I remember reading the advice that you shouldn’t be self-conscious singing to your kids because they are really nonjudgmental so it doesn’t matter if you mess up Whoever wrote that advice has clearly never slipped up and sung the wrong word to a three-year-old

New post! Of Umwelts and Magic, about how our sensory and conceptual capabilities shape how the world appears to us. Also, aphids, ladybugs, and science fiction! substack.com/home/post/p-...

It’s worth noting just how dramatically anti-science the Trump administration is. Compare his proposed budget cuts to what the Republican-controlled senate and house ended up doing. Trump’s proposal is a wild outlier even among Republican politicians www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Sometimes I think about life before kids when I had all the free time in the world, and how I spent that time playing video games instead of doing productive things, and I just think: Hell yeah, I’ve had a great life.

“We weren’t designed to read, even though we do effortlessly and automatically.” This remarkable property tells us a lot about brain plasticity, writes @tommyblanchard.bsky.social: buff.ly/2OvUe3B

Having daycare-aged kids is great because everyday you get to play a new round of “am I just tired (because of kids) or am I sick (because of kids)?

Questions I got today on the way to daycare: What is a rainbow? How do fireworks work? What is a star? What is the sky? Having a three-year-old is like a constant science literacy test

I do it for the fans

New article out about the benefits of living a varied life. Plus it has a picture of me in spandex! open.substack.com/pub/cognitiv...

We're trying to get our kid to stop sucking his thumb, and he brought up this major concern about not being able to put his thumb in his mouth: "Where do I put my thumb while I pick my nose?"

thinking back to a few years ago when our daycare had a “toy story” themed halloween for the infant class 6 of the 7 kids dressed as buzz lightyear the remaining kid was dressed as an avocado for some reason

The inconceivability argument for my beliefs: I can’t conceive of how my beliefs could be false Inconceivability implies impossibility Therefore it is impossible my beliefs could be false Check-mate, anyone who disagrees with me on anything

New post about the difficulty of defining rationality: cognitivewonderland.... Quick summary in thread.

Why don't we serve all meals with a little cup of vinegar? Dip each bite or take little vinegar sips between bites. No need to have a disappointing lasagna, just sip your vinegar to overwhelm the bad taste, the lasagna is just for the texture/calories.

New article!

The spread between the most and least popular books I read this year

There is beauty in this world, for those who take a moment to see it

It's Christmas, time to post something weird about solipsism. "What better time than when you’re surrounded by friends and family to think about whether any of them actually have minds?" open.substack.com/pub/cognitiv...

We humans have made enormous strides over the past few millennia, which really raises the question: why are there still food items that aren't pickled? All the technology of the modern world at our disposal and still some meals are eaten without a single pickled element. Sad.

Turning my ideas into a linear narrative for an article is too hard From now on all articles will take the form of branching concept maps

It's so weird that Americans don't put ketchup on Kraft Mac & Cheese They just rawdog mac & cheese

New article out. Our Conceptual Umwelts: all mental models are wrong, some are useful.

Hot take: It makes no sense to drink coffee for caffeine You don’t chew willow bark when you have a headache, you take an aspirin. It gives you a predictable dosage, is faster, and more convenient.

I learned today 9 people in the USA contracted the plague in 2020. Can you imagine telling someone you got the plague in 2020? They would roll their eyes and assume you were just being annoying about having COVID

Having kids is great because you can buy the toothpaste that isn't disgusting-mint flavored, pretend it's for them, and still be taken seriously as an adult. Why have we as a society not embraced watermelon blast and strawberry burst for adults?

New post out: Being a neuroscientist doesn't make you a wellness expert

My wife made the mistake of saying the pickles “taste like chemicals”. I'll be insufferably saying “Tastes like chemicals” every time I take a bite of anything for the rest of the day since taste is a chemical sense

I just had the death talk with my kid. Him: Daddy, this ladybug is sleeping Me: Oh, it's dead. It's like sleep, but it won't wake up. Him: Why is it dead? Me: All living things die, it's part of life Him: WHERE'S MY SCOOTER? He's got the right attitude about the whole thing.

I have an article out in Psyche magazine today: "Why are we curious about some things and indifferent to others?" psyche.co/ideas/why-... We humans are voracious infovores, but surprisingly picky in what information we seek out.

Reasons to get a PhD: ❌ Job prospects ❌ Satisfy intellectual curiosity ❌ Contribute to our understanding of the world ✅ Something fancy to put in your Substack bio

My review of An Immense World by Ed Yong: cognitivewonderland.... I loved this book. Reading about animal senses can help break the reflexive naive realism that mistakes our perceptions of the world as direct, transparent access to the world itself.

“No man is an island” Well acktually that's obvious because no man is even a land mass let alone one surrounded by sea

Everyone keeps talking about Judith Butler but whenever I hear that name all I can think is “The existence of Judith Butler implies the existence of Judith Maid”

My hands are jittery from too much caffeine. Need to find something for them to hold, like a fresh mug of hot tea.

I haven't been great about sharing here lately, but I have still been writing. This is from a couple of weeks ago: Why I Don't Often Mention Neuroscience (despite being a neuroscientist).

Are podcasts—as some argue—“inefficient”? That depends on whether you are interested in explicit or tacit knowledge, writes @tommyblanchard.bsky.social. Sometimes the former alone is really not enough, and podcasts can contain lots of the latter: buff.ly/M6NgPOd

On tacit knowledge, the nature of expertise, and the value in informal dialogue

A silly little "choose-your-own-adventure" story I wrote about the classic transporter/mind upload questions about personal identity: open.substack.com/pub/cognitiv...

Do LLMs like ChatGPT, consummate as they are in having, er, meaningful conversations, have a conception of ‘meaning’? It is widely believed they don’t (because of how they are built and work), but it’s not that clear cut, argues @tommyblanchard.bsky.social: buff.ly/Smaypaw

My latest post: cognitivewonderland.... About how the things we're immersed in are often invisible to us. "There's nothing we're more immersed in than the workings of our own brains."

A guest post by self-control researcher Michael Inzlicht on how the field has mischaracterized self-control and willpower: cognitivewonderland....

New post: cognitivewonderland.... "In a very real sense, we are stuck in our skulls, figuring out what's going on in the world from the measurements of various instruments."

What did dopamine do to deserve this? New guest post by @garwboy.bsky.social on the unfair demonization of a neurotransmitter "Saying you’re addicted to dopamine is like saying you’re looking at your own retina: you can’t do that, it’s too fundamental to the process."