Nov 30, 2018
I.
The Mind Illuminated is a guide to Buddhist meditation by Culadasa, aka John Yates, a Buddhist meditation teacher who is also a neuroscience PhD. At this point I would be more impressed to meet a Buddhist meditation teacher who wasn’t a neuroscience PhD. If I ever teach Buddhist meditation, this is going to be my...
Nov 27, 2018
[This post was up a few weeks ago before getting taken down for complicated reasons. They have been sorted out and I’m trying again.]
Is scientific progress slowing down? I recently got a chance to attend a conference on this topic, centered around a paper by Bloom, Jones, Reenen & Webb (2018).
BJRW identify areas...
Nov 17, 2018
[Content warning: scrupulosity]
I.
“There is no ethical consumption under late capitalism”.
I hear this from a bunch of people. Sometimes it is taken to its conclusion; no currently living person is morally acceptable. People who aren’t activists reorienting their entire lives around acknowledging and combating...
Nov 15, 2018
I.
A lot of people pushed back against my post on preschool, so it looks like we need to discuss this in more depth.
A quick refresher: good randomized controlled trials have shown that preschools do not improve test scores in a lasting way. Sometimes test scores go up a little bit, but these effects disappear after a...
Nov 9, 2018
In 2016, I wrote Ketamine Research In A New Light, which discussed the emerging consensus that, contra existing theory, ketamine’s rapid-acting antidepressant effects had nothing to do with NMDA at all. I discussed some experiments which suggested they might actually be due to a related receptor, AMPA.
The latest...