Money quote from Joel Achenbach….
Ten years and $4 billion: That’s a reasonable cost. The evolution of the human mind is arguably the most important biological event in the history of our planet since the origin of life itself.
Jim
Igor Smirnov and Mind Control (Russian Style)
Here’s a really interesting piece from Cnet News about a rather strange Russian Institute that claims to “manipulate the subconscious minds” of terrorists.
Money quote:
SSRM Tek is presented to a subject as an innocent computer game that flashes subliminal images across the screen — like pictures of Osama bin Laden or the World Trade Center. The “player” — a traveler at an airport screening line, for example — presses a button in response to the images, without consciously registering what he or she is looking at. The terrorist’s response to the scrambled image involuntarily differs from the innocent person’s, according to the theory.
Tyler Cowen’s take on meetings
My students know I have a dim view of meetings in academia. My colleague Tyler Cowen has a different view.
Money quote:
Meetings also confer a sense of control. Attendees feel like insiders who have a real voice in decisions. This boosts their motivation to implement ideas discussed as a group. For this reason it is especially important to listen to the blowhards and the obstructionists, who otherwise would pursue their own agendas rather than support a common plan.
Jim
Items from the Institute
First, I’ll have my news regarding Decade of the Mind up on Sunday.
Second, I’ll try to get my slides up from my recent talk on the next five years at Krasnow. Also probably over the weekend.
I’ll also link to a couple of faculty job opening advertisements, also probably over the weekend.
Jim
Decade of the Mind updates
Stay tuned for some important Decade of the Mind updates here. I’ll be announcing some substantive next steps to the May meeting.
Jim
Three weeks into the Semester
I’ve been preparing a set of slides for a talk I’m giving on Monday about my vision for my second term as institute director. The process got me thinking about “institutes for advanced studies” in general and the one in Princeton in particular. The Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study is someone different from the platonic model in that it’s an integral part of a university. But in other aspects, the model is appropriate, I think.
I also gave a guest lecture yesterday for a grad class on the “state of American science”. It’s something I know a bit about–I’m afraid I was a bit too pessimistic for the cohort of first year students–funding for American science is getting squeezed by non-discretionary funding in the Federal Budget, and that’s a structural problem.
Most enjoyable, I got to sit down with my co-author, Lee Zwanziger, on the neuroethics book project that we’re hatching. I think it’s got great potential and we came up with a structure that I think is going to work.
Jim
Alex the Parrot, RIP
From the NY Times on-line:
But last week Alex, an African Grey parrot, died, apparently of natural causes, said Dr. Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Brandeis University and Harvard who studied and worked with the parrot for most of its life and published reports of his progress in scientific journals. The parrot was 31.
We send our condolences to Irene, Alex was a remarkable animal.
Jim
New $1M Prize in Neuroscience
Mr. Kavli says:
“I decided to support science in three fields – astroscience, nanoscience and neuroscience – from the biggest, to the smallest, to the most complex,” he told reporters.
Sounds good to me.
Jim
Schools of Engineering: the Cal Berkeley approach
This is a really interesting article about new trends in Engineering Schools.
Money quote:
A major thrust of that effort will be mixing courses from the oft-derided “soft sciences” like sociology and economics, as well as law and design, into engineering students’ academic load.
Sounds a lot like Krasnow’s Center for Social Complexity.
Jim
Free will as visualized by fMRI
Mark Hallet’s money quote:
This paper has theoretical importance since it identifies a brain region possibly responsible for “free won’t”, the process that Benjamin Libet proposed to allow there to be “free will” even though the brain prepares to make movement prior to a person’s being aware that this is happening.
