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  • Category: 2008  (100)
    • Yun-Men’s Dried Shitstick 

      December 21, 2008, 16:41

      Yun-Men's Dried Shitstick and the humor of teenaged boys both involve irreverence for convention, and both offer an opportunity to examine our unconsidered…

    • Meditation, Smiling, Mood Control, and Relationships 

      October 26, 2008, 13:13

      Meditation enhances mood monitoring, and smiling is a mood-altering tool; very conducive to happy relationships, as well as general enjoyment of life.

    • Lucid Dreaming, Videogames, Books, Movies, Everyday Life—The Reality of Reality 

      October 12, 2008, 14:58

      Lucid Dreaming, Videogames, Books, Movies, Everyday Life--The Reality of Reality is that it is all virtual, created by the brain based on evolution and our…

    • War, Financial Crisis, “Religulous,” Buddhism, Kipling, Naturalism, and Identity---Fantasy Versus Reality 

      October 6, 2008, 15:12

      Science, technology, education, and communication--more of these could diminish the fictions, fantasies, and wishful thinking that lead to wars and financial…

    • Eve Ensler, Sex, Compulsion, and Freedom 

      September 19, 2008, 16:24

      Eve Ensler on misguided quests for security and their effects on attitudes, including those of us-vs-them. Illuminating examples from the vagina warriors…

    • As Good As It Gets 

      September 15, 2008, 18:03

      The longer we live, the more abilities we lose; get used to it. 3 weeks after an accident, I still have pain, but I'm cheerful, and expect to be no matter what.

    • Is Your Self a Thing or a Process? 

      September 13, 2008, 19:37

      The Greeks mired Western thought in essentialism for centuries. Science finally taught us that everything is in flux. The Buddha got it 2500 years ago.

    • Tom Clark’s “Living in Light of Naturalism” 

      September 10, 2008, 21:13

      How do we free ourselves from conventional, erroneous, views of who we are as human beings, and develop an identity based on the realities of science?

    • Love and the World Wide Web 

      August 28, 2008, 12:58

      I have written about love here, and talked about it in Bare Brains, as a perhaps necessary inducement to human reproduction, created by evolution, of course.

    • “Credit” and “Dignity” in Marvin Minsky's, "The Emotion Machine" 

      August 19, 2008, 13:20

      The Emotion Machine, by Marvin Minsky, throws new and profound light on the working of the brain, but use of the terms "credit," and "dignity," needs refinement…

    • Who is Laughing at Whom? 

      August 15, 2008, 12:11

      Minsky's concept of subpersonality in "The Emotion Machine," makes sense of getting angry at ourselves, laughing at ourselves, and other schizophrenic-like…

    • The Guessing Game: Our Unavoidable Ignorance 

      August 7, 2008, 12:13

      I would like to remember that I’m floating along in a sea of neural processes that are beyond my comprehension, just guessing at where I am and how I got…

    • In Kyoto I Long for Kyoto 

      August 3, 2008, 13:41

      This morning I found myself thinking how great a second cup of coffee would be, even though I hadn’t finished the first: In Kyoto I Long for Kyoto.

    • Emotional Vulnerability: Its Causes and Cure 

      July 31, 2008, 14:20

      I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my wife’s traveling with another guy, and the reaction of a conventional friend who asked, “Are you OK with that?” At…

    • How I Got Here: Evolution of a Naturalist  

      July 29, 2008, 21:07

      Time and memory being the mysterious creatures they are, it seems like I have always had my current naturalistic point of view, but it evolved, sometimes…

    • Meaning: Abstract and De Facto 

      July 27, 2008, 12:40

      Whether a culture addresses the question of meaning in the abstract or not, there is a de facto answer imbedded in the ways people behave, in their beliefs ,…

    • Love, Romance, and Meaning 

      July 17, 2008, 13:23

      Love, romance, and meaning are ideas made possible by language, but language can describe things that don't exist, and ask questions that don't have answers.

    • Normal? Sex in a Changing World 

      July 16, 2008, 13:54

      The idea of “normal” seems problematic when it comes to female/male relationships among humans; cultural and historical variations abound, evolution…

    • Who’s Cuing You? 

      July 13, 2008, 12:56

      The understanding of the origin of cues for our behavior becomes a part of what we are, and helps to determine what we will become. Understanding begets change.

    • Love, Vampires, and Pornography 

      July 12, 2008, 12:54

      There is a tendency to think that our problems, opinions, etc. are uniquely ours, but we are all just human beings, acting as anyone else would, given the…

    • “Heart” versus “Mind”? 

      July 2, 2008, 15:26

      The comparison of heart to mind in the NYT Science section betrays a lamentable lack of scientific understanding of the brain. Marvin Minsky could help them…

    • Sins Of The Fathers; Our Evolutionary Heritage Of Violence 

      June 28, 2008, 13:15

      It is unfortunate that, given the right circumstances, we can take great pleasure in hurting each other in every way, from the unkind word to torture and…

    • The Incomprehensibility Of Being 

      June 15, 2008, 17:31

      We have everyday definitions of our selves and the world that work well enough, but in the gaps between our concepts lies the incomprehensible: non-conceptual…

    • Offend Me... Please! Origins of the Inappropriate 

      June 12, 2008, 12:24

      I recently had the unfortunate experience of saying something to a friend that she found inappropriate. Hopefully that lapse will make me more vigilant in the…

    • I Pledge Allegiance To My Species; Examining Identity 

      June 4, 2008, 20:41

      Genes don’t care whether they survive or not. Human beings care because we host memes that identify us as human, as members of families, social groups,…

    • Our Human Condition; Fantasy vs. Reality 

      May 28, 2008, 10:35

      Human beings develop unrealistic expectations based on their desires. They want the world to be as they imagine it, and condemn themselves to disappointment.

    • Reality Is More Than What We Think 

      May 27, 2008, 13:24

      The more reliable our information about who we are and how our brains work, the more effectively we can deal with the difficulties life presents us.

    • They Are Us; We Are Them: Humanoid Robots 

      May 25, 2008, 12:12

      Science is moving us toward self-understanding, like it or not. If we begin now, we’ll have a head start in getting used to living with ourselves as we are.

    • The Evolution of Our Identity 

      May 23, 2008, 11:35

      Lack of conscious control does not preclude change in our self-perception. As the brain learns new information, its perception of itself changes, feelings…

    • Healthful Ejaculation, Cancer, Longevity, Depression And Immune Function 

      May 20, 2008, 12:37

      A study has shone that orgasms are conducive to lower rates of prostate cancer, and another that they promote longevity, reduce depression, and enhance immune…

    • Hostility, Violence, and Personal Identity 

      May 15, 2008, 11:41

      People identify themselves by their family, ethnic group, race, country; as preferring certain sports teams, etc.; creating us-them groups that often lead to…

    • Mystical or Mysterious? Science, Religion, And The Self 

      May 14, 2008, 12:10

      The feeling of sacredness is the product of neural processes. Sooner or later everyone will realize that their particular sacred was produced by their history.

    • Mom’s and Ex-Wife’s Day: More Cultural Conflict 

      May 10, 2008, 20:51

      Life has wrought some radical changes in me, making it hard for people from the past—mother, friends, ex-wives—to comprehend the person I have become.

    • Alternatives To Depression 

      May 8, 2008, 12:07

      An acid trip gone wrong leads to depression, which leads to an evaluation of my life, which leads to consideration of alternatives, which leads to change.

    • Complexity to the Nth Degree; Cells and Brains 

      May 4, 2008, 12:38

      Even a fraction of what goes on in a human cell is overwhelming. The number of cells in the body and brain magnify the limits of conscious thought.

    • Feeling Guilty? Don't 

      April 30, 2008, 12:38

      Guilt is not fun—that’s how it works. To discourage bad behavior, make someone feel really shitty, then allow them to “absolve their guilt.” They feel…

    • Wishing Life Were Different Is Not Conducive To Happiness  

      April 28, 2008, 21:07

      The Buddhists recommend contemplating decomposing corpses to instill the understanding that that will be my fate, too, and I have taken their advice seriously.

    • Sub-Personalities And The Self; Who Is Monitoring Whom? 

      April 20, 2008, 21:12

      There is no central part of the brain that is in control of my thoughts. Cues in my surroundings trigger subroutines that have been found useful in the past.

    • Who Said That? Sub-Personalities And The Difficulty Of Attribution 

      April 19, 2008, 21:32

      A prominent version of my self would like to instill a new habit: that of maintaining constant awareness that each emerging thought is of equally mysterious…

    • Think/Don’t Think: Verbal Thought As Optional 

      April 17, 2008, 13:51

      Having non-linguistic thinking as an option is what makes monitoring thought possible. It’s a great option to have, but it’s impossible to function in that…

    • Well, How Did I Get Here? Emotional Self-Sufficiency 

      April 9, 2008, 10:23

      I’ve had a couple of probes lately which led me to a consideration of how I got to be so emotionally self-sufficient. One ingredient is coming to see myself…

    • The Meaning of Life; Current Version 

      April 6, 2008, 16:16

      Life has no meaning in absolute terms, yet each of us who looks for it will evolve toward a personal answer; the more we learn, the more our meaning is shaped…

    • The Illusion of Determination; Brain Machinery At Work 

      March 27, 2008, 15:57

      Even though it feels like I want, and I am determined, it’s just the brain’s machinery grinding away; following programs built up over millions of years.

    • Why Is This Man Smiling? Mood Alteration Through Facial Expression 

      March 25, 2008, 10:57

      Emotions trigger facial expressions, and vice versa; it seems to be a two-way street. Based on that happy fact, I resolved that I would smile more often.

    • Sexual Awareness Unfolds: Eve Ensler and V-Day 

      March 20, 2008, 15:19

      One of the consequences of removing the veil of drugs was that it became clear to me that it's not okay to cause someone pain, even if you warn them in…

    • Reality All Over Again; Left Brain or Right 

      March 17, 2008, 20:02

      There are many ways to take our linguistic systems off-line, but when they're back, everyone faces the same dilemma: how to describe the experience linguistical…

    • Mind Blower: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke And Recovery 

      March 13, 2008, 13:59

      Dr. Taylor could only describe her stroke after her left brain had recovered enough to attach language and concepts—based on her history—to the experience.

    • Is Love Personal? 

      March 12, 2008, 14:38

      Our identity grows out of our interaction with other people, and with the physical world, based on feedback from both. We don't create ourselves; we're not…

    • What Feels Pain? The Pain Is In The Brain 

      March 9, 2008, 22:15

      My brain is producing the experience of pain, and it is also producing some thoughts about that experience that it thinks are interesting enough to share.

    • Running in Circles: Escaping Brain Loops 

      March 8, 2008, 11:22

      Understanding multiple selves can help to break out of compulsive brain-loops by learning to reinforce preferred selves and undermine problematic ones.

    • A New Sense of Reality; Augmented Senses 

      March 7, 2008, 11:10

      I have an aversion to some day discovering that I have devoted huge resources to the pursuit of an illusion that has evaporated in the bright light of reality.

    • Welcome to the New Location 

      March 6, 2008, 22:05

      tumblr.com has been very, very good to me, but there came a time when I wanted more options, so here we are in WordPress. I've been so busy with the migration…

    • Just Do It: The Benefits of Anonymous Giving 

      March 5, 2008, 21:24

      If someone knows we did something nice, they are likely either to expect more or to suspect our motives. In either case, they may not show appreciation.

    • Buddha: "Resting in the Peace of Immortality" 

      March 5, 2008, 21:20

      I am part of an infinite process, but I'm easily seduced by the tiny perspective of a limited conscious experience into thinking I'm only that. I'm that and…

    • Who is the Magician? Tricks of the Brain 

      March 5, 2008, 21:12

      The take-away line for me was, “With a grab bag of devices accumulated over the eons, the brain pulls off the ultimate conjuring act: the subjective sense of…

    • The Mystery of Being Human: The Illusiveness of Reality 

      March 5, 2008, 21:03

      The search for truth can be fascinating, and can improve our quality of life, but the mystery of our own mental processes makes a sense of humor incredibly…

    • The Price of Ignorance 

      March 5, 2008, 20:56

      Not only can ignorance be dangerous and expensive, it contributes to a poverty of existence, a diminished enjoyment of life.

    • Who's in Charge, Redux: Our Lack Of Free Will 

      March 5, 2008, 20:26

      The feeling that we have conscious control of our behavior, thoughts, and lives, is an illusion; a result of the brain's inability to access its own processes.

    • Science, Anger, and Forgiveness 

      March 5, 2008, 20:16

      Anger, love, forgiveness; everything that is–human or otherwise–results from the playing out of natural forces in varying permutations and combinations.…

    • Your Brain Is Like Your Liver: No Conscious Control 

      March 5, 2008, 19:58

      You don’t control your brain’s thinking, it thinks you, and it thinks you in the particular way that it does as the result of thousands of years of…

    • What Level Of Explanation is This? 

      March 5, 2008, 19:31

      Interactions on the neural level lead to ideas—like "depression"—on another level, with many levels between. Finding the most useful levels is the…

    • There Are No Mistakes, Unless You're Omniscient 

      March 5, 2008, 19:23

      Nothing can be considered a mistake unless you take a particular point of view, and unless you can accurately predict the future consequences of that decision.

    • Time and Time Again; To Hurry Or Not To Hurry 

      March 5, 2008, 19:17

      I have given up the feeling of a full stomach for health reasons, but many value pleasure above health and longevity—it's all in history and brain wiring.

    • Timeless: Conceptual Thinking and Perception of Time 

      March 5, 2008, 19:12

      Perception of time is different from clock time. Scheduled activities keep me looking at the clock, but if I turn off conceptual thinking, time seems not to…

    • Freedom and Solitude; Why I Left My Wife 

      March 5, 2008, 19:01

      There have been some adjustments of fantasy to reality, but the end result is I'm happier than I have ever been, even when I was young, high, and sexually…

    • Culture Crossings: Death, Funerals, and Family Relations 

      March 5, 2008, 18:50

      Events prior to my father's death changed my view of my family and their culture—our relationships, death, funerals—and led to my severing ties with them.

    • Pride Goeth: Free Will Redux 

      March 5, 2008, 18:41

      A more objective understanding of ourselves can do more than undermine our feelings of pride, it can alter our relationship to the rest of the world on every…

    • Hatcherized: The Making of My Self 

      March 5, 2008, 17:16

      One of the most common and debilitating human delusions is that we have made our selves out of whole cloth. This delusion is at the root of many of our…

    • The Final Chapter? No Free Will: The End of Guilt and Pride 

      March 5, 2008, 17:00

      I cannot “let” the world change me; I have no choice. It changes all of us, and then our actions cause other changes, and those changes change us, etc.

    • Still More Po, More Personal Re-evaluation  

      March 5, 2008, 16:45

      Early on I was imprinted with, "Know the truth and the truth will set you free." I wanted to avoid imprisoning myself in a commitment based on falsehood.

    • More Fallout from Po: Reviewing Effects of My Early Conditioning 

      March 5, 2008, 16:41

      None of us is a unified whole. We each combine different aspects and versions of ourselves that are not comprehensible as a single entity. It's not that simple.

    • Certainty, Uncertainty, And The Value Of Accurate Prediction 

      March 5, 2008, 16:33

      One of our great abilities is forecasting events—and evolution rewards it—but the world has grown more complex, and the future is more difficult to predict.

    • Communication Gaps and Competition 

      March 5, 2008, 16:26

      Communication problems go beyond language differences. People often have different goals, and perfect communication does not guarantee an end to conflict.

    • Drugs and Me and Po: New Lessons, and Old Ones Renewed 

      March 5, 2008, 16:21

      I'm reading Po Bronson's book, What Should I Do With My Life? It's a question I’ve been concerned with all my life, and I wanted to see other people's…

    • Who Are You? Transforming the Self-Narrative 

      March 5, 2008, 16:14

      Most of the chatter in our heads is related to our shaping the narrative of who we are, and how we have and will present ourselves to others. That can be…

    • Further Exploration: Shifting Attention Away From the Verbal 

      March 4, 2008, 21:49

      While verbal activity will never lose its importance, it is wonderful to realize that the brain doesn’t have to be dominated by it. There are other options.

    • Changing Perspective: Meditation, Intention, and Control 

      March 4, 2008, 21:45

      Through meditation we can come to see that the sub-set of brain activity in control at any one moment is temporary, and to notice when another takes over.

    • But What Is Real? The Limits of Perception/Conception 

      March 4, 2008, 21:38

      Our perceptual/conceptual reality has its limits. Appreciating those limits can improve our sense of humor, and help us deal with our suffering more effectively…

    • Let's Get Real; Clinging to "Impermanence" 

      March 4, 2008, 21:00

      Everything is ultimately impermanent—the sun will someday go supernova—but on the human scale, things have relative duration: rocks last longer than…

    • The Same but Different: Continuity and Change 

      March 4, 2008, 20:53

      Many aspects of our life remain the same from day to day, contributing to an all-embracing sense of continuity that leads us to overlook important changes.

    • Love, Love, Love: The Need and Evolution 

      March 4, 2008, 20:47

      The evolutionary value of the experience of love is as social cement: it binds parents to children and vice versa, spouses to each other, and members to…

    • Who's in charge? Facing Reality 

      March 4, 2008, 20:38

      We have no free will. We are determined by the interplay of all the forces in the universe as they converge in our brains and bodies; part of the natural world.

    • Living Longer Without Fearing Death 

      March 4, 2008, 20:21

      Caloric restriction and exercise both have benefits, which can be decreased by emphasizing one more than the other. Balance can increase healthy longevity.

    • What Knows? The Brain and the Self 

      March 4, 2008, 20:10

      An interesting thing about that is that the brain doesn't know how it makes decisions, any more than it knows how it sees.

    • The Beauty of Things as They Are; Reality vs. Fantasy 

      March 4, 2008, 19:58

      Because we can imagine a perfect world, we are dissatisfied with the defects of the world as it is. The problem is not the world, the problem is our imagination…

    • What's the Point? Language In Perspective 

      March 4, 2008, 19:50

      When your brain realizes that much of the silent verbalizing it does is pointless, it may consider trying to reduce mental chatter and find other amusements.

    • Be Here Now; The Complexity of the Present Moment 

      March 4, 2008, 19:43

      When people say, "Be here now," they don't specify what part of "now" we should be in. There's more in the five senses than anyone can be conscious of at once.

    • Buddha the Scientist; Faith vs. Free Will 

      March 4, 2008, 14:58

      When the Buddha told us to work hard, he didn't presume that we could freely will ourselves to follow his advice; he was knowingly becoming a link in a causal…

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