Yale’s Robert Shiller on Neuroeconomics

Shiller was a keynote speaker at the recent Society for Neuroscience meeting in DC. Here he talked about the Neuroeconomics Revolution and a new book by Paul Glimcher, Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis.

Money quote:

In particular, Glimcher wants to identify brain structures that process key elements of utility theory when people face uncertainty: “(1) subjective value, (2) probability, (3) the product of subjective value and probability (expected subjective value), and (4) a neuro-computational mechanism that selects the element from the choice set that has the highest ‘expected subjective value’…”

Thanksgiving week at Krasnow

The leaves are mostly off the trees as you can see.  It’s been strangely warm and some of the famous DC cherry trees are blooming out of presumed confusion. The Redskins have lost their six straight, this time to the hated Cowboys. And the Congressional Super-comittee seems headed for failure.

Amidst all of this, there is much to be thankful for: the Krasnow Institute is thriving. Our work is consequential, not incremental. Our trainees clearly enjoy doing science. And our faculty continue to amaze me.

George Mason, in contrast to many other research universities, continues to prosper, both as a growing center of excellence in scholarship, but also as a terrific place for learners and teachers alike.

And science writ large seems to be in rude health. From physics to neuroscience, really significant findings are making their way into publication. Last week’s paper in Nature on the reality of the quantum wave function is but an example.

Tomorrow, this blog goes on Holiday in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States. We wish all of our readers the very best and we’ll see you Saturday. Stay tuned…

Niall Ferguson’s United States of Europe, 2021

In today’s Wall Street Journal, here. His view: the Euro will still exist, but not so much for the European Union….oh and that Brussels will be replaced by Vienna to make the Germans more comfortable.

It’s an entertaining piece, but I’m pretty skeptical of such geopolitical forecasting, especially so far out. The world is far too much of a series of linked complex adaptive systems to make predictions that I’d be willing to actually bet on.

Shakespeare luncheon

I’m in DC today to attend a luncheon here at the Cosmos Club on Shakespeare. I have a particular interest in Elizabethan England because it was a time when the beginnings of The Enlightenment were superimposed upon a society that was still very much into believing in the power of witchcraft–an interesting time indeed, with echos that apply I suppose to our own times. In any case, my idea is that there were, at the time, two parallel versions of explaining human mind: one that recognized the brain as the seat of consciousness and the other that became dualism (as exemplified by Decartes). What is most interesting to me is that the version closer to our own current theories of mind arising from the activity of brains, came out of the folk-wisdom (I think)–the same place that witchcraft was still thriving. And the dualism view–the version that while still accepted by many, is not the neuroscience consensus….the dualism view arose out of The Enlightenment.

Society for Neuroscience Redux

Thirty thousand plus neuroscientists will be leaving Washington today to head home. My sense is that it was an extraordinarily successful meeting in that there was a lot of serious new science to report.

The photo was taken just outside the DC convention center yesterday as neuroscientists headed towards China Town and its many restaurants. For those readers who enjoy my various complaints about Blackboard, you’ll note its corporate headquarters (brown building to the left).

Today back at Krasnow we have an advisory board meeting that will take up the morning. The Board is a terrific group of distinguished individuals who have given enormously to the Institute over the years, both materially and in terms of collective wisdom.

For that we are very grateful. Over the next year, the Board will be entering a new phase, which I’ll put out as a teaser. I hope to write more about that soon.

In the meantime, we’re looking forward to a very busy remainder of the week, and a Thanksgiving holiday that’s not too far off.