Jonah Lehrer's Blog, page 30

The Morality of Drones

War is rapidly becoming a video game. Here, from the NY Times, is a fascinating behind the scenes look at the increasing reliance on drones by the US military:

The Guard members, along with Air Force crews at a base in the Nevada desert, are 7,000 to 8,000 miles away from the planes they are flying. Most of the crews sit at 1990s-style computer banks filled with screens, inside dimly lit trailers. Many fly missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan on the same day.

On a recent day, at 1:15 p.m. in

PTSD

David Dobbs has a really excellent and thought-provoking article on the diagnosis (and perhaps over-diagnosis) of post-traumatic stress disorder over at Sciam. The essential point is that it's extremely hard to define a normal psychological response to traumatic events. Are nightmares normal? Is it normal to experience bouts of anxiety or depression? Dobbs profiles several big name psychiatrists who think that PTSD has become too vague for its own good, and is creating a generation of patients w

No-Lie fMRI

This is disturbing stuff. According to the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences, No-Lie MRI has recently produced a report that's being offered as evidence in a California court.

The case is a child protection hearing being conducted in the juvenile court. In brief, and because the details of the case are sealed and of a sensitive nature, the issue is whether a minor has suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a custodial parent and should remain removed from the home. The parent has con

The Value of Neuroscience

A reader asks:

What's the hardest question you've gotten about the new book? Is there one you were totally unprepared to answer?

This is a slightly embarrassing confession, but one of the most difficult questions I've been asked is also one of the most obvious. It goes something like this:

"What practical knowledge have we gained by looking at decision-making in the brain that we didn't already have, either through introspection or behavioral studies?"

When I was first asked this question, I

Free Throws

A general assumption in the sports world is that athletes get better over time. Sprinters get faster, hitters hit more home runs, quarterbacks throw fewer interceptions, etc. And yet, there's one sports statistic that has refused to budge: the percentage of free-throws made in the NBA. Here's the NY Times, via Kottke:

The consistency of free-throw percentages stands out when contrasted with field-goal shooting over all. In men's college basketball, field-goal percentage was below 40 percent unt

Risk, Fear, Certainty

Apologies, once again, for the blogging silence. I was busy in London, on tour for the UK version of the book, which is called "The Decisive Moment". (We got some great press, including being featured as "Book of the Week" by BBC Radio 4.)

Although book tours can, on occasion, be frustrating and grueling - I'm so sick of airport food that I don't even like Egg McMuffins anymore, and I'm getting to the point where I detest the sound of my own voice - one of the genuine highlights is getting to a

Babies and Morality

In the Times Science section today, Natalie Angier discusses a fascinating-sounding new book, by the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. The book, "Mothers and Others," argues that humans evolved a powerful set of moral instincts - a set of instincts that far exceed those of our primate relatives - because we depend on others to help us rear our helpless infants:

As Dr. Hrdy argues in her latest book, "Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding," which will be published

Out of Our Heads

First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who came to one of the events on my book tour, from Seattle to The Strand. Thank you for listening and for your questions. It's been such a deep pleasure to meet so many people interested in dopamine, Proust and Cheerios. Also, a sincere thank you to everyone who bought the book and helped put it on the New York Times Bestseller List.

On an entirely unrelated note, I've got a new review in the San Francisco Chronicle (long may it live!) on the philosop

Bubbles

In case you were wondering how you should invest your retirement savings (assuming you're fortunate enough to still have some), yet another study demonstrates that low cost index funds are the way to go:

Basic stock market index funds generally aspire to nothing more than matching the returns of a market benchmark. So in a miserable year for stocks, index funds may not look very appealing. But it turns out that, after fees and taxes, it is the extremely rare actively managed fund or hedge fund

Reason, Emotion and Consumption

One of the frustrations with writing a science book is that you keep on bumping into brand new research that you want to include. That's precisely what happened to me when I read this just published paper in the Journal of Consumer Research by Leonard Lee, Dan Ariely, and On Amir. The behavioral economists were interested in evaluating which decision-making system - the slow rational, deliberate approach (System 1) or the fast, emotional, instinctive approach (System 2) - was best suited for eve