Essays, notes, open questions, and half-finished thoughts. Newest first.
tags: match
- June 5, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Does the brain always take the cheapest fix?
The brain seems to make the smallest change that solves the problem in front of it, and to spend that effort on the most urgent need first. Where does this rule come from, and is least effort for the most urgent need really how the brain decides what to fix?
- June 5, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
How does the brain map the body?
The brain has detailed maps for touch and movement, but the trunk barely shows up in the motor map even though the organs inside it run all the time. So what keeps track of those organs, and what other body maps does the brain hold beyond touch and movement?
- June 5, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Why some brains can't read faces
Some people cannot recognise a face, sometimes even their own, while the rest of their vision works fine. What breaks in the brain for this to happen, and what does that failure reveal about how we normally recognise faces?
- June 5, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Why does music move our emotions?
Music sometimes has an effect on how we feel. Why did we evolve to be moved by sound, and how does it connect with the emotional system?
- June 5, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Why we only see what we're aiming at
We mostly notice what serves our current aim and stay blind to everything else. How does a goal reshape what we perceive, and can we widen that filter without losing the focus it gives us?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
What's funneling young adults into the same narrow set of interests - algorithms, peer effects, education tracks? And what genuinely different paths are we being steered away from?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
How does synaptic plasticity actually work at the biochemistry level - LTP, LTD, Hebbian rules - and do any of those mechanisms transfer to artificial networks?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Can the environment write code into your children?
Can environmentally-triggered mutations actually reach offspring? Where's the line between germline and somatic, between an epigenetic mark and an inherited disease?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
The language of thought, before words
Before words landed in our minds, what was the language of thought? How did we communicate with ourselves before language gave us an inner voice - and what got lost or gained when speech moved in?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Is logic predicated on values?
How and why is logic predicated on values and personality? Two people can share facts and inference rules and still land in different places - what does that say about the parts of 'logic' we mistake for universal?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Why pain beats pleasure as a motivator
Why does pain-avoidance pull on us harder than pleasure-seeking? Evolutionary asymmetry, loss aversion, the design of incentives, and culture - what's primary and what's downstream?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Piaget's game of life and the substrate of reciprocity
Reciprocity is the substrate that holds iterated games together. How do Piaget's children at play translate to adult moral reasoning - and what does 'winning' mean once the game isn't zero-sum?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Predicting the brain's response to language
How can a model predict how the brain reacts to language? What does that say about language being a mostly-predictable signal - and where's the line between reading thoughts and reading correlations?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Psychology and the cost of subjectivity
What makes psychology subjective in a way the hard sciences aren't - and what does that subjectivity actually cost (or buy) in how the field gets done?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
How do you actually verify reasoning in LLMs? Do neuro-symbolic approaches (LTNs, DeepProbLog) give us real proof structure, or just a fancier place to hide hallucinations?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
What does the brain see in a face?
How does the brain recognise within-race face similarity even when the distinguishing features aren't obvious? What is holistic face-processing keying on that the rest of us can't put into words?
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