This is how thinking is done

I am playing Disco Elysium, where certain topics that arise in the story become available as “thoughts” in what the game calls the Thought Cabinet. The main character can hold several thoughts at once. To …

Memory is a consistently reinforced pattern

I am listening to Michael Levin on Lex Fridman Podcast on YouTube and Levin just made this description which resonates with how I feel about memory. What is a memory? It is a pattern, it is an informational …

Can birds think about flying while they're flying?

I was reading The Sand Wolf by Åsa Lind to the kids tonight, and we reached a section called “Thinking Exercise”. In it, Zackarina asks the Sandwolf whether birds can think about flying while they’re flying. The …

What's it like to be an octopus

I am watching a YouTube video titled The Insane Biology of: The Octopus and it just showed a cross-section of octopus skin. There is an outer layer called papillae, that can raise into bumps and ridges. Beneath …

Cognition is physiological

I am reading What It’s Like to Be a Bat by Thomas Nagel, in which he explores the difficulty of describing what it is like to be a bat. While reading, I keep returning to a strong conviction of mine: that …

The “we-ness” of being an octopus

I’m reading The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, and there’s a section where he writes about Tibetan Maintenance Drones, the degree of independence built into them, and what it feels like to command them. You …

Neurons that fire together wire together

I came across this idea while learning about associations and memory. It suggests that the more we use certain pathways in the brain, the stronger they become. I like thinking of associations between ideas in the …