James Glattfelder studies complexity: how an interconnected system -- say, a swarm of birds -- is more than the sum of its parts. And complexity theory, it turns out, can reveal a lot about how the economy works.
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How it evolved, what we do with it, futures; And otherwise interesting trends
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BY DANIEL L. EVERETT
FastTFriend's insight:
confronting "biology made me do it" world view: We certainly are all cut from the same biological mode. But nature made us flexible not rigid. That is why the bold idea of Chomsky and the evolutionary psychologists simply cannot explain what we know about human diversity. 
FastTFriend's comment,
June 17, 9:27 AM
Human reasoning is the core of human flexibility. And it is this flexibility, not hard-wiring, that is the truly distinctive advantage and characteristic of human beings.
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The ruling will shape the course of research and testing, and it may alter the willingness of businesses to invest in understanding genetic material. Delete the scoop?
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Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is being explored as a therapeutic tool to improve the lives of people with a life-threatening illness
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Say "yes" to Psilocybin Delete the scoop?
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A fascinating new neuroscience experiment probes an ancient philosophical question—and hints that you might want to get out more
FastTFriend's insight:
Regardless of these specifics, this experiment is a potent reminder that our lives are a work in progress. If we’re indeed living out a kind of tape, then it seems to be one in which the tracks can be tweaked as they’re read, even if they’re rather deep. As your brain is shaped by the choices you make, there is room for chance and noise – room for you to be unique. 
Ivon Prefontaine's curator insight,
June 12, 9:57 AM
Who we are is hard to measure and research, but it is important to seek the questions, if not the answers. Delete the scoop?
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In coming years, neuroscience will answer questions we don't even yet know to ask. Sometimes, though, focus on the brain is misleading. Via Spaceweaver 
luiy's curator insight,
May 31, 5:53 AM
Understanding the brain is of course essential to developing treatments for devastating illnesses like schizophrenia and Parkinson's. More abstract but no less compelling, the functioning of the brain is intimately tied to our sense of self, our identity, our memories and aspirations. But the excitement to explore the brain has spawned a new fixation that my colleague Scott Lilienfeld and I call neurocentrism -- the view that human behavior can be best explained by looking solely or primarily at the brain. Delete the scoop?
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Architect Alastair Parvin presents a simple but provocative idea: what if, instead of architects creating buildings for those who can afford to commission them, regular citizens could design and build their own houses? Delete the scoop?
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In this article, I explore Stephenson's use of mathematical objects and philosophies in his novel Anathem (2008). Via Mariusz Leś Delete the scoop?
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Highlights from a PopTech Talk by Sociologist Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Outliers: The Story of Success." "When we observe differences in how individuals s...
FastTFriend's insight:
"We have a scarcity of achievement... not because we have a scarcity of talent. We have a scarcity of achievement because we're squandering our talent. And that's not bad news that's good news; because it says that this scarcity is not something we have to live with. It's something we can do something about." Delete the scoop?
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Several new mind and brain radio series have just started in the last few weeks and all can be listened to online. Delete the scoop?
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As Wittgenstein famously wrote, "The limits of my language means the limits of my world." Watch talks by linguists, data analysts and word nerds who explore the all-encompassing power of language.
FastTFriend's insight:
Including an interesting talk by John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language
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Quijada, a fifty-four-year-old former employee of the California D.M.V., spent three decades inventing Ithkuil, an artificial language which is both maximally precise and maximally concise.
FastTFriend's insight:
It wasn’t long after he released his manuscript on the Internet that a small community of language enthusiasts began to recognize what Quijada, a civil servant without an advanced degree, had accomplished. Ithkuil, one Web site declared, “is a monument to human ingenuity and design.” It may be the most complete realization of a quixotic dream that has entranced philosophers for centuries: the creation of a more perfect language. 
danijel drnić's curator insight,
April 26, 2:54 PM
..So ... there are people that can simply be left as they guide you through the amazing world of fantasy adventure with no end and the beginning, in fact I've been thinking about a new letter odosno symbols that zamijenjivali complete dictionaries and actually serve the same need, at the level of communication the entire planet Earth. Always welcome the innovative and creative people. Delete the scoop?
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A cyborg, or "cybernetic organism", was initially defined as follows: "The Cyborg deliberately incorporates exogenous components extending the self-regulating control function of the organism in order to adapt it to new environments." This verbose sentence can be simplified to, the cyborg represents "a notion of human-machine merging". This concept, dear to science fiction writers, is all about humans becoming stronger, faster, and more powerful through the use of integrated technology. One example of this is the cochlear implants used to help deaf people hear again; these implants are more than hearing aids, since they interface directly with nerve endings. Another example is prosthetics, which allow people who have lost limbs in accidents to function almost as before. Andy Clark, a cognitive scientist, sets out to recount why, in his eyes, "we shall be cyborgs not in the merely superficial sense of combining flesh and wires but in the more profound sense of being human-technology symbionts: thinking and reasoning systems whose minds and selves are spread across biological brain and nonbiological circuitry." This is quite a statement, if you look at it closely: he is suggesting that the systems we will incorporate into our bodies will be thinking systems, that they will merge with our minds, and that they will be come self-aware. Via Marie-Anne Paveau Delete the scoop?
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"Cartesian-inspired dualism enforces a theoretical distinction between the motor and the cognitive and locates the mental exclusively in the head. This collection, focusing on the hand, challenges this dichotomy, offering theoretical and empirical perspectives on the interconnectedness and interdependence of the manual and mental. The contributors explore the possibility that the hand, far from being the merely mechanical executor of preconceived mental plans, possesses its own know-how, enabling “enhanded” beings to navigate the natural, social, and cultural world without engaging propositional thought, consciousness, and deliberation. Via Marie-Anne Paveau Delete the scoop?
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FastTFriend's insight:
In his unique role as salon-host and impresario for science, John Brockman has performed what will come to be seen as an enduring service, by bringing Napoleon Chagnon together with four of today's leading Third Culture intellectuals: Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Richard Wrangham and David Haig. Separately and in teams, these penetrating minds, combining deep scholarship with a rare ability to communicate and entertain, converse with Napoleon Chagnon and shed and reflect light on the life-work of a great anthropologist and a brave man.
Video's of the varoius discussions on page. Delete the scoop?
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Adults hang on to useless information, which impedes learning
FastTFriend's insight:
More dramatically, their brains could barely weaken their synapses, a process that allows the loss of useless information in favor of more recent data. 
Arjen ten Have's curator insight,
June 12, 5:43 AM
There is two interesting aspect to this. The fact that learning can be hampered by ehm yeah well, learning and of course that this is a clue about the heuristics of memory storage in human brains. Delete the scoop?
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Guided imagination exercises help the body repair itself after surgery
FastTFriend's insight:
Compared with the control group, participants who practiced imagery reported a larger reduction in stress, and their wounds showed signs of greater collagen deposition and faster healing. Although it is not possible to determine how much the effects result from the imagery versus simply being relaxed, Broadbent says both factors probably worked together and that the imagery most likely enhanced the stress-reducing effects of the relaxation. Delete the scoop?
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Cotard's syndrome is the belief that your brain or body has died. New Scientist has the first media interview with someone who has come out the other side
FastTFriend's insight:
The power of metaphor: Graham's belief "was a metaphor for how he felt about the world – his experiences no longer moved him. He felt he was in a limbo state caught between life and death". Delete the scoop?
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There will no sense of self that doesn’t take into account how the self has been or will be recorded, how that self will turn up as an artifact of online searches. Delete the scoop?
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FastTFriend's insight:
Something really interesting happens in the curation process, because stories don’t have intrinsic value. An unshared story is basically like rubbish, lying around without any value. Stories gain their meaning and value by sharing, but it’s not as simple as that. The curator imparts her own value, status and trust, upon the story. Curators represent a new type of tribal leadership that operates bottom-up and peer to peer. As a member of a tribe, curators will always be more native and relevant than any outsiders will ever be. Within a tribe they are not only appreciated for leveraging their insider skills, but for sustaining and developing their culture. Delete the scoop?
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Humans live in landscapes of make-believe. We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. Delete the scoop?
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Bryan Magee talks to John Searle about the legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein; ranging from his early work, the Tractatus, to his posthumously published, Philosophical Investigations. Delete the scoop?
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How can science, philosophy and a work of pure imagination meet to deepen our understanding of the physical world? - In 1927 a young German physicist published a paper that would turn the scientific world on its head. Until that time, classical physics had assumed that when a particle’s position and velocity were known, its future trajectory could be calculated. Werner Heisenberg demonstrated that this condition was actually impossible: we cannot know with precision both a particle’s location and its velocity, and the more precisely we know the one, the less we can know the other. Five years later he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for having laid the foundations of quantum physics. This discovery has all the hallmarks of a modern scientific breakthrough; so it may be surprising to learn that the uncertainty principle was intuited by Heisenberg’s contemporary, the Argentine poet and fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges, and predicted by philosophers centuries and even millenniums before him. While Borges did not comment on the revolution in physics that was occurring during his lifetime, he was obsessively concerned with paradoxes, and in particular those of the Greek philosopher Zeno. As he wrote in one of his essays: “Let us admit what all the idealists admit: the hallucinatory character of the world. Let us do what no idealist has done: let us look for unrealities that confirm that character. We will find them, I believe, in the antinomies of Kant and in the dialectic of Zeno.” Via Wildcat2030 Delete the scoop?
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Deep brain stimulation is becoming very precise. This technique allows surgeons to place electrodes in almost any area of the brain, and turn them up or down -- like a radio dial or thermostat -- to correct dysfunction. Delete the scoop?
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The first season of the drama series Real Humans garnered a broad and enthusiastic audience when it aired in spring 2012.
FastTFriend's insight:
They return, it is yet unclear though if they have a plan. Delete the scoop?
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James B. Glattfelder aims to give us a richer, data-driven understanding of the people and interactions that control our global economy. He does this not to push an ideology -- but with the hopes of making the world a better place.