How Your Brain Decides Without You - Issue 19: Illusions

Princeton’s Palmer Field, 1951. An autumn classic matching the unbeaten Tigers, with star tailback Dick Kazmaier—a gifted passer, runner, and punter who would capture a record number of votes to win the Heisman Trophy—against rival Dartmouth. Princeton prevailed over Big Green in the penalty-plagued game, but not without cost: Nearly a dozen players were injured, and Kazmaier himself sustained a broken nose and a concussion (yet still played a “token part”). It was a “rough game,” The New York Times described, somewhat mildly, “that led to some recrimination from both camps.” The game not only made the sports pages, it made the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. In watching and interpreting the game footage, the students were behaving similarly to children shown the famous duck-rabbit illusion, pictured above. I ought not to have felt bad. Attention can “be thought of as what you allow your eyes to look at.” But what matters in making such assessments? References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Does Culture Really Evolve Like Organisms Do? It’s become common to think about cultural change the same way we think about biological evolution—so common that it may obscure whether the comparison really works. Though there remain many questions yet to answer about biological evolution, it’s a process that’s well-understood. We know, in great detail, how variations emerge, how they’re passed on hereditarily, and how natural selection and other forces push organisms toward change. Evolution is integrated with almost everything else we know about biology. It’s been much harder to pin down the exact workings of how ideas change, which has led some scientists to wonder just how deep and literal is the connection between biological and cultural evolution. Despite the apparent flop of the meme as science, the study of cultural evolution as a whole has borne fruit. In modern times, we have similar forms of cultural evolution, though it doesn’t come out in the way we knap handaxes. Amos Zeeberg is Nautilus’ digital editor.

Why It's So Hard to Figure Out What's Killing the Bees We first realized the bees were all disappearing back in 2006, yet despite years of government-funded research, they’re still dropping off in droves. Earlier this week the Department of Agriculture released its annual survey of managed bee colonies (those are bees that are kept by people for pollination or honey, as opposed to wild bees). According to the survey, 42.1 percent of managed colonies died between April 2014 and April 2015. In the same period the year before, 34.2 percent of colonies were lost. The bees are still disappearing, and the problem is getting worse. A big factor is the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a still largely-unexplained phenomenon where entire colonies of managed bees vanish from the hive without explanation, often leaving behind a live queen and fresh honey. And they’re trying, because when it comes to our food production, bees (both wild and managed) are even more important than fertilizer. "It was in the queen’s reproductive organ.