Jonah Lehrer's Blog, page 29

Breast-Feeding

In the latest Atlantic, Hanna Rosin has a very interesting article/manifesto that rails against the "cult of breast-feeding":

The medical literature [on breast-feeding:] shows that breast-feeding is probably, maybe, a little better; but it is far from the stampede of evidence that Sears describes. More like tiny, unsure baby steps: two forward, two back, with much meandering and bumping into walls. A couple of studies will show fewer allergies, and then the next one will turn up no difference. S

Phony Experts

Nicholas Kristof has a great column today on Philip Tetlock and political experts, who turn out to be astonishingly bad at making accurate predictions:

The expert on experts is Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His 2005 book, "Expert Political Judgment," is based on two decades of tracking some 82,000 predictions by 284 experts. The experts' forecasts were tracked both on the subjects of their specialties and on subjects that they knew little about.

The re

Beyond the Skull

Over at Salon, there's a quite interesting interview with UC-Berkeley philosopher Alva Noe, author of Out of Our Heads. (I reviewed the book in the SF Chronicle last month.)

Q: Maybe I'm naive but it seems kind of obvious that the brain is the mechanism that -- in the context of a person's life and environment -- gives rise to consciousness. That's not to say it is the same as consciousness, but that it is the mechanism from which consciousness emerges.

Noe: The brain is necessary for consciou

Men Vs. Women

Here's another common question I get at my book talks:

"Is there a difference between the male and female brain when it comes to decision-making? Are women really more intuitive? Which sex is the better decider?"

While there are certainly relevant differences between the male and female brain - that wash of sex hormones in the womb can have significant effects - I think it's important to begin by emphasizing the profound irrelevance of gender in most experimental studies of decision-making.

Boredom

Here's Joseph Brodsky (via Kottke), praising boredom:

A substantial part of what lies ahead of you is going to be claimed by boredom. The reason I'd like to talk to you about it today, on this lofty occasion, is that I believe no liberal arts college prepares you for that eventuality. Neither the humanities nor science offers courses in boredom . At best, they may acquaint you with the sensation by incurring it. But what is a casual contact to an incurable malaise? The worst monotonous drone co

Mapping the Brain

I've got a new feature in Wired Magazine on the Allen Brain Institute and their heroic attempts to construct a gene expression map of the human brain. I was most impressed by the way the Institute has "industrialized" the scientific process, as it transforms the artisan model of lab benchwork - in which post docs play with micropipettes - into a high-throughput model, in which massive robots execute most of the actual "science".

The article is now online, but the photographs are pretty stunning

Risk as Feelings

Brad Delong summarizes an important point when it comes to evaluating whether or not the latest plan to rescue banks from their own toxic assets is going to work. In this interesting post, he contrasts his own tepid support for the plan with Paul Krugman's pessimistic opposition:

I think the private-sector players in financial markets right now are highly risk averse--hence assets are undervalued from the perspective of a society or a government that is less risk averse. Paul judges that assets

Steven Johnson

In the NY Times Book Review, Steven Johnson has a very kind review of How We Decide:

Jonah Lehrer's engaging new book, "How We Decide," puts our decision-making skills under the microscope. At 27, Lehrer is something of a popular science prodigy, having already published, in 2007, "Proust Was a Neuroscientist," which argued that great artists anticipated the insights of modern brain science. "How We Decide" tilts more decisively in the thinking- person's self-help direction, promising not only

Washington D.C.

Just a quick programming note: I'll be speaking at the National Academy of Sciences tomorrow evening, in Washington D.C. The event is free.

I also wanted to apologize to all those whose comments have been eaten by the spam filter in the last two days. Due to an attack of Viagra bots, I had to temporarily tighten the restrictions.

Read the comments on this post...

AIG and Inequality

I know, I know: everybody is sick of hearing about those AIG bonuses. But bear with me for one more blog post, because I think the swell of populist anger can actually illuminate something interesting about the human response to inequality.

Consider the ultimatum game, that simple economic task where one person (the proposer) is given ten dollars and told to share it with another person (the responder). The proposer can divide the money however they like, but if the responder rejects the offer