I enjoyed this primer on super-stimuli by Gregory Ciotti, titled "Is Your Brain Truly Ready for Junk Food, Porn, or the Internet?" Super stimuli, featuring the work of Niko Tinbergen. He discovered that we can hijack animal's instincts beyond their evolutionary purpose.
A growing number of psychologists – particularly the younger generation – are fed up with results that don’t replicate, journals that value story-telling over truth, and an academic culture in which researchers treat data as their personal property. Psychologists are realising that major scientific advances will require us to stamp out malpractice, face our own weaknesses, and overcome the ego-driven ideals that maintain the status quo.
By now, I'm sure, many people know about the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. Only 9% of respondents apparently saw Ham as the winner. Of course that won't be the end of it.
What happens when a person forgets who they are, but the new version become an excellent writer? The result is an article well worth reading. I found this true story to be captivating.
We don't always remember how things were, but how we need them to be. Here's new evidence reported by NPR, titled, Our Brains Rewrite Our Memories, Putting Present In The Past":
Think about your fifth-birthday party. Maybe your mom carried the cake. What did her face look like? If you have a hard time imagining the way she looked then rather than how she looks now, you're not alone. The brain edits memories relentlessly, updating the past with new information. Scientists say that this isn't a question of having a bad memory. Instead, they think the brain updates memories to make them more relevant and useful now — even if they're not a true representation of the past.I've written a lot more about memory research here.