Cerebral: Recent Episodes
Vatsal
In this podcast, we try to calibrate our bullshit detectors, learn to think better and make better decisions by exploring topics from fields like cognitive and social psychology, heuristics and biases and instrumental rationality.
In this episode of Cerebral, we will briefly explore how "Availability Heuristic" or "Availability Bias", a mental shortcut that we use to assign likelihoods of a particular event or behavior, leads to irrational fears and makes us vulnerable to exploitation through mass propaganda.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_cascade
Bill Gates ted talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=en
Music:
Bio Unit - Idiophone
For questions, concerns of feedback, write to cerebralpodcast@protonmail.com
In this episode of Cerebral, we explore the halo bias.
Music:
Ketsa - No-Light-Without-Darkness
Blear Moon - Learning from kids
Bio Unit - Chase
Links:
https://www.thelawproject.com.au/insights/attractiveness-bias-in-the-legal-system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect#Marketing
Expectations, Impressions, and Judgments of Physically Attractive Students: A Review https://www.jstor.org/stable/1170486
http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2012/09/little-evidence-of-health-benefits-from-organic-foods-study-finds.html
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.842
Feedback and questions? Write to cerebralpodcast@protonmail.com
In this episode of Cerebral, we unpack "thinking" and understand various components involved in it using the framework described by Jonathan Baron in his book Thinking and Deciding.
Resources:
Thinking and Deciding
Music:
Audiobinger - Isolation
Keta - Coming Storm
Siddhartha Corsus - Ta Da!
Questions, feedbacks or concerns? Write to cerebralpodcast@protonmail.com.
In this episode of Cerebral, we will learn about negativity bias and explore how "Bad" seemingly triumphs "Good" in various aspects of life.
Music:
Hoist, Our Young Guts - Andy Cohen
Hare Krisha, Star of David - Siddhartha
Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias
Bad is Stronger than Good: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323
For questions, concerns and feedback, reach out at cerebralpodcast@protonmail.com
In this episode of Cerebral, we explore Spotlight Effect and understand the psychological concepts like Egocentrism that cause it.
Resources:
Spotlight Effect
Theory of Mind
Egocentrism
Music:
Prasad by Siddhartha Corsus
Hakuna Matata by BlueWednesday
Feedback, Questions or Concerns? Write to cerebralpodcast@protonmail.com
In this episode of Cerebral, we look into simulation heuristic and understand how it can trick us into becoming more anxious about the events in the real world.
Resources:
Wikipedia Entry
Paper describing effects of simulation heuristic on anxiety
Music:
Ketsa
Siddhartha Corsus
Lobo Loco Master Thief
Feedback, questions or concerns? Write to cerebralpodcast@protonmail.com
In this episode, we look into attribution and understand the biases we fall prey to when using attribution in our lives.
Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_(psychology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_asymmetry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
Meditation can reduce Attribution bias: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/17470218.2016.1149498
Music:
All music in this episode is by Ketsa downloaded from Free Music Archive
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa
Have questions, feedbacks or concerns? Reach out at cerebralpodcast@protonmail.com
Welcome to the Cerebral Podcast! The goal of this podcast is to enhance our thinking experience and better appreciate the nature of our minds. I will share 5-15 minute episodes exploring topics from fields like cognitive and social psychology, heuristics and biases and even applicable techniques from the art of instrumental rationality. This podcast is also an experiment in understanding the limits of learning via podcasting. So instead of just making you passively listen, I will try to actively involve you in this journey by asking questions and occasionally assigning problems to reinforce the ideas as well as improve retention.