Hidden Brain

How to Combat Pain

When pain signals travel to the brain, the brain doesn't just passively receive that information — it actively decides how much attention to pay to it. This means that pain is not simply a readout of damage in the body; it's a construction of the mind.

Freakonomics Radio

680. Can Universities Win Back Our Trust?

Dartmouth president Sian Beilock, a psychologist by training, made her name studying why people choke. Now she's applying those insights to one of the most scrutinized jobs in America.

Hidden Brain

Waking Up Your Spiritual Brain: Part 1

People who have what researchers call 'spiritual experiences' — states of overwhelming connection, awe, or transcendence — consistently show changes in a specific region of the brain called the parietal cortex. What's surprising is that damage to this region, whether from a stroke or a tumor, can actually cause people to become more spiritual, not less.

The a16z Show

What's Missing Between LLMs and AGI - Vishal Misra & Martin Casado

what's actually required for AGI: the ability to keep learning after training and the move from pattern matching to understanding cause and effect

Book of the Day

To understand consciousness, Michael Pollan looked at plants, AI and himself

Sensience is kind of the base default case of having a certain awareness of your environment and a sense of the changes taking place in your environment and whether they're good for you or bad for you and then the ability to move toward the positive and away from the negative. Consciousness is kind of how we do sensience.