The existence of Bambi implies the existence of Kapowbi
Tommy Blanchard
@tommyblanchard.bsky.social
PhD in neuroscience, MA in philosophy. Writing about science and philosophy of mind: https://cognitivewonderland.substack.com/
It's easy to "sample" successes—opening up Spotify will expose you to successful musicians, bookstores to published authors, shopping to successful entrepreneurs. We don't have a good way of sampling people who tried and didn't have the same success.
Reality Filters 2: Bias in Man and Machine (Learning)
Understanding the data problems with human cognition
cognitivewonderland.substack.com
"Why do some songs become chart toppers while others fall flat? Why do Stephen King’s books sell millions of copies while other talented authors are lucky to sell thousands? Why do some paintings become enduring classics while others fade into obscurity?"
Reality Filters 1: The Social Lottery
How social influence skews success
cognitivewonderland.substack.com
There's a scene in an early season of The Walking Dead where an fMRI shows individual neurons, their interconnections, and their real-time electrical activity. It's funny because this is like Star Trek level technology in a modern-day setting
Mind Uploads Aren't Happening Anytime Soon
Mind uploads are bad science, good science fiction, and great philosophy
cognitivewonderland.substack.com
This short line, in a review of the science fiction book Teranesia, is what gave my publication its name: "Cognitive wonder at its challenging best." I loved the term "cognitive wonder" and it seemed to articulate exactly what I wanted to explore (and evoke) in my writing.
If we want to make better predictions and decisions, we should be more like aggregators, holding multiple independent perspectives at once to see what survives. This can be uncomfortable—it means considering different perspectives that may clash with each other.
The “line of purples” is a group of non-spectral colors: because they are formed by a combination of fully saturated red and blue, they do not correspond to any specific wavelength — they’re a combination of long and short ones, with no middle wavelengths.
Writing about a few essays that failed to come together. Some interesting facts and reflections that didn't quite come together into an actual narrative:
Essays In Support of the Null Hypothesis
Failed essays on snobbery, bad neuroscience explanations, and the ontological status of stuff
substack.com
There's a concept in statistical learning called the "bias-variance tradeoff". One of the things you can take away from it is the value in pluralistic thinking: having many different tools for thinking is better than trying to find the one perfect way
The Wisdom of Foxes
The bias-variance trade-off and the value of pluralism in thinking
cognitivewonderland.substack.com
Some people think if the world is made of "dead", mechanistic parts, this takes something away. I disagree -- if our universe is understandable, this opens the gateway to wonder
A Cold Dead Universe Full Of Wonder And Meaning
Mechanistic thinking doesn't drain the world of meaning; it can imbue it with wonder
cognitivewonderland.substack.com
A look at Lisa Barrett Feldman's "constructed emotion" theory:
Are Emotions Constructed?
A review of How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett
cognitivewonderland.substack.com
My 5-year-old this morning: "When we blink, is that when our eyes take a picture?"
A similarity between poetry and math: Both abstract away details to allow you to see hidden structure connecting things that seem very different on the surface
The Poetry of Math
Analogy is the engine of thinking and the power of mathematical modeling
cognitivewonderland.substack.com
A few thoughts from a little while ago reflecting on my first 2 years of writing. I try to write in an accessible way, but don't see it as "dumbing down".
Thoughts After 2 Years of Writing
Cognitive Wonderland is (almost) 2
cognitivewonderland.substack.com
Really young kids (<5) are comically bad at looking for stuff. They'll miss the brightly colored toy or whatever right in front of them while a parent is pointing it out. What's cool is what this tells us about visual attention and its development:
What Is Attention; Or, Why Can’t My Kid Find the Easter Eggs?
Attention as a competition, and what that means for our sense of self
cognitivewonderland.substack.com
The most interesting concept you've never heard of: stigmergy It's how ants and termites build nests, and also how I keep track of where I am while putting together my kids' lunches.
One of the difficulties of science communication: science writers want to stick to the facts, but they are competing with books and articles that have no such constraint.
It doesn’t matter exactly where a brain function happens—to steal a phrase from Jerry Fodor (who was talking more generally about the mind): “[I]t happens somewhere north of the neck. What exactly turns on knowing how far north?”
Ants work together to solve collective problems of the colony without a central planner. For example, each ant following simple rules based on its local observations leads to efficient allocation of foraging resources. Similarly, each neuron in your head follows local rules
It’s true that the top people usually got lucky. But it’s also true that they’re probably quite good. Research suggests that you need to be high quality to be anywhere at the top, but luck is involved in what from the top becomes a breakaway hit.
Steelmanning isn’t just polite. If you’re able to put yourself in the shoes of someone who holds an opposing view, you’re showing you can conceptualize the world the same way they do—you just think your view is a better theory.
Research has shown that in general, having variety among our day-to-day activities also improves happiness. But some psychologists have suggested that the way to combat hedonic adaptation is to make sure there’s novelty in your life.
Reading is a very recent human invention. It first appeared only a few thousand years ago. Why then do we seem to have specialized neural circuitry that, across regions, languages, and even sensory modalities, responds selectively to text?
"Take out the jargon and the study should mean, to a regular intelligent reader: a brain area does something around the time you have a moment of insight. Like… okay. I could've told you that without putting anyone in a brain scanner." From:
Why I Don’t Often Mention Neuroscience
Let’s read a bad neuro article to ironically regain our hope for neuroscience writing
cognitivewonderland.substack.com
The importance of tacit knowledge in science: The first TEA-laser was built in the early 1970s by a Canadian defence lab.
My 5-year-old asked if these pictures of our bunnies are from their wedding
