tamihania

"Wooden pointers assist in demonstrating an early psychology experiment with white rats pressing a bar. Vintage B&W educational film, now public domain and part of the Prelinger Archives."

"Dennis Genpo Merzel, Roshi, is confident we're seeing steady advancement in both computing technologies and spiritual technologies. He talks to Big Think about how he is streamlining the art of coming to a Zen "awakening" through his Big Heart Big Mind program, and shares advice on how you can achieve Zen on your own."

"Paul Romer is developing a radical new model of growth and governance, which calls for the establishment of city-scale special administrative zones." from: http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html

"Bridging the gap from people to machines requires a complex understanding of how we think. Winston asserts we think with our eyes, our hands, our mouth. Humans rely upon visual, motor, and linguistic faculties to learn and solve problems. Perceptual powers enable naming, describing, categorizing and recalling. In the aggregate, these processes are “commonsense,” a hallmark of cognition that Winston aims to vest in computer programs -- to endow transistors with the nuanced capabilities of neurons.

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In an exclusive preview of his book The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language and how it expresses what goes on in our minds -- and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realize.

"Elaine Morgan is a tenacious proponent of the aquatic ape hypothesis: the idea that humans evolved from primate ancestors who dwelt in watery habitats. Hear her spirited defense of the idea -- and her theory on why mainstream science doesn't take it seriously."

"It’s rare to find research that simultaneously advances basic science and brings good into people’s lives, but Pawan Sinha’s Project Prakash does precisely that. An investigator of human visual processing, Sinha is interested in how these brain mechanisms develop. For his work, Sinha realized the ideal subjects would be individuals who developed sight after blindness. Since he could not ethically create such an experimental population, he had to “rely on natural experiments” -- children born blin

"Journalist Paul Hoffman moderates a 50-minute panel discussion about in-home DNA tests and the connection between genes and disease."

"Fellow neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe outlines her research investigating the neural basis for a Theory of Mind -- how the human mind seems geared to “glean what others are thinking and feeling.” From her work with children and adults, Saxe has determined that there’s a very specific region of the brain -- the right temporal-parietal junction -- dedicated to thinking about how others think. This area lights up in the fMRI scanner when people read stories involving another person’s beliefs and moral ju

"Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure -- and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work."

"In this documentary series, Professor and neuroscientist Susan Greenfield sets out to explain how this three-pound squishy organ is responsible not only for motor action and perception but for subjective experience, ranging from simple information processing to artistic creativity and even religious 'out-of-body' experiences." via Berto: Philosophy Monkey http://berto-meister.blogspot.com/2009/07/brain-story-all-in-mind.html

"Roy Baumeister of Florida State University speaks about the usefulness and complexity of consciousness and human culture."

"John A. Bargh, Ph.D., professor at Yale University, speaks during a symposium at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Convention in Tampa, FL. This special keynote session was titled "What Social Psychology can Tell Us about the 'Free Will' Question." Roy F. Baumeister spoke afterwards on the merits of the belief in and study of free will and human consciousness"

" Mike’s project to connect law with neuroscience (13:59)
Why normal people sometimes make horrible choices (07:54)
How to be morally responsible—and causally determined (11:49)
Becoming your future self (06:48)
Poverty as a neurotoxin (12:51)
Left-brain, right-brain, split-brain (11:28) "

"Part 1 of Unlocking the Secrets and Powers of the Brain, a panel discussion on “the hottest issues in brain research, from predicting human behavior to manipulating memory to pinpointing consciousness” broken into two video players with indexed five minute clips and and interviews with each scientist."