Denyse O'Leary
Generative AI Is Creating a Copyright Crisis for Artists
How does an artist assert copyright when her image was only one of many used to create a new image? How does she make a living if she can’t?
It’s Not “Myths” That Cause Distrust in Science But Sad Truths
An astrophysicist, hoping to shore up public trust, means well but gets the problems all wrong
An “Evolutionary” Analysis of Childhood Provides No New Knowledge
Archeologist Brenna Hassett offers to explain the evolution of childhood and grandmothers — but, unfortunately, ends up providing no real insight
Free Will: Never Let Mere Atoms Near a Keyboard
No free will — and therefore no responsibility — may sound more “cool” than free will but we had better be careful about what we admire
Can Mathematics Describe Our Innermost Life When Words Fail?
What if the researchers end up with a number that means nothing while the experience itself remains a barely describable personal event?
Animals Using Healing Plants Is Old News, Says Classics Prof
Adrienne Mayor tells us that ancient and Indigenous peoples learned herbal medicine in part by observing animals
If Humans Were Just Animals, We Would Not Help Animals
Whether we like it or not, the gulf fixed between humans and other animals is what makes it possible for us to reject cruelty to animals
Religious Scientists Balance Work and Faith — on a Knife Edge
A recent article in Nature both sums up — and typifies — the problems they face, weaving around the presumption of atheism
The Conviction That ET Is Out There Survives Every Setback
Because it is only natural to resist the idea that we are alone, the hope of finding extraterrestrials twists science thinking in strange ways
Could Neanderthals Speak? It Depends on Who You Talk To
Theorists who will, sadly, never converse with a living Neanderthal imagine things they could and couldn’t do linguistically
Can Viruses Cheat? Cooperate? That’s What Sociovirologists Claim
What does it mean to say that a defective string of genes’s behavior could be self-defeating? Or self-preserving? Where did the “self” come in?
At Scientific American, free will seems very much alive
The concept is incompatible with their “mind is just the brain” thesis but they can’t let go of it anyway
Neuroscientist: The “I” of Consciousness Cannot Be Explained Away
Skeptical philosopher David Hume tried it and, Raymond Tallis says, things collapsed almost immediately
What Does It Mean To Say That “Lobsters Are Conscious”?
The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, signed in April by 40 researchers, posits a “realistic possibility of conscious experience” in all vertebrates and many invertebrates
What Drives the Belief That We Live in a Computer Sim Universe?
The lack of evidence for the sim is admitted — but then we are challenged to prove that it ISN’T true…
The wildly varying intelligence of big, bad, extinct T. Rex
After centuries with the “stupid” label, T. rex was found in one 2023 study to be as smart as a primate. But then…
Panpsychism Going Mainstream in Popular Media?
Significantly, Hawkins does not try to privilege conventional “consciousness is an illusion” over panpsychism (“everything is conscious”). He treats the two views equally
Gaia Reborn? New Climate Book Sees Earth as Living Entity
The Gaia hypothesis, pioneered by Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock was once ridiculed but Ferris Jabr thinks we should take it seriously to fight climate change