It’s crazy to me that the US educational system doesn’t teach you that you can buy a big bag of sticker-backed googly eyes and stick them to whatever you want

I have a new article out in Skeptic:

They say making friends is a lot different as an adult but I dunno, I was at a dude's house yesterday and I knew he wanted to be friends because he brought me to his room to show me his Pokemon card collection

Proud to see my gym had this hung up on their bulletin board this morning

Something a little different this week: a story of sonder "Photons bounce off of the snow and strike my retina, setting off a cascade of electrical activity. Different photons, each having taken a cosmic journey across space from the sun, strike the retina of the grocery guy."

I don't know if water mixed with vinegar is actually effective as a cleaning product, but it sure makes your house smell amazing

I feel like ~2 years is the perfect age gap between siblings because right around 5 the older one naturally wants a dog and the younger one naturally wants to be a dog

My daycare teaches my kids fundamental life skills. Today the toddler's learning activity was eating pickles and drinking pickle juice. Apparently he drank all the pickle juice they gave him. Good kid

Just came across an old draft in my writing folder called “3 thoughts”, and it has three bullet points. The first two are incomprehensible combinations of words (one is “Orthogonal Salmon Rushdie”). The third is “Did I have a third thought?”

I tried to share this with the "Doom Neuron" community (a community around this project) and the mild pushback was immediately removed as "disrespectful".

You might have seen the news headlines saying "human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom". It sounded really interesting, so I decided to look into it. The reality left me very disappointed

Tomorrow at 12 PM PST, I'll be chatting with @tommyblanchard.bsky.social on Substack livestream about extraordinary beliefs, cognitive anthropology, and the evolution of childhood. Tune in for a great convo :) open.substack.com/live-stream/...

what the fuck is Buster's dad?

They say money can't buy happiness, but I'm not sure that's true since with enough cash you can hire a personal assistant whose full-time job is unsubscribing you from marketing email lists

There are only two types of days in the winter: 1. Days where the kids are home from daycare because it's a snow day 2. Days where the kids are home from daycare because they are sick

New post about animal consciousness and the evolution of minds (and a review of Peter Godfrey-Smith's book, Metazoa):

A 6-year-old saw me playing a silly game with my kid today and told me I'm like Bandit from Bluey I've never had such high praise. I'll be riding this high for the rest of the week

The sci fi classic about having children under 5 that bring home a constant stream of daycare germs

Picking up my two-year old from daycare is great. When he sees me he runs to the door with his arms excitedly stretched out for a hug. I embrace him, then all of his friends run over, their arms outstretched as well, saying “Hug, hug”, like a dozen tiny affection-thirsty zombies

What to make of the neural activity observed before the moment people report their intention to act? Nothing much, argues @tommyblanchard.bsky.social—naturally the intention to act precedes the action. This does not challenge ‘free will’, quite the opposite: buff.ly/7x6N5fO

Normies are just weirdos you haven't gotten to know yet

This is the front cover of the new edition of @thelancet.com (thanks to @profstevegriffin.bsky.social for sharing) #HealthPolicy #Science 🧪🧵

New article about swarm intelligence and taking the neuron's point of view: "Just as ant colonies regulate foraging without a leader and slime molds solve mazes without a nervous system, the human brain builds and adapts itself without a central control."

The Lego instructions for assembling “trash can beside trash bag”:

Heaven hath no joy like a 2-year-old with bubbles

I had a conversation with Mike X Cohen about the relationship between AI and neuroscience:

I love seeing intelligent people I highly respect saying something really stupid. It makes it clear that it’s okay if I’m a little idiot sometimes too.

Not to brag, but I was just told by the coordinator of the course I'm teaching that my “delivery of satisfactory checklist items each week is noticed” Talk about gracious praise. This is why we do the work.

26 (hopefully) useful thoughts/concepts: cognitivewonderland.... "Unarticulated thoughts often feel much stronger than they are once you say them. It’s common once you put your thought into words, to realize it sounds like just as weak an argument as the ones you criticized."

The cool thing about The Culture novels is that they’re all so good it isn’t surprising when different fans cite different favorites. Each one just builds on The Culture universe and helps you appreciate the others more by giving you a different perspective on that world.

It’s amazing how demotivating writing advice can be [RANT MODE ENGAGE] I don’t have any formal training in science writing, so I’ve read a couple of books over the past year on the topic.

I've seen articles talking about how dads roughhousing with their kids has benefits for the kids’ emotional development, but I've never seen one that mentions the primary benefit: satisfying the dad's deep-seated need to just pick someone up and chuck them across the room

New article is out, talking about strawmen, steelmen, and talking past each other. "There's a conceptual gulf that makes communication difficult. We don't always appreciate the conceptual resources we are using that make things seem obvious."

The best argument against the theory of evolution is human children. If evolution was true, they would have built in desires to do what's good for them, and yet the hardest thing in the world is to get a 2 year old to eat or sleep.

I had a fun conversation with Joseph Folley over on youtube, covering misuse of neuroscience by wellness gurus and how neuroscience can inform philosophy

Practice is so weird. Like “I'm just going to do the same thing over and over”. Come on. The fact that it works is so dumb.

Hear me out: pickle flavored toothpaste

New article! The Self as Brain: Getting Traction on Consciousness, The Excitement and Wonder of Understanding the Brain, and the Neuroscience of Homosexuality, inspired by Touching a Nerve by Patricia Churchland

Why must the things I want to do (that I only value doing because they are hard) be so hard?

People are unreasonable in how unreasonable they judge people to be

- Philosophy of Mind - American Literature - Rhetoric - Cognitive Psychology - Foundations of sequential programming

People sometimes say dumb stuff on the internet It’s a wild place

A clip from a recent conversation I had with computational neuroscientist Chenchen Li. Full convo here: cognitivewonderland.substack.com/p/neuroscien...

Looks like she read this: cognitivewonderland....

In 20 years, Australia will enjoy near total cultural domination of the English speaking world. Bluey has won them the coming generation My kid now calls farts “fluffies” and the bathroom “dunny”. It's so over for America

New article out today, a manifesto of sorts: