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Latest news and features on science issues that matter including earth, environment, and space. Get your science news from the most trusted source!
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For Adorno, popular culture is not just bad art – it enslaves us to repetition and robs us of our aesthetic freedom
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Given how little control we have of our wandering minds, how can we cultivate real mental autonomy?
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Ethics cannot be based on human nature because, as evolutionary biology tells us, there is no such thing
The swarming, ever-changing character of the living world challenges our deepest assumptions about the nature of reality
Via Xaos
Volunteering may improve cognitive function of older adults, especially for women and those with lower levels of education.
While the links of volunteering to physical health are well known, its associations with mental functioning are less clear.
“Cognitive functions, such as memory, working memory, and processing are essential for living an independent life,” says Christine Proulx, an associate professor of human development and family science department at the University of Missouri.
“They’re the tools and methods the brain uses to process information. It’s the brain’s working memory and processing capacity that benefit the most from volunteering.”
Processing is how fast the mind is able to take in and store information. Working memory, which is different from long-term memory, is what the brain needs to temporarily store and manage information.
Proulx used national data from the Health and Retirement Study, which researchers have collected for the past 25 years. The results from more than 11,000 adults aged 51 and older show significant associations between cognitive function and volunteering among all participants, regardless of the amount of time spent. Adults with lower levels of education and women seemed to benefit the most.
Via Wildcat2030
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A series of conversations between Riccardo Manzotti and Tim Parks
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If you want someone to see an issue rationally, you just show them the facts, right? No one can refute a fact. Well, brain imaging and psychological studies are showing that, society wide, we may be on the wrong path by holding evidence up as an Ace card. Neuroscientist Tali Sharot and her colleagues have proven that reading the same set of facts polarizes groups of people even further, because of our in-built confirmation biases—something we all fall prey to, equally. In fact, Sharot cites research from Yale University that disproves the idea that the social divisions we are experiencing right now—over climate change, gun control, or vaccines—are somehow the result of an intelligence gap: smart people are just as illogical, and what's more, they are even more skilled at skewing data to align with their beliefs. So if facts aren't the way forward, what is? There is one thing that may help us swap the moral high ground for actual progress: finding common motives. Here, Sharot explains why identifying a shared goal is better than winning a fight.
Via Yissar
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Our imaginative life today has access to the pre-linguistic, ancestral mind: rich in imagery, emotions and associations
We all experience the world like we are at the center of reality.
We think and we feel in relation to how our senses absorb information and how this information mingles with our personal memories. The subjective perception created by these interactions provides the illusion of importance.
We forget that this perception only exists in our minds and that everyone near us is walking around under exactly the same psychological mindset.
In truth, we’re just one of billions, and over the course of history, everything about us is insignificant. Even people like Newton and Einstein, who we revere for their contributions to humanity, are only slightly less insignificant.
Our universe contains one septillion stars (a one followed by 24 zeroes) and a lot of these stars contain many, many more modes of dust that we call planets. If any of us ceased to exist tomorrow, little would change beyond the subjective emotional states of the people in our immediate circles.
Earth would continue its orbit, and the laws of physics would remain in tact. We’re nothing more than a fraction of a ripple in an infinite sea of entropy.
Many of us don’t like hearing this. It conflicts with the story our mind tells.
Via Wildcat2030
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People who are “open to experience” literally see the world differently
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A new type of brain-imaging technology could expose—even change—our private thoughts
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Zany and earnest, political yet puckish, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari were philosophy’s most improbable duo
Via Xaos
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Nicky Case (of Explorable Explanations and Parable of the Polygons internet fame) has a fantastic essay which picks up on the theme of my last Cyberselves post - technology as companion, not competitor. In How To Become A Centaur Case gives blitz history of AI, and of its lesser known cousin IA - Intelligence Augmentation.…
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Julian Jaynes was living out of a couple of suitcases in a Princeton dorm in the early 1970s. He must have been an odd sight there…
Cognitive bias occurs when we make subjective assumptions about people or situations based on our own perception of reality. This can lead t
Via Yissar
In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, Douglas Adams’s seminal 1978 BBC broadcast (then book, feature film and now cultural icon), one of the many technology predictions was the Babel Fish. This tiny yellow life-form, inserted into the human ear and fed by brain energy, was able to translate to and from any language.
Web giant Google have now seemingly developed their own version of the Babel Fish, called Pixel Buds. These wireless earbuds make use of Google Assistant, a smart application which can speak to, understand and assist the wearer. One of the headline abilities is support for Google Translate which is said to be able to translate up to 40 different languages. Impressive technology for under US$200.
So how does it work?
Real-time speech translation consists of a chain of several distinct technologies – each of which have experienced rapid degrees of improvement over recent years. The chain, from input to output, goes like this:
Input conditioning: the earbuds pick up background noise and interference, effectively recording a mixture of the users’ voice and other sounds. “Denoising” removes background sounds while a voice activity detector (VAD) is used to turn the system on only when the correct person is speaking (and not someone standing behind you in a queue saying “OK Google” very loudly). Touch control is used to improve the VAD accuracy.
Language identification (LID): this system uses machine learning to identify what language is being spoken within a couple of seconds. This is important because everything that follows is language specific. For language identification, phonetic characteristics alone are insufficient to distinguish languages (languages pairs like Ukrainian and Russian, Urdu and Hindi are virtually identical in their units of sound, or “phonemes”), so completely new acoustic representations had to be developed.
Automatic speech recognition (ASR): ASR uses an acoustic model to convert the recorded speech into a string of phonemes and then language modelling is used to convert the phonetic information into words. By using the rules of spoken grammar, context, probability and a pronunciation dictionary, ASR systems fill in gaps of missing information and correct mistakenly recognised phonemes to infer a textual representation of what the speaker said.
Via Wildcat2030
Albert Einstein attributed his brilliant mind to having a child-like sense of humour. Indeed, a number of studies have found an association between humour and intelligence.
Researchers in Austria recently discovered that funny people, particularly those who enjoy dark humour, have higher IQs than their less funny peers. They argue that it takes both cognitive and emotional ability to process and produce humour. Their analysis shows that funny people have higher verbal and non-verbal intelligence, and they score lower in mood disturbance and aggressiveness.
Not only are funny people smart, they’re nice to be around. Evidence suggests that having a good sense of humour is linked to high emotional intelligence and is a highly desirable quality in a partner. Evolutionary psychologists describe humour as a “heritable trait” that signals mental fitness and intellectual agility to prospective mates. In studies of attractiveness, both men and women rate funny people as more attractive, and cite having a good sense of humour as being one of the most important traits in a long-term partner.
In psychology we use the term “positive humour style” to refer to people who use humour to enhance relationships and reduce conflict. This type of humour is associated with relationship satisfaction, extroversion and high self-esteem Having a humorous outlook on life is also a good coping strategy. It helps people better manage stress and adversity.
More negative humour styles, such as sarcasm, ridicule and self-defeating humour, do not offer the same benefits. Instead, they tend to alienate people and are more often associated with depressed mood and aggression.
Via Wildcat2030
New research shows that when we hear stories, brain patterns appear that transcend culture and language. There may be a universal code that underlies making sense of narratives.
Telling and listening to stories is a pastime that spans all cultures. From crime novels to bedtime stories and from ancient legends to spicy romances, humanity loves a good book.
We are all very used to the idea of stories, but the processes at work in the brain are more complex than it seems.
Following a narrative and understanding the story's meaning and themes, as well as the interaction of causes and effects across time, involves challenging cognitive gymnastics. But of course, our brains make it seem effortless.
Neuroscience has made headway in finding out which brain regions help us to understand smaller chunks of language - words and sentences, that is - but we still have a lot to learn about how the brain understands a narrative. Following a story involves a steady accumulation of meaning.
Via Wildcat2030
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The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a compendium of invented words written by John Koenig
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I’m trying to concentrate on writing this piece, but my two grandchildren in the room next door have stopped making paper aeroplanes and started arguing. ‘You kicked me,’ yells Freya. Her brother Ben insists it was an accident. ‘I didn’t mea
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Awareness can be part of it, but it’s much more than that
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According to Ubuntu philosophy, which has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby is not a person. People are born without ‘ena’, or selfhood, and instead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time. So the ‘self’/‘other
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*This post is part of an online book about Silicon Valley’s Political endgame. See all available chapters here. Cerf suffered a torrent of criticism in the media for suggesting that privacy is…
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