Archive for August, 2007
Friday, August 24th, 2007
Why Life—or at Least Music–Seems LOUDER
Does our culture seem noisier than it used to? Feel like everyone is screaming at you at top volume? In the case of popular music, that’s not just an illusion; it’s the result of calculation and clever (short-term but probably not long-term) engineering by greedy music companies. Check out this fascinating analysis of the “loudness war” by Suhas Sreedhar, my former student at Stevens and soon to become assistant director of the CSW. The article, on the IEEE Spectrum website, is already generating tons of commentary at Slashdot. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to working with Suhas on CSW projects, including this website, this fall.
1 Comment » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Friday, August 10th, 2007
“Prozac and Other Placebos” Revisited
The most controversial section of my book The Undiscovered Mind was a chapter titled “Prozac and Other Placebos.” It argues, among other things, that the seronotin-depression connection is dubious and selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors are scarcely more effective than placebos. The neurophilosopher Paul Churchland, reviewing Undiscovered in the New York Times, complained, “The situation here is more legitimately hopeful than Horgan portrays.” Bullshit! My cynical view of SSRIs has become mainstream. Check out this post, titled “Death to the Serotonin Hypothesis,” which nicely debunks the serotonin-depression hypothesis. Thanks to my old friend Chris Bremser, a noted computer scientist now living in France (nice life these noted computer scientists have), for sending me the link.
1 Comment » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Monday, August 6th, 2007
My (Irrational?) Distrust of Medical Testing
On this week’s “Science Saturday” on Bloggingheads.tv, George Johnson patiently listens to me rant about my distrust of medical testing, which he believes, overall, is a good thing. We then get into the evolution of cooperation and altruism, subliminal priming, the effects of phony eyeballs and lots of other stuff far, far from the cutting edge. Re the testing issue, I mention a friend who believes a cancer diagnosis