Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Monthly Archive August 2022

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press and media camera ,video photographer on duty in public new

Longtime Newsman Mourns the Loss of Objectivity in Media

Peter Menzies notes that news media today are “overflowing with agenda-driven employees intent on publicizing their own opinions”

Reporter and editor Peter Menzies reflects on mainstream news media journalists’ revolt against objectivity in recent years. It’s not a pretty picture: News organizations overflowing with agenda-driven employees intent on publicizing their own opinions while suppressing or ejecting anyone guilty, in [Bari] Weiss’s words, of “Wrongthink,” have proliferated across North America. The Washington Post, for example, has had to battle its own reporters over their social media activism. Staff at National Public Radio, the U.S.’s federally funded, not-for-profit network, demanded and last year received the right to participate in demonstrations and voice political opinions in public. Peter Menzies, “Objectivity: What Journalists Hate but the Public Still Craves” at C2C Journal (August 31, 2022) Menzies, a Canadian, cites similar examples from Canada, where the overall situation Read More ›

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The little chimpanzee monkey put his human friend's hand on his head, hugged him. made a grimace. Sits in a green stroller, wearing blue shorts. Walk down the street. in the background palms,

Researchers Find More Ways That Human and Ape Brains Differ

Underlying the significant differences in brain — to say nothing of the vast difference in mind — is a genetic mystery…

Yale University researchers have identified more specific ways the human brain differs from the brains of all other primates. Using “hundreds of thousands of cells collected from the dlPFC of adult humans, chimpanzees, macaque, and marmoset monkeys,” they found After grouping cells with similar expression profiles they revealed 109 shared primate cell types but also five that were not common to all species. These included a type of microglia, or brain-specific immune cell, that was present only in humans and a second type shared by only humans and chimpanzees. The human-specific microglia type exists throughout development and adulthood, the researchers found, suggesting the cells play a role in maintenance of the brain upkeep rather than combatting disease… An analysis of Read More ›

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Woman in bedroom terrified by big spider crawling over her bed

Should Spider Dreaming Really Give Us “Ethical Pause”?

The incidental discovery of REM sleep in spiders is morphing into vast claims that we have “urgent and inexorable ethical obligations” to them and other life forms

Anyone familiar with the current “animal consciousness” scene might have seen this one coming. At The Scientist, we learned earlier this month that animals dream, according to researcher David M. Peña-Guzmán. Recently, it was spiders that were found to dream. Therefore, it is now implied, human and animal consciousness do not differ very much: In When Animals Dream, I argue that the mere fact that animals dream poses a formidable challenge to that bastion of traditionalism that is the human-animal divide, raising provocative ethical questions about the status of animals as moral subjects toward whom we have urgent and inexorable ethical obligations. This fact also frustrates the common view that only humans are “cognitively free” because only we can liberate Read More ›

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Social media concept. Social networking service. Video hosting website. Streaming video.

You Hate Twitter Already? But Did You Know About the Child Porn?

From a searing report at The Verge, we learn that it’s out of control but executives have just not prioritized the issue

Recently, we’ve been covering Twitter’s court-destined squabble with tech entrepreneur Elon Musk about what he should pay for the edgy social medium. Labor writer Zoe Schiffer and tech writer Casey Newton published an article at The Verge today that will surely stir the pot. It’s about Twitter’s problems with child porn — and its efforts to get involved with adult porn. The story is complex as well as disturbing but here’s the outline: Early in 2022, Twitter, which has not been making much money in recent years, decided to allow adult content (porn) vendors to tweet their wares to paying customers (Adult Content Monetization or ACM). Twitter would, of course, get a percentage. The main competitor, OnlyFans, projects revenues of Read More ›

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Girl is running with a dog (Beagle) on a leash in the autumn time, sunny day in forest. Copy space in nature

Why Tom Holland’s Social Media Break Is A Good Idea For All Of Us

We don’t need Spider-Man’s “spidey sense” to see that too much social media can be “very detrimental” to mental well-being

This article ran at the Daily Wire (August 22, 2022) where it is available by subscription only. Last week, Spider-Man: No Way Home actor Tom Holland made the bold decision to delete Instagram and Twitter and take a break from social media. In a video shared with his 67 million Instagram followers, Holland called both of the apps overstimulating and overwhelming. “I get caught up and I spiral when I read things about me online,” Holland added, “and ultimately it’s very detrimental to my mental state.” The strength to stop something as addictive and sometimes harmful as social media is a superpower all on its own. Forget spidey sense — Holland will soon start to experience new levels of clarity, Read More ›

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invisible man wearing black bowler, surreal concept of absence of identity

Philosopher: I’m Neither Me, Myself nor I… Yet I Give Interviews!

Theoretical philosopher Thomas Metzinger tells his interviewer “Nobody ever had or was a self. Selves are not part of reality.”

It’s remarkable that given the abysmal logical state of modern neuroscience, modern philosophy of mind seems to be in a heated contest to be even more absurd. Secular meditation teacher Michael W. Taft interviewed leading theoretical philosopher Thomas Metzinger. Here is one set of Taft’s and Metzinger’s questions and answers, and my observations: Michael W. Taft: You’ve written at great length about the experience of selfhood in human beings. So let’s start off by asking, What is the self? Thomas Metzinger: The first thing to understand, I believe, is that there is no thing like “the self.” Nobody ever had or was a self. Selves are not part of reality. Selves are not something that endures over time. The first Read More ›

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Oak tree

Yes, Plants May Be Conscious Too, Says Researcher

Paco Calvo has authored many papers in respected journals; his view is another instance of panpsychism overtaking materialism in science

At one time, claims for animal consciousness and/or intelligence focused on, say, chimpanzees and dolphins, where the animals were enough like humans that what is meant by intelligence or consciousness was clear. Maybe not clear enough for a philosopher but clear enough for practical purposes. The octopus’s intelligence came as a bit of a surprise because it is an invertebrate. But these comparisons with mammals and birds showed that we were still talking about the same thing. We are now told in science publications that bees feel and think and that spiders dream. As science edges slowly toward panpsychism (all life forms participate in consciousness), we even learn — in science journals — that viruses are intelligent and cells are Read More ›

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Chocolate and vanilla bourbon ice creams

How We Know the Mind Is About Information, Not Matter or Energy

The computer program’s world is one of binary 0 or 1 decisions but the physical world is one of many different shades of more or less

It’s really hard to picture the “mind,” isn’t it? You might think of wavy ghosts, or a spectral light. But nothing very definite. The brain, on the other hand, is very easy to visualize. Images and videos are just a Google away. That’s why it’s easy to assume that our brains are the entities that do our thinking for us. The brain is not only easy to image, it is physical. We can (in theory) touch it. Poke it. The brain even runs off electricity, just like your computer. But what makes a computer run Windows? It isn’t just the transistors on silicon wafers. It isn’t just the electricity coursing through the circuits. Windows itself is a ghostly being, like Read More ›

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technician with wafer

Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan Matters to China. And to Your Computer

China staged an impressive display of military firepower at U.S, lawmaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit Taiwan — prominent in the globally crucial semiconductor “chips” industry

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan at the beginning of August included a meeting with Mark Liu, head of the Taiwan Manufacturing Semiconductor Corporation (TMSC), which is the world’s largest producer of computer microchips — and makes most of the world’s advanced ones. Plans for Pelosi’s visit were first reported in Financial Times, after the trip was rescheduled due to COVID. China responded to the announcement with a global propaganda to present the visit as an act of defiance against the U.S. One China Policy. The U.S. One-China Policy recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China but it does not necessarily agree with the PRC on Taiwan being a part of China. Read More ›

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Abstract fractal patterns and shapes. Beautiful abstract background. Сolored waves,spirals, lines and circles. Infinite universe.

Is Ours One of a Few Working Universes Among Countless Flops?

Is that probable? How would we know? Philosopher Stephen C. Meyer offers some suggestions

In this fourth and final portion of a talk at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith (2021), philosopher Stephen C. Meyer takes on the claim that the fine-tuning of our universe for life can be explained by the multiverse, that is, “there are many other universes with different laws and concepts of physics and different initial conditions, different arrangements that matter in energy at the beginning of those universes. And there are enough such universes to make the improbable features of our universe probable on a mega cosmic scale.” Dr. Meyer is the author of The Return of the God Hypothesis (Harper One, 2021). (A sample of the book is here.) The first portion is here, the second here, Read More ›

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The Big Bang

Astrophysicist: Webb Finds May Bring “Revolutionary Changes”

It doesn’t disprove the Big Bang, says Brian Koberlein… but read the fine print. And Fermilab’s Don Lincoln gets the religious implications all wrong

Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope started sending back observations about our universe that started quite the tizzy. Did the Big Bang even happen? More focused: If it happened, did it happen when and how the conventional story runs? At Universe Today, astrophysicist Brian Koberlein tries to put the matter in perspective: Most significantly, it has found more galaxies and more distant galaxies than there should be, and that could lead to some revolutionary changes in our standard model. Our current understanding is that after the big bang the universe went through a period known as the dark ages. During this period the first light of the cosmos had faded, and the first stars and galaxies hadn’t yet formed. Webb Read More ›

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Somewhere in extreme deep space far galaxies and habitable exoplanets with rings. 3D rendered background. Elements of this image were furnished by NASA.

News From the Search for Extraterrestrial Life 2

A new ocean planet, a planet with carbon dioxide, and new information about life chances on Mars

What may be an ocean planet has been discovered in the region of the Constellation Draco: An international team of researchers led by Charles Cadieux, a Ph.D. student at the Université de Montréal and member of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx), has announced the discovery of TOI-1452 b, an exoplanet orbiting one of two small stars in a binary system located in the Draco constellation about 100 light-years from Earth. The exoplanet is slightly greater in size and mass than Earth and is located at a distance from its star where its temperature would be neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on its surface. The astronomers believe it could be an “ocean planet,” Read More ›

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Futuristic multiverse world concept. Downtown with skyscrapers skyline under and cityscape over. Two parallel worlds. Alternative reality dimension

Multiverse of Madness?: It’s a Letdown for the Marvel Universe

I can’t really recommend it because spectacle trumps any sense of the story hanging together and we can infer nothing from past events

The Multiverse of Madness ends with America Chavez training at Kamar-Taj while Dr. Strange and Wong have a final conversation.All the Characters say their goodbyes and Dr. Strange returns home, prepared to move on with his life. Thing’s are looking pretty chipper — that is until a third eye opens on his forehead. This isn’t a big deal but I did think it was a little ridiculous to have a cliffhanger ending followed by a post-credits scene. At any rate, the post-credits scene includes a mysterious woman played by Charlize Theron show up out of nowhere. She tells Dr. Strange that he’s caused an Incursion — a collision between two universes, possibly as a result of multiverse travel. And together, Read More ›

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belly of a pregnant woman

Google Employees Demand Corporate War on Crisis Pregnancy Centers

The recent Dobbs decision returning abortion legislation to the states has also spurred abortion activists to violence against pro-life crisis pregnancy centers

Recently, in a petition circulated by the Alphabet Workers Union, 650 Google employees asked the firm to suppress search results for pro-life crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) “by removing results for fake abortion providers” as well as to stop collecting users’ data on abortion-related searches. Yelp has already doubled down against the centers: As the linked story notes, Yelp has decided to flag them with a “consumer notice,” warning users that “Crisis Pregnancy Centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite” (translation: no abortionists on staff). Utilizing the common leftist tactic of accusing people who express a different view of dispensing “misinformation,” Yelp said in a statement that “it’s been well-reported” (well… “reported”) “that crisis Read More ›

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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas holds a press briefing, Friday, September 24, 2021, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Hannah Foslien)

U.S. Shuts Down Its Paused Disinformation Governance Board

Faced with resounding unpopularity, the Department of Homeland Security has decided that the Board is not necessary

The Department of Homeland Security, facing widespread backlash, has ended the governance board that would decide what news is “disinformation”: “In accordance with the HSAC’s prior recommendation, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas has terminated the Disinformation Governance Board and rescinded its charter effective today, August 24, 2022. “With the HSAC recommendations as a guide, the Department will continue to address threat streams that undermine the security of our country consistent with the law, while upholding the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of the American people and promoting transparency in our work.” “Following HSAC Recommendation, DHS terminates Disinformation Governance Board” at Department of Homeland Security (August 24, 2022) The Board had been placed on hold shortly after its Read More ›

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abstract autumn illustration ai generated art

New Text-to-Art Image Generator Easier to Misuse, Critics Say

Relative to DALL-E 2, it is easier to use to generate pornography, as controversial website 4Chan has recently demonstrated

Stable Diffusion, a new open source text-to-art generator (they’re coming thick and fast), dropped a couple of days ago: It has come under fire for some of its more questionable uses. Most uses have been reasonable, according to Kyle Wiggers at TechCrunch, but the problem uses give us a window into potential headaches to come: On the infamous discussion board 4chan, where the model leaked early, several threads are dedicated to AI-generated art of nude celebrities and other forms of generated pornography. Emad Mostaque, the CEO of Stability AI, called it “unfortunate” that the model leaked on 4chan and stressed that the company was working with “leading ethicists and technologies” on safety and other mechanisms around responsible release. One of Read More ›

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A man's hand separates people from the Internet. The concept of blocking access to the World Wide Web, self-isolation and traffic filtering. the great firewall. Control over the Internet.

Atheist Philosopher Sam Harris Supports Online Political Censors

Recently, neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris came out in favor of Big Social Media censorship in a Triggernometry YouTube podcast. His comments, as reported in a partial transcript, supported acknowledged BSM efforts to stifle public awareness of of compromising material found on the laptop of Present Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden just prior to the U.S. 2020 election: ‘At that point, Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement – I would not have cared,’ began the best selling author, who specialises in religion, rationality, and ethics… ‘Now, that doesn’t answer the people who say that it is still completely unfair to not have looked at the laptop in a timely way or to shut Read More ›

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WEB 3.0 abstract sign with blockchain 3d illustration

Why Didn’t Decentralized Organizations Work in the Crypto World?

DAOs broke down when people tried to make them interact with the outside world

Here’s the second part of Episode 3 of the discussion between computer engineering prof Robert J. Marks and computer engineering grad students Adam Goad and Austin Egber on the wild new online world. They’ve been talking about non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and what sort of NFTs survived the crypto crater: Now, in the second part of “The NFT Anti-bubble” (August 18, 2022), they look at what happened to the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that grew up along with crypto and NFTs: https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Mind-Matters-200-Adam-Goad-Austin-Egbert.mp3 A partial transcript, notes, and Additional Resources follow. Austin Egbert: Could you give an example of what one of these DAOs was maybe trying to do? What service were they providing? Or what was their business output, so to Read More ›

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The colossal titan is comingAttack On Titan

Big Tech Moguls vs. Historic Titans of Industry: What’s Changed?

Today’s Big Tech moguls were more likely to have been born into fractured relationships and may be seeking an eternal geek adolescence

If we had to compare the giants of industrialization of the late 19th through early 20th centuries — Andrew Carnegie, Thomas A. Edison, Henry Ford, Henry Clay Frick,J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt — with the giants of the contemporary tech world —Jeff Bezos, Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs,  Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg — would we see significant differences? Fred Bech tackles that at Expensivity. He finds that the immense fame, power, and wealth are comparable, as is the fact that they took inventions created largely by others and — via business acumen — transformed our way of life.Of course, that means new problems as well as new solutions. Staying in touch with far-distant loved ones is a blessing; viruses, hacking, and Twitter mobs are Read More ›

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Ex-Security Head: Twitter Has Much Bigger Woes Than the Bots

Elon Musk’s buyout offer collapsed over the bots. Now, with a court case looming, we learn, bots were only a PART of Twitter’s problems

A new uproar at Twitter sheds an interesting light on Elon Musk’s on again-off again bid to buy the social media firm: Twitter has much bigger problems than bots, according to its former head of security, who just dropped a bomb in claims to the federal government that the site’s security is so lax it’s a risk to national security, and the company allegedly has foreign intelligence agents on the payroll… That former head of security submitted disclosures to those agencies, as well as Congress, detailing what CNN calls “reckless and negligent cybersecurity policies,” including that thousands of Twitter employees have access to central controls with no oversight, that executives have been knowingly lying to investors and regulators for years, Read More ›