Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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Pinterest Logo Icon Around Earth. Popular App Concept.
Type
post
Author
Caitlin Cory
Date
April 12, 2022
Categorized
Censorship, Environment, Social Media
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Pinterest Bans Climate Change “Misinformation”

Pinterest might be the first company to implement such a strict ban, but what if it's not the last?
Caitlin Cory
April 12, 2022
6
Censorship, Environment, Social Media

Last week, Pinterest banned climate change misinformation from its platform, becoming the first major social media company to do so outright. The policy raises free speech concerns. Since not all scientists agree on the nature of climate change, what causes it, and what the solutions are, how is the issue to be discussed if alternate points of view are banned from public platforms? Pinterest is an image-sharing social media site, where users share ideas that they can “pin” to their own boards on everything from recipes to interior design to fashion. On April 6, Pinterest announced their new climate misinformation policy, aimed at “remov[ing] content that may harm the public’s well-being, safety or trust.” As of the policy announcement, any Read More ›

visualization-of-virtual-world-stockpack-adobe-stock
Visualization of Virtual World
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post
Author
Eric Holloway
Date
April 11, 2022
Categorized
Information Theory
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Does Information Weigh Something After All? What If It Does?

At the rate we create information today, one physicist computes that in 350 years, the energy will outweigh the atoms of Earth
Eric Holloway
April 11, 2022
4
Information Theory

In the 1960s, IBM researcher Rolf Landauer (1927–1999) observed that if the logical information in a computational system decreased, then the physical entropy in the system must increase (Landauer’s Principle). This conclusion follows from the principle that the entropy in a closed system can never decrease. A decrease in the logical information corresponds to a decrease in entropy. And factoring in the principle that the entropy cannot actually decrease, the physical system itself must increase in entropy when the information decreases. This increase in entropy will result in the emission of heat, and a reduction of energy in the system. Now Melvin Vopson, a physicist at the University of Portsmouth, has taken Landauer’s principle to the next logical step. He Read More ›

propane tanks
Gas cylinders used welding Industrial in factory
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post
Author
News
Date
April 11, 2022
Categorized
Computer Security
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Cybersecurity: Put a Lid on the Risks. We Already Own the Lid

Security specialist David Kruger says, data must be contained when it is in storage and transit and controlled when it is in use
News
April 11, 2022
11
Computer Security

Veteran software developer David A. Kruger offered some thoughts on computer security recently at Expensivity and we appreciate the opportunity to republish them here as a series. Last week’s discussion focused on the ingredients that cybersecurity needs to work. Today, the focus is on putting a lid on risks. Put a Lid on It Fortunately, we have at our disposal untold millions of man hours of safety engineering focused on safely extracting benefits from the use of hazardous things. For example, our homes and the highways we travel on are chock full of beneficial things that can easily kill us, such as high voltage electricity, flammable/explosive natural gas, and tanker trucks filled with flammable or toxic chemicals driving right next Read More ›

woman-fist-with-woke-written-woke-concept-refers-to-awareness-of-social-and-racial-justice-concern-vigilance-activism-stockpack-adobe-stock
Woman fist with woke written. Woke concept refers to awareness of social and racial justice, concern, vigilance, activism.
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post
Author
News
Date
April 10, 2022
Categorized
Ethics, Philosophy, Relationships, Religion
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A Catholic and a Hindu Tackle Woke culture

In a wide-ranging discussion, Michael Egnor and Arjuna Gallagher look at Woke culture, abortion, euthanasia, and microaggressions
News
April 10, 2022
22
Ethics, Philosophy, Relationships, Religion

In a recent series of Mind Matters News, podcasts, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor interviewed Arjuna Gallagher, a Hindu who lives in New Zealand. The first podcast looked at what the world’s 1.2 billion Hindus generally think about the mind and the second explored the Hindu view of free will and evil. The third podcast addressed the question, “What do Hindus think about the Big Bang?” Now, the fourth and final podcast asks, what do Hindus think of current science and culture issues, especially the flowering of Woke Cancel Culture, abortion, and euthanasia? Gallagher hosts a YouTube channel called Theology Unleashed, which has featured many guests discussing the spiritual dimension of our lives — for example, philosopher David Bentley Hart and neuroscientist Read More ›

light-teleport-with-business-panels-stockpack-adobe-stock
Light teleport with business panels
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post
Author
News
Date
April 9, 2022
Categorized
Arts & Culture, Biology, Physics
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Can We Teleport? Find a Wormhole? Survive the Universe’s Death?

Many ideas, once thought science fiction, have become science fact. How will these ones fare?
News
April 9, 2022
6
Arts & Culture, Biology, Physics

If anyone thinks that, by definition, none of this stuff could possibly happen, it’s worth remembering that many people would have said that decades ago about invisibility or the bionic hand. But here we are. Some things are impossible in principle, some in practice. In other cases, all we can do is see where we are in relation to the problem. Could humans be teleported to Mars? With teleportation, as in Star Trek, geologists could get from Houston to Mars to pick up some rocks injust minutes. Science writer Marcus Chown tells us that one reason the feat was considered impossible in the recent past was the inability to be certain of every atom in a human body, due to Read More ›

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炎に包まれた壊れかけのハート
Type
post
Author
Gary Varner
Date
April 9, 2022
Categorized
Arts & Culture, Relationships
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Firefly Episode 10: Jealousy Divides the Firefly Crew in Space

And yet jealousy plays a key role in saving Mal and Wash from a villain’s sadistic torture
Gary Varner
April 9, 2022
11
Arts & Culture, Relationships

Episode 9 marks a turning point for the series. The previous episodes have been somewhat hit and miss but so far, there’s only been one outright bad episode (Episode 5, which broke all the “rules” of consistent character). However, at best thus far, the series has been very… episodic. That is, a handful of the characters recurs but the events from the preceding episodes seem to have no effect on the upcoming ones. But with Episode 9, that changes. The transition from Episode 9 to 10 starts off on a promising note. We see the events of Episode 9 actually affecting the events of Episode 10. This is a trend that continues as the story builds to a crescendo. That Read More ›

sensitive-plant-or-mimosa-pudica-plant-stockpack-adobe-stock
Sensitive plant or mimosa pudica plant.
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 9, 2022
Categorized
Biology, Natural Intelligence
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How Plants Talk When We’re Not Around

Some aspects of plant behavior can be studied in the same terms as animal or human behavior
Denyse O'Leary
April 9, 2022
6
Biology, Natural Intelligence

One genuine surprise in recent decades has been the discovery that plants have nervous systems like animals and use some of the same compounds in communications — for example, TMAO to relieve stress and glutamate to speed transmission. Biologist Peter Rogers pointed out recently that the similarities may shed a bit of light on issues around anaesthesia. Surprisingly, it is possible to anesthetize a plant. The shameplant (Mimosa pudica) and the Venus flytrap demonstrated that: Thirty years after anesthesia debuted in the operating room, Claude Bernard, a French physiologist, demonstrated that the shameplant (Mimosa pudica), which bashfully folds into itself when touched, was unresponsive to touch after exposure to ether, a commonly used anesthetic. The plant also folds into itself Read More ›

neuron-cell-with-electrical-pulses-concept-3d-illustration-stockpack-adobe-stock
neuron cell with electrical pulses concept 3d illustration.
Type
post
Author
News
Date
April 8, 2022
Categorized
Neuroscience
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Our Neurons’ Electrical Synapses Are the Dark Matter of the Brain

These aren’t the familiar chemical synapses but a second set, the electrical synapses that enable currents to travel directly between neurons from pore to pore.
News
April 8, 2022
4
Neuroscience

The universe has its dark matter, the 23% of matter that we know is out there but can’t see because it emits no light. The brain has its own “dark matter” too, in the form of electrical synapses. These are not the chemical synapses by which neurons transmit a stimulus from one cell to the next. They are a second layer of synapse that allows message-carrying currents to flow passively from one neuron to another through pores in the neurons’ cell walls. They are likely important because just about every type of animal except echinoderms (starfish and sand dollars, for example) has them — and yet we don’t know much about them: ”Electrical synapses are much rarer and are hard Read More ›

cyber-security-and-extortion-stockpack-adobe-stock
Cyber security and extortion
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post
Author
News
Date
April 7, 2022
Categorized
Computer Security
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Ingredients That Cybersecurity Needs To Actually Work

Software makers continue to produce open data as if we were still living in the 50s, and the Internet had never been invented.
News
April 7, 2022
11
Computer Security

Veteran software developer David A. Kruger offered some thoughts on computer security recently at Expensivity and we appreciate the opportunity to republish them here as a series. Yesterday’s discussion made the point that the hacker’s target isn’t networks, computers, or users; they are just pathways to the target —gaining control of data is the target. Today, we look at the ingredients that cybersecurity needs to work. Necessary Ingredients Data in this context is digitized information. Digital information is physical, as in, it’s governed by the laws of physics. Data is the result of software converting (digitizing) human usable information into patterns of ones and zeros that are applied to “quantum small” physical substrates: microscopic transistors, electrical pulses, light, radio waves, Read More ›

super-macro-shot-tiny-fruit-flies-on-the-top-of-a-banana-stockpack-adobe-stock
Super macro shot tiny fruit flies on the top of a banana
Type
post
Author
News
Date
April 7, 2022
Categorized
Medicine and Health, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
Tagged
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The Brain Unfolds Like a Drama, With Neurons in Different Roles

Researchers studying fruit flies hope that spotting the stages at which human neurons go missing or wrong can help develop treatments to insert or replace them
News
April 7, 2022
3
Medicine and Health, Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

We are not accustomed to thinking of fruit flies as even having brains. But they have 120 types of neurons in their visual system alone (which could be why they are so pesky): In the research published in Nature, the researchers studied the brains of the fruit fly Drosophila to uncover the complete set of tTFs needed to generate the roughly 120 neuron types of the medulla, a specific brain structure in the visual system of flies. They used state-of-the-art single-cell mRNA sequencing to obtain the transcriptome — all of the genes expressed in a given cell — of more than 50,000 individual cells that were then grouped into most of the cell types present in the developing medulla… The Read More ›

online-security-technology-stockpack-adobe-stock
Online Security Technology
Type
post
Author
News
Date
April 6, 2022
Categorized
Computer Security
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What’s Wrong With Cybersecurity Technology?

Know your enemy: The target isn’t networks, computers, or users; they are pathways to the target —gaining control of data
News
April 6, 2022
10
Computer Security

Veteran software developer David A. Kruger offered some thoughts on computer security recently at Expensivity and we appreciate the opportunity to republish them here. He starts with “Root Cause Analysis 101” Now we’ll apply the lessons learned in yesterday’s discussion to cybersecurity: Lesson Learned 1: A pattern of multiple types of recurring related failures indicates the presence of an unidentified root cause. In cybersecurity, is there a pattern of multiple types of recurring failures that appear to be related? Yes! A cybersecurity failure occurs whenever a cyberattacker gains control of data and then:  1) views or plays it, 2) steals copies of it, 3) ransoms it, 5) impedes its flow, 5) corrupts it, or 6) destroys it. The lesson learned is that the Read More ›

family-with-laptop-tablet-and-smartphone-everyone-using-digital-devices-stockpack-adobe-stock
Family with laptop, tablet and smartphone, everyone using digital devices
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post
Author
Andrew McDiarmid
Date
April 6, 2022
Categorized
Arts & Culture, Relationships
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Escaping the “Truman Show” of Our Times

Effective methods intentionally hook us in, keep us engaged, and encourage behaviors that benefit them — and are often damaging for us
Andrew McDiarmid
April 6, 2022
5
Arts & Culture, Relationships

This story originally appeared at Newsmax. (April 5, 2022) as “Time to Write Our Own Stories, Not Big Tech” and is reprinted with permission. It’s one of the best movies of the late 1990s. In The Truman Show, Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) has no idea his life is actually a popular TV show. Everything has been fabricated — his parents, his friends, his marriage, his job. But things start happening — a studio light falls from the sky, a fake elevator reveals a hidden backstage room. Suddenly, Truman is determined to discover the truth of his existence. Rebelling against the script being played out all around him, he begins a journey to seek the truth and discover the life he was Read More ›

a-computer-popup-box-screen-warning-of-a-system-being-hacked-compromised-software-environment-3d-illustration-stockpack-adobe-stock
A computer popup box screen warning of a system being hacked, compromised software environment. 3D illustration.
Type
post
Author
News
Date
April 5, 2022
Categorized
Business and Finance, Computer Security, Crime
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The True Cause of Cybersecurity Failure and How to Fix It

Hint: The cause and fix are not what you think
News
April 5, 2022
12
Business and Finance, Computer Security, Crime

Veteran software developer David A. Kruger offered some thoughts on computer security recently at Expensivity and we appreciate the opportunity to republish them here. He starts with “Root Cause Analysis 101” The classic line “I have a bad feeling about this” is repeated in every Star Wars movie. It’s become a meme for that uneasy feeling that as bad as things are now, they are about to get much worse. That’s an accurate portrayal of how many of us feel about cybersecurity. Our bad feeling has a sound empirical basis. Yearly cybersecurity losses and loss rates continually increase and never decrease despite annual US cybersecurity expenditures in the tens of billions of dollars and tens of millions of skilled cybersecurity Read More ›

common-earthworm-lumbricus-terrestris-stockpack-adobe-stock
Common Earthworm (Lumbricus Terrestris)
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 5, 2022
Categorized
Ethics, Natural Intelligence
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Evolutionary Psychologist Argues That Worms Feel Pain. But How?

Wait. Barash’s hypothesis overlooks the fact that suffering is more than an alarm system. An alarm could be going off in an empty building
Denyse O'Leary
April 5, 2022
8
Ethics, Natural Intelligence

A web site for fans of earthworms tackled the question recently: Yes, it is now accepted that worms feel pain – and that includes when they are cut in half. They do not anticipate pain or feel pain as an emotional response, however. They simply move in response to pain as a reflex response. They may curl up or move away, for example, from painful or negative stimuli. Aimen Mirza, “Do worms feel pain? (Can Earthworms Sense Painful Stimuli?)” at WORMMY (October 12, 2021) Possibly in line with the growing support for panpsychism in science, University of Washington evolutionary psychology professor David P. Barash, asks us to consider that worms do indeed feel pain in a deeper sense than an Read More ›

Apple iPhone 8 with Twitter Logotype on a Screen
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post
Author
Caitlin Cory
Date
April 5, 2022
Categorized
Censorship, Social Media
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Dorsey Talks Decentralization and Musk Buys Twitter Share

Will this be the upset many free speech advocates hope it could be?
Caitlin Cory
April 5, 2022
6
Censorship, Social Media

Last week, I wrote about the buzz around internet decentralization, especially as there appears to be talk at Twitter of moving in such a direction. The buzz continues, this time with vocal support from former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, coinciding with a bold financial move from Elon Musk. On April 2, Dorsey reminisced on Twitter about the early, decentralized days of the Internet, and said that centralization “really damaged the internet. I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it.” The problems of social media platforms have been made clear in the past few years, specifically when it comes to data privacy and how to handle (or even define) harmful content while also respecting free speech. But there isn’t as much Read More ›

positive-girl-resting-on-the-couch-with-robot-stockpack-adobe-stock
Positive girl resting on the couch with robot
Type
post
Author
Eric Holloway
Date
April 4, 2022
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Soylent AI is…people!

OpenAI advertises itself as AI-powered, but at the end of the day, the system is human-powered
Eric Holloway
April 4, 2022
30
Artificial Intelligence

In the sci-fi movie, “Soylent Green,” the big reveal is that a food called soylent green is actually made from human beings, the catchphrase being “soylent green is people.” Likewise, as I discovered from a recent exchange with OpenAI’s GPT-3, “soylent AI is people.” GPT-3 is the product of AI company OpenAI. The company made headlines in 2019 with the claim that their AI model was too dangerous to publicly release. OpenAI is not a mere research company. While their publicly stated goal is fairly modest – “Aligning AI systems with human intent” – their CEO Sam Altman has bigger plans. He left his very successful role as president of Y Combinator, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capital Read More ›

brain-surgery-stockpack-adobe-stock
Brain surgery
Type
post
Author
News
Date
April 4, 2022
Categorized
Ethics, Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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What Would Head or Partial Brain Transplants Do To Consciousness?

Researchers had some success swapping rodent heads (though there’s a catch) but no luck with monkeys. And then animal lovers weighed in…
News
April 4, 2022
7
Ethics, Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Science writer Max G. Levy, profiling Brandy Schillace’s book, Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher (2021), reminds us of the strange case of neurosurgeon Dr. Robert White (1926–2010) and his quest to develop human head transplants — or, as he liked to put it, body transplants. A new body for your old head… an offbeat form of immortality. White started with rhesus monkeys. At Case Western Reserve University, starting in 1970, he attempted many such transplants. Only one attempt succeeded (sort of). Without the usual spinal connections and thus without access to a body, the monkey head lived only nine days. Another such monkey head transplant was reported in 2016 — carried out by Xiaoping Ren at Harbin Medical University, China Read More ›

alien-planet-landscape-beautiful-forest-the-surface-of-an-exoplanet-stockpack-adobe-stock
alien planet landscape, beautiful forest the surface of an exoplanet
Type
post
Author
News
Date
April 2, 2022
Categorized
Biology, Chemistry, Physics
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NASA Develops a Scale for Assessing the Chances of ET Life

We’ve come a long way from mere snatches of (maybe) information to the need for standards in evaluating the expected incoming mass
News
April 2, 2022
5
Biology, Chemistry, Physics

Geoscientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, co-author with William Bains of The Cosmic Zoo (2017) and a number of other books on planetary habitability, thinks science needs standardized scales for assessing claims about extraterrestrial life. There are lots of claims: life on Mars detected by the Viking landers (1976), fossil life in a Mars-origin meteorite (1996), phosphine on Venus (2020) … all have some evidence in their favor. But scientists need a way to express degrees of certainty. Recently, NASA has proposed the Confidence of Life Detection Scale (CoLD), featuring seven benchmarks. The main problem is that evidence that might suggest life could just as easily be a non-biological process: Consider Jupiter’s moon Europa. A large asteroid impact could have volatilized ice on Read More ›

prohibited-development-of-bioweapon-in-a-lab-a-dropper-and-a-petri-dishes-with-human-blood-sample-and-a-row-of-ampoules-with-a-bio-hazard-sign-close-up-selected-focus-stockpack-adobe-stock
Prohibited development of bioweapon in a lab. A dropper and a Petri dishes with human blood sample and a row of ampoules with a bio-hazard sign, close-up, selected focus.
Type
post
Author
News
Date
April 2, 2022
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Military
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Will AI Start the Next Pandemic? It Easily Could.

It’s a bigger risk than we might think, as an experiment written up in a Nature journal has shown
News
April 2, 2022
5
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health, Military

In a recent paper at Nature Machine Intelligence, three drug discovery researchers share an unsettling result from their experiment with AI drug discovery. Their normal practice when getting AI software to motor through thousands of possibilities (which might take human researchers years) is to penalize toxicity and reward bioactivity. They wondered what would happen when they decided to reward both toxicity and bioactivity — to challenge their artificial intelligence — modeled on open source software — to create a lethal bioweapon: To narrow the universe of molecules, we chose to drive the generative model towards compounds such as the nerve agent VX, one of the most toxic chemical warfare agents developed during the twentieth century — a few salt-sized grains Read More ›

dramatic-lit-image-of-a-bloody-crime-scene-with-a-knife-on-the-floor-stockpack-adobe-stock
dramatic lit image of a bloody crime scene with a knife on the floor
Type
post
Author
Gary Varner
Date
April 2, 2022
Categorized
Arts & Culture, Neuroscience
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Firefly Episode 9: A Medical Heist — the Best So Far

Simon, with access to medical equipment, diagnoses his erratic sister’s neurological issues — after she has unaccountably stabbed Jayne
Gary Varner
April 2, 2022
11
Arts & Culture, Neuroscience

This is my favorite episode so far. It’s a classic heist with all the traditional beats! The crew is sitting around the table talking and eating while Jayne cleans his gun. He keeps spitting on the various parts for some reason, and Simon asks him to stop. He doesn’t. Jayne keeps spitting on the parts, glaring at Simon all the while River, Simon’s sister, gets up, grabs a butcher knife, and slashes Jayne across the chest. Jayne hits her, but she looks up, stares at the big man, and says, “He looks better in red.” With the stakes suddenly raised, the mystery of what happened to River surges to the forefront again. It’s time to get some answers. It so Read More ›