Interesting reads, November 2024 edition

Collective minds, smartphones are (not) evil, LLMs, Covid 19, strong bones, brainy movies, personality, human energy

Collective Minds laboratory

Lots of good reads this month:

1. My new ‘Collective Minds’ lab - See our website here (and more btl)

2. Deep dive on the smartphones causing all the 'evils in the world’

3. It might be something other than phones

4. 'Do LLMs understand the world in the same way that a hammer understands a nail?'

5. Covid 19 Pandemic - The pandemic resulted in over twenty million deaths.

6. Bone exudes a molecule which dramatically affects brain function (includes a reading list on how bone health contributes to brain health)

7. Mapping patterns of thought onto brain activity during movie-watching (way cool, imho) (and a relevant piece: How Great Storytelling Lingers in the Mind)

8. The Power of Personality

9. Human Energy

Recent BrainPizza Pieces:

How bad will you feel when your side loses the election?

Science of Dread

The onward march of semaglutide and friends

My two most recent books

• Talking Heads: The New Science of How Conversation Shapes Our Worlds

• In Praise of Walking: The new science of how we walk and why it’s good for us

Extra: Some excellent stacks, including

Henry Oliver

on the necessity of Shakespeare;

Brian Klaas

on supercitizens;

Dan Williams

on the evolution of paranoia;

Adam Kucharski

on ‘why when the next major epidemic threat comes along, we’ll need all the useful tools we can get our hands on’.