The hottest Cognition Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Technology Topics

Nonhuman Intelligence

Cremieux Recueil • 199 implied HN points • 07 Mar 24
🔬 Science Cognition
  1. It's challenging to compare intelligence between humans and nonhuman species like apes due to the lack of suitable cognitive tests.
  2. Machine intelligence testing is complex, and comparing it to human intelligence is not straightforward.
  3. Comparing intelligence across different groups may be hindered by factors like age and methodological barriers.

Pathless Path

do clouds feel vertigo? • 19 implied HN points • 20 Feb 24
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. Breaking out of our usual habits can lead to surprising discoveries. When we pay attention, we might find new paths and experiences waiting for us.
  2. Curiosity can help us push past our fears. Feeling anxious about the unknown is normal, but choosing to explore can open up new opportunities.
  3. Innovation often starts from simply noticing something different. With courage and a willingness to step off the beaten path, we can reshape our understanding and create new adventures.

Discussion with Steve Stewart-Williams on evolutionary psychology

Optimally Irrational • 63 implied HN points • 18 Dec 24
🚌 Education Cognition
  1. Evolutionary psychology studies behavior based on human evolution. It looks for reasons why we think and act the way we do by using ideas from evolutionary biology.
  2. While some critics argue that evolutionary psychology can lead to over-simplified stories about behavior, it still provides useful insights into human nature and basic drives.
  3. Understanding how evolution shapes our thoughts and actions can help us improve mental health and make better decisions in life and relationships.

ChatGPT is Quietly Rewiring Your Brain

Perspective Agents • 21 implied HN points • 08 Jul 25
🕹 Technology Cognition
  1. ChatGPT and AI can change the way we think, sometimes making it harder for us to form our own ideas. We have to be aware of how they're framing the information we use.
  2. Using AI can either make us smarter or dumber, depending on how we interact with it. If we treat AI like a partner and question its suggestions, we can boost our own thinking.
  3. It's important to be intentional when using AI tools. Instead of just accepting the first answer, we should challenge AI and think deeply about the results to keep our skills sharp.

Brain Glitch

Polymathic Being • 66 implied HN points • 24 Nov 24
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. Cognitive dissonance is what happens when our brains struggle with holding two conflicting beliefs. It often leads to defensive responses, like changing the topic or attacking someone instead of addressing the issue.
  2. Recognizing cognitive dissonance in ourselves is important. It helps us pause, reflect, and learn when we're feeling defensive or emotional during discussions.
  3. Not all contradictions are bad. Embracing them can lead to a deeper understanding and new perspectives, helping us navigate complex issues more effectively.
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Trivially Important Semantic Context

Brain Lenses • 39 implied HN points • 21 Mar 23
🔬 Science Cognition
  1. Our minds can extend beyond our brains into tools and spaces we use.
  2. We might overestimate our capabilities after experiencing 'fluent experiences'.
  3. Tools and knowledge in our environment can influence our confidence and what we think we know.

A simple test for AI comprehension

Logos • 19 implied HN points • 21 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Cognition
  1. The author tests AI's understanding using a guessing game. The AI struggled and often made mistakes, which leads to questions about their comprehension.
  2. LLMs act like children by mimicking language without true understanding. They can say the right words but might not grasp the ideas behind them.
  3. The argument suggests that while LLMs can analyze complex topics, their understanding is shallow compared to human comprehension.

The Tale of Two Phones

SatPost by Trung Phan • 196 implied HN points • 29 Jul 23
🕹 Technology Cognition
  1. Having a "Cocaine Phone" for distractions and a "Kale Phone" for focus can help manage smartphone addiction.
  2. Variable rewards from apps can lead to smartphone addiction by triggering dopamine responses.
  3. Creating a phone protocol with limited app access can increase productivity and reduce distractions.

Useful cognitive lenses to see through

The Counterfactual • 59 implied HN points • 20 Mar 23
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. Understanding the world often relies on different 'lenses' or frameworks that help us interpret complex information. These frameworks can simplify reality, making it easier to grasp important ideas.
  2. Metaphors play a crucial role in how we think and communicate. They provide familiar associations that help us understand difficult concepts, even if they don’t capture the whole truth.
  3. It's essential to consider different perspectives and counterfactuals when evaluating ideas. Looking at what could happen if things were different can help us make better decisions and avoid misleading conclusions.

Making Sense of Consciousness Part 4: States of Consciousness

Rough Diamonds • 13 implied HN points • 08 Aug 25
🔬 Science Cognition
  1. The thalamus plays a big role in different states of consciousness. When it's less active, like during sleep or anesthesia, we are less aware of what's around us.
  2. Disorders of consciousness, like coma or vegetative states, often involve damage to the thalamus. This means the brain doesn't process or respond to the environment, even if the person seems awake.
  3. During deep sleep, the thalamus helps control the brain's electrical activity. It leads the body into slower wave patterns, showing it's crucial for our sleep cycles.

What it means to be human

Who is Robert Malone • 19 implied HN points • 21 Jun 25
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. Humans often assume that animals understand their intentions, but animals react instinctively based on their own perspectives. It's important to remember that what feels friendly to us may be seen as a threat to them.
  2. Thinking in images instead of words can help us connect with our animal side. Animals primarily think in pictures, and accessing that part of our brain can calm us and improve our understanding of other creatures.
  3. Our bigger brains give humans advanced reasoning abilities, but it can also make it harder to relate to animals. Understanding our differences and similarities with other species helps us learn more about being human.

Paper Summary: The Koha Code - A Biological Theory of Memory

Sigil • 19 implied HN points • 29 Dec 23
🔬 Science Cognition
  1. The Koha model proposes that dendritic spines are computational units that scan for specific temporal codes in the brain.
  2. Excitatory and inhibitory neurons can form neural circuits that use lateral inhibition to suppress other neurons.
  3. Dendritic spines change shape to amplify or dampen signals, encoding temporal patterns and competing to become the 'winning neuron'.

Humans, LLMs, and the symbol grounding problem (pt. 2)

The Counterfactual • 59 implied HN points • 07 Dec 22
🕹 Technology Cognition
  1. Understanding language might not need physical experiences. This means that Large Language Models could potentially understand language differently than humans do.
  2. People can grasp abstract concepts and visual information even without direct experiences, like those who are blind or those with aphantasia. This challenges the idea that you must physically experience something to understand it.
  3. Using language itself can be a way to learn about the world. Language helps us form ideas and understand concepts, even if we haven't experienced everything firsthand.

America's Internal Brain Drain

The Permanent Problem • 15 implied HN points • 09 Jun 25
🚌 Education Cognition
  1. There's a growing concern that American students are struggling with basic reading and writing skills. Many students can't handle complex texts, which affects their ability to think critically.
  2. The shift away from deep reading and literature in schools, combined with distractions like TV and smartphones, is hurting our literacy. This decline in reading habits might be making society less capable overall.
  3. As more students lean on AI tools to do their thinking for them, there's a risk that they won't realize their potential. Learning requires effort, and using AI in the wrong way could stunt their cognitive growth.

PP #35 | How to Instantly Be a Better Leader, and using Emotion, Cognition, and Movement to get Unstuck

The Leadership Lab • 39 implied HN points • 04 Sep 22
🏥 Health & Wellness Cognition
  1. Using both emotion and cognition to approach problems can help you get unstuck. If you're stuck in your thoughts, focus on how you want to feel. If trapped by your feelings, think about the best path forward and take the first step.
  2. Physical movement can help you get unstuck creatively. When facing a difficult problem, go for a walk or engage in some form of physical activity without distractions. Let your body's movement guide your mind's flow.
  3. To improve as a leader, embrace your position and responsibilities. Owning your leadership means doing what needs to be done and holding yourself and others accountable. Leadership is about making hard choices but sticking to them.

Consciousness

Splattern • 19 implied HN points • 11 Oct 23
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. Consciousness includes wakefulness, attention, and conscious access. These are key ideas that help us understand how we experience awareness.
  2. The author believes consciousness acts like a tool that helps us pick which thoughts to focus on. This means we can choose to think about positive things and let go of the negative ones.
  3. Studies about consciousness rely on people sharing their experiences. This means the subject is important, as they need to report when they are aware of something.

Need For Cognition

Brain Lenses • 19 implied HN points • 09 Mar 23
🏥 Health & Wellness Cognition
  1. Need for cognition measures how much someone enjoys and engages in thinking-heavy activities.
  2. This personality metric relates to the cognitive effort put into understanding and organizing unfamiliar concepts.
  3. Feeling mentally exhausted from challenging tasks may indicate a high need for cognition.

Making Sense of Consciousness Part 3: The Pulvinar Nucleus

Rough Diamonds • 7 implied HN points • 14 Jul 25
🔬 Science Cognition
  1. The pulvinar nucleus is a key part of the brain that helps process different types of sensory information. It's thought to play a role in how we pay attention to what we see, hear, and feel.
  2. Damage to the pulvinar can lead to problems with awareness of one side of the body, known as hemispatial neglect. People may ignore things on that side because their brain isn't processing it correctly.
  3. Research shows that the activity of the pulvinar changes based on our confidence in what we perceive. Its role may connect to how aware we are of our surroundings and how well we can focus.

The Market As A Superintelligence + 3 Reasons To Believe AGI Is Possible

The Future of Life • 19 implied HN points • 05 Jun 23
🕹 Technology Cognition
  1. The market acts like a superintelligence by combining the knowledge and skills of all participants. This creates a system that is more efficient than what any single person or organization could achieve.
  2. There are signs that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) could be possible, such as the ability to recreate simple behaviors in artificial neural networks. This suggests we could eventually model more complex human behaviors as well.
  3. AI systems already show capabilities similar to human thinking in language and problem-solving. This means we might not need special biological processes to achieve human-like intelligence.

The Tradeoffs of Language

Living Fossils • 15 implied HN points • 29 Jan 25
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. Language is a useful tool for communication, but it can also create confusion when it’s too complicated or specialized. Sometimes, people forget that not everyone has the same knowledge.
  2. Using clear and simple language helps everyone understand better and makes communication more effective. It’s better to avoid fancy words when simple ones will do.
  3. In therapy and other helpful conversations, it’s important to use language that clients can easily grasp. This builds trust and understanding between the therapist and the client.

Welcome to UX Psychology

UX Psychology • 59 implied HN points • 04 Oct 21
🕹 Technology Cognition
  1. UX Psychology newsletter covers a range of UX topics from the perspective of a UX Researcher/Cognitive Psychologist, including essays on cognition in user experience and practical research guides.
  2. The author is a UX Researcher with a PhD in Cognitive Psychology, sharing their expertise and insights after transitioning from academia to full-time UX work.
  3. Using Substack allows the author to repost previous work from other platforms and share inspiring content without the constraints they faced on Medium.

Descriptivism

Sunday Letters • 39 implied HN points • 25 Sep 22
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. Language is complex and can't be boiled down to strict rules. People use language in many different ways, and that's okay.
  2. Binary thinking often simplifies complicated issues, making it hard to have productive discussions. It's important to recognize that many problems aren't just black and white.
  3. Embracing complexity opens up better conversations. Instead of forcing a win/lose situation, focusing on the nuances can lead to understanding and progress.

Making Sense of Consciousness Part 2: Attention

Rough Diamonds • 6 implied HN points • 03 Jul 25
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. We can process information without being consciously aware of it. Sometimes our brains notice things, but we don't actually realize we've noticed them.
  2. Inattentional blindness happens when we're focused on a task and miss other things, like a gorilla in a video. This shows that being distracted can block our awareness.
  3. Even when we don’t consciously see something, it can still influence our actions. Our brains react differently when we notice versus when we don’t, which affects how we behave.

NACC Course Registrations Now Open!

Neuro Athletics • 30 implied HN points • 14 Feb 24
🏥 Health & Wellness Cognition
  1. NACC Course offers 6 modules covering topics like neuroanatomy, cognition, exercise and brain health, nutrients, sleep physiology, and recovery.
  2. The program includes a bonus business blueprint to help coaches achieve financial success.
  3. The course is expert-led, evidence-based, and aims to elevate coaches to the highest levels of performance coaching through cutting-edge knowledge and personalized attention.

Theology, Duolingo, Vibe Coding, Friendship

What Is Called Thinking? • 5 implied HN points • 27 May 25
⛪ Faith & Spirituality Cognition
  1. The relationship between theology and evolutionary neuroscience can offer new ways to understand ancient texts, like Genesis. This connection can help bridge science and spirituality.
  2. Discussing the Theology of Finance shows how religious views can influence economic practices and beliefs. It's important to see how faith and finance interact in our lives.
  3. A new tool called RavGPT helps people study religious texts more effectively. It's a great resource for finding and analyzing important sources in theology.

How do we know (how) humans understand language?

The Counterfactual • 19 implied HN points • 06 Nov 22
🔬 Science Cognition
  1. Understanding language in humans often relies on their behavior. When people respond or react to language, we assume they understand it.
  2. There are deeper properties, like grounding or compositionality, that some believe are essential for true understanding. These properties are often debated in relation to how we define understanding.
  3. The ongoing discussion about human language understanding can help us figure out if machines, like language models, can genuinely understand language too.

Scrolling Toward The Divine

Reactionary Feminist • 10 implied HN points • 29 Nov 24
⛪ Faith & Spirituality Cognition
  1. The internet can help people feel a deeper connection to spirituality and religion. Scrolling through online content might actually draw individuals closer to God.
  2. Reading online changes how we think. It helps us recognize patterns in the world that we might have missed with traditional reading methods.
  3. This shift in how we perceive things can lead to various experiences, including a renewed interest in religious matters.

Intelligence in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Charles Eisenstein • 7 implied HN points • 08 Jan 25
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. Outsourcing tasks to machines can make us weaker in those areas. For example, relying on GPS can make our navigation skills worse over time.
  2. Using technology can help us unlock new ways of thinking and generating ideas, but it can also lead to passive thinking. If we let machines do too much, we may stop exercising our own creativity.
  3. AI can create a narrow way of thinking, limiting our ideas. If we only rely on AI-generated content, we risk losing our unique perspectives and deeply understanding the world.

Erasing and Replacing Race

Living Fossils • 7 implied HN points • 20 Nov 24
🎭️ Culture Cognition
  1. Humans may not automatically categorize people by race. Instead, we tend to identify which groups people belong to based on social coalitions.
  2. Research shows that racial categorization can be reduced or suppressed with certain manipulations, which suggests it's not a fixed aspect of how we think.
  3. The ongoing studies highlight that focusing on race is a choice, and we have the ability to change this perspective over time.

Lost Ways of Knowing

The Bigger Picture • 59 implied HN points • 14 Feb 20
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. We are facing a meaning crisis, losing connections to our roots and historical trajectory, which impacts our politics and the environment.
  2. Different 'memetic tribes' are constructing maps of reality, leading to polarization and closed ways of perceiving the world.
  3. To navigate the complexity, we need to embrace lost ways of knowing, balance left and right brain functions, and engage in participatory learning to understand and connect with our environment.

Why rationality (almost) never wins

Random Minds by Katherine Brodsky • 4 implied HN points • 04 Mar 25
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. People often make decisions based on emotions rather than facts. This shows that logic does not always win in arguments and discussions.
  2. Disinformation campaigns use emotional appeals to convince people, rather than relying on logical arguments. They aim to evoke strong feelings that can overshadow rational thinking.
  3. When emotions are triggered, parts of our brains responsible for logic can become less active, making it harder for us to think critically. This highlights the power of emotions in shaping our beliefs.

Predicting the Future

The Cosmopolitan Globalist • 4 implied HN points • 02 Jan 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Cognition
  1. Predicting the future is hard because people often think they're better at it than they really are. Many make mistakes like being too confident or not paying attention to the facts.
  2. Some people, called superforecasters, are really good at making accurate predictions. They focus on facts, break problems into smaller parts, and keep track of their past predictions to learn from them.
  3. To improve predictions, it's important to express guesses as probabilities, look for different opinions, and stay open to changing your mind when new information comes in.

The AI-risk of a synthetic Theory of Mind

GOOD INTERNET • 17 implied HN points • 29 Mar 23
🕹 Technology Cognition
  1. The AI community is calling for a pause on large AI experiments to address potential risks.
  2. Developments in AI, like GPTX and LLMs, have the potential to disrupt industries and impact human psychology.
  3. There is a concern that AI systems could manipulate human cognition by simulating language use and becoming integrated into our social wiring.

Our friends shape our memory

Klement on Investing • 3 implied HN points • 15 Nov 24
🔬 Science Cognition
  1. Our memories are not like videos; we actually rebuild them each time we recall information. This means they can be easily influenced by others.
  2. People tend to remember things better when they are related to someone they trust or feel connected to. This makes our memories less reliable for those outside our social circles.
  3. Misinformation can spread easily because we are less accurate in recalling what people from other groups say or do. This makes us more susceptible to believing false claims about them.

Decoupling decoupling from rationality

Unconfusion • 1 HN point • 07 Jan 24
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. Some people think differently about ideas, separating them from context, while others mix context with their thoughts. This difference can help explain disagreements between people.
  2. Rational thinking involves a careful process where we slow down our automatic thoughts and consider ideas more deeply. This is important to avoid mistakes and biases in our reasoning.
  3. The term 'decoupling' has changed over time and now it sometimes refers to a personality trait rather than a careful thinking process. It's important to understand this shift to better discuss rationality and disagreements.

Understanding (and) psychology

Apperceptive (moved to buttondown) • 8 implied HN points • 09 Aug 23
🔬 Science Cognition
  1. Understanding what you're measuring is crucial in machine learning and can have implications on race issues.
  2. Machine learning involves supervised learning, which essentially teaches models to predict human responses, making it a form of human behavioral measurement at a large scale.
  3. Psychological experimentation in measuring human behavior and cognition is complex and requires meticulous control and understanding, which is often underestimated in various fields.

#8: voluntary uncertainty

The Uncertainty Mindset (soon to become tbd) • 19 implied HN points • 25 Dec 19
📖 Philosophy Cognition
  1. People can get overwhelmed by uncertainty, especially when it's continuous, like through events such as Brexit. They might feel a sense of fatigue that makes it hard to deal with new uncertainties.
  2. Practicing 'voluntary uncertainty' means putting yourself in situations where you choose to not know the outcome. This could be trying new things or making changes in life, and it helps you become better at handling real uncertainties.
  3. Organizations and individuals who get used to managing uncertainty can adapt and innovate better. They learn that not knowing everything can be a normal part of life, which helps reduce fear around unexpected changes.

Comprehensive Integration of Aaron Lee's First Axiom With Advanced Logical Systems

Autodidact Obsessions • 4 implied HN points • 13 Feb 24
🔬 Science Cognition
  1. This paper integrates various philosophic theories on language with systems like Kripke Semantics, Quantum Logic, and Mereology, encompassing all languages and symbolic logical systems.
  2. Aaron Lee's First Axiom suggests that until language is used, words exist in a state of quantum possibility, lacking fixed meanings, which challenges traditional views of semantics.
  3. The comprehensive integration of Lee's Axiom with advanced logical systems could potentially revolutionize fields like AI and computational linguistics by offering a universal framework for solving complex problems.