Cognitive & Behavioral Science

Umwelt , as I learned from Ed Yong’s book, An Immense World , is the world as it is experienced by a particular organism. How does the organism that is my dad now , not my dad of 5 or 25 or 50 years ago, experience the world? What language assigns itself, or doesn’t, to the surfer and the wave, the son and the daughter? How cold and confused and in... See more

Technical debt is a concept taken from software development. Let’s say you’re working on a big complicated program. Robust accounting software, for example. And you need to build a new feature rapidly because customers are up your ass about it. So you build it, and it works, but the build isn’t perfect. There are bugs, it doesn’t fully enmesh with... See more

People with an optimistic mindset are associated with various positive health indicators, particularly cardiovascular, but also pulmonary, metabolic, and immunologic. They have a lower incidence of age-related illnesses and reduced mortality levels. Optimism and pessimism are not arbitrary and elusive labels. On the contrary, they are mindsets that... See more