonçalves originally shared this post: Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete? “I think at some point you need to provoke people. Science is meant to make people uncomfortable.”

Left the comment below in Jennifer’s original thread. Comments in either thread are welcome. _ I agree with the main thrust of the thesis, but I have a quibble. It is minor, but I think it is worth stating. Look, identity politics matter, not just in the practical “that’s the way it is, get over it” sense, but in the deeper sense of “that’s how our brains work.” Specifically, we tend to think about the world and our place in it in terms of how we identify (label, name) ourselves, and a lot of our ability to socialize comes from our ability to identify (label, name) others. Yeah, some of that results in stereotype and caricature, but frankly it is amazing that our brains can do it at all, and worrying about “identity” is how the brain does it. We know we can overcome the unfortunate shortcomings of the algorithm, but it takes a lot of training and practice. It’s not as easy as saying “we should stop worrying about our identities”, because this is the result of literally hundreds of thousands of years of evolution as a eusocial primate. It’s not the kind of thing that changes with stern finger wagging. To the topic at hand, identifying as a skeptic is something that is very important to a lot of people, and we shouldn’t downplay that importance. I was the faculty adviser to my university’s first secular student club. The club spent a lot of time talking about science and skepticism, but one thing that struck me was how many students used the club as a support group of sorts, in ways that felt closer to a LGBTQ meeting or an AA meeting than other kinds of affinity groups. It was very typical to hear students discuss their “coming […]

“Consider the various moral panics that surround young people’s online interactions. The current panic is centred on “cyberbullying”. Every day, I wake up to news reports about the plague of cyberbullying. If you didn’t know the data, you’d be convinced that cyberbullying was spinning out of control. The funny thing is that we have a lot of data on this topic, dating back for decades. Bullying is not on the rise and it has not risen dramatically with the onset of the internet. When asked about bullying measures, children and teens continue to report that school is the place where the most serious acts of bullying happen, where bullying happens the most frequently, and where they experience the greatest impact. This is not to say that young people aren’t bullied online; they are. But rather, the bulk of the problem actually happens in adult-controlled spaces like schools. “What’s different has to do with visibility. If your son comes home with a black eye, you know something happened at school. If he comes home grumpy, you might guess. But for the most part, the various encounters that young people have with their peers go unnoticed by adults, even when they have devastating emotional impact. Online, interactions leave traces. Not only do adults bear witness to really horrible fights, but they can also see teasing, taunting and drama. And, more often than not, they blow the latter out of proportion. I can’t tell you how many calls I get from parents and journalists who are absolutely convinced that there’s an epidemic that must be stopped. Why? The scale of visibility means that fear is magnified.” ____ +danah boyd is doing amazing work on the #attentioneconomy . I posted her talk at SXSW earlier, and it is brilliant and definitely worth a watch. […]

More on this research here: http://depts.washington.edu/hints/video1b.shtml Derya Unutmaz originally shared this post: This study was conducted on whether people hold a humanoid robot morally accountable for a harm it causes. In the video clip presented here, Robovie and a participant play a visual scavenger hunt. The participant has chosen a list of items to find in the lab, and is promised a $20 prize if he can identify at least seven items in 2 minutes. Robovie is in charge of keeping score and making the final decision as to whether or not the participant wins. Although the game is easy enough that all participants win, Robovie nonetheless announces that the participant identified only five items and thus did not win the prize. As you watch this video, note the tension in the participant’s voice. At the end of his interaction with Robovie, he even accuses Robovie of lying. While this participant’s reaction was on the strong end of the behaviors observed, 79% of participants did object to Robovie’s ruling and engage in some type of argument with Robovie.

The Power of Fear in Networked Publics Radical transparency is particularly tricky in light of the attention economy. Not all information is created equal. People are far more likely to pay attention to some kinds of information than others. And, by and large, they’re more likely to pay attention to information that causes emotional reactions. Additionally, people are more likely to pay attention to some people. The person with the boring life is going to get far less attention than the person that seems like a trainwreck. Who gets attention – and who suffers the consequences of attention – is not evenly distributed. And, unfortunately, oppressed and marginalized populations who are already under the microscope tend to suffer far more from the rise of radical transparency than those who already have privilege. The cost of radical transparency for someone who is gay or black or female is different in Western societies than it is for a straight white male. This is undoubtedly a question of privacy, but we should also look at it through the prism of the culture of fear. Full article: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2012/SXSW2012.html Taken from http://boingboing.net/2012/04/25/how-a-culture-of-fear-thrives.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter h/t +Boing Boing +Rebecca Spizzirri #attentioneconomy http://vimeo.com/38139635

Jennifer Ouellette originally shared this post: There’s a hint of the “duh” quality to this research, but interiguing nonetheless. “It turns out, they say, that various online behaviors are a good indicator of personality type. For example, conscientious people are more likely to post asking for help such as a location or e-mail address; a sign of extroversion is an increased use of emoticons; the frequency of status updates correlates with openness; and a measure of neuroticism is the rate at which blog posts attract angry comments.” Psychologists Use Social Networking Behavior to Predict Personality Type – Technology Review The ability to automatically determine personality type could change the way social networks target services to users

“So far, the Portable Legal Consent is valid only in America, although Sage Bionetworks is looking at ways of adapting it to fit the legal frameworks of China and the European Union. How quickly the idea will catch on remains to be seen. But if it does, other sorts of researchers who rely on gathering personal data—for example in sociology or in tracking energy use in homes—may find it attractive. And that would enable research of a sort that is now impossible, by opening up the field of quantifiable social science.” ____ Awesome! I’ve been writing about consent and consensus as part of my #attentioneconomy series, and I’m happy to see the reworking of consent as part of the dialogue. The discussion here seems to be dramatically limited in scope; the issue is part of the move for Portable Legal Consent in genomics research. You can read more about it here: http://weconsent.us/ The website includes a link to an endorsement written in Nature Genetics: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v44/n4/full/ng.2244.html This is very interesting stuff! A.J. Cann originally shared this post: The Only Way Is Ethics In an age where people promiscuously post personal data on the web and regularly click “I agree” to reams of legalese they have never read, news of yet another electronic consent form might seem like a big yawn. But for the future of genomics-related research the Portable Legal Consent, to be announced shortly by Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit research organisation based in Seattle, is anything but mundane. Consent 2.0 Sign here IN AN age where people promiscuously post personal data on the web and regularly click “I agree” to reams of legalese they have never read, news of yet another electronic…

Charlie Hoover originally shared this post: One thing is for sure, we humans certainly know how to get around! Mesmerizing Visualization Maps Every Transportation Route on Earth [VIDEO] “Welcome to the Anthropocene” maps every land and water transportation route on earth in a celestial three-minute clip.