Denyse O'Leary
Fine-Tuning of Universe Makes a Top Neuroscientist “Very Hopeful”
Allen Institute’s Christof Koch talks about the assumptions underlying his consciousness theory — which led many other neuroscientists to try to Cancel himIs Our World, Post-1950, Really a Geological Epoch?
Some earth scientists lobby for calling the past 75 years the Anthropocene epoch, giving it equal importance with the 16-million-year Upper JurassicAbout the claim that chatbot Claude 3 showed self-awareness…
Has anyone noticed the resemblance between the conviction that an AI project thinks like a human and that extraterrestrials are visiting us?How Materialism Handicaps Us in Understanding AI’s Limits
Sabine Hossenfelder acknowledges AI’s limits, yet she is convinced that it will become consciousIn “Scientists warn of AI collapse,” theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder warns, “We’ve all become used to AI-generated art in the form of text, images, audio, and even videos. Despite its prevalence, scientists are warning that AI creativity may soon die. Why is that? What does this mean for the future of AI? And will human creativity be in demand after all? Let’s have a look.” She discusses the problem that chatbots and other generative AI create; they end up reprocessing and degrading their own information, essentially eating their own tails: [1:28] The more AI eats its own output the less variety the output has. For example in a paper from November, a group of scientists from France tested this for Read More ›
Neuroscientist: How the Brain-as-Computer Myth Led Science Astray
Michael Merzenich explains neuroplasticity — how the brain organizes itself in detail — to Robert Lawrence Kuhn at Closer to TruthCanada Prepares Harsh New Online Harms Bill to Fight “Hate”
Canada is a comparatively peaceful country, so onlookers might puzzle over the assumption that draconian measures are needed to fight poorly defined “hate.”Yesterday, I discussed the way in which Canadian government efforts to manage the news industry led to Canadians being restricted by Facebook from posting links to news media. Undeterred, the government now seeks to stamp out “hate”/“hate speech” in online media. The Online Harms bill, C-63, if enacted as proposed, according to a veteran free speech journalist, provides that “victims of ‘hate speech’ could be compensated up to $20,000.” Also, “a new stand-alone hate crime offence would be added to the criminal code allowing for penalties of up to life imprisonment.” It also provides for house arrest for people who, it is feared, “may commit a hate crime in future.” Related 2023 legislation (C-11) requires that all podcasters and streamers, Read More ›
When Government Manages the News Business: Canada Tried That…
Any comprehensive censorship regime requires that the government begin by managing the news businessNeuroscientist: Human Brain More Complex Than the Models Show
The weird “homunculus” — the way the brain maps the body — was pioneer neurosurgeons’ best guess nearly a century agoWhy Humans Can’t “Share the Spotlight” With Tool-Using Animals
As the Ivy League war on human exceptionalism motors on, researchers’ thinking sometimes shorts out — and they don’t even noticeAt Sapiens, Oxford archaeologist Michael Haslam and Harvard archaeologist Abigail Desmond offer a fascinating look at the way animals use tools. It’s marred by a mental “short circuit” (I am not sure of a better way to describe it) about human beings. They are not happy with human exceptionalism at all. For example, they write, “Archaeologists have long considered tool use to be an evolutionary milestone that distinguished our lineage from other animals. Humans were considered the technological species.” Indeed, their purpose in writing is to show us that it’s not so. Before we turn to their argument, let’s look at their claim about archaeologists’ views. If archaeologists indeed think that humans are “distinguished” from other animals, they have made Read More ›
Is There a Solution to Low Quality Research in Science?
Molecular biologist Henry Miller and statistician Stanley Young explain why statistical techniques like meta-analysis won’t solve the basic problemWhy Mainstream Media Can No Longer Really Fight Censorship
Whether they realize it or not, by accepting funds in order to survive, the MSM will gradually become agencies of governmentTV personalities — ones you might not have expected — have begun to notice the way mainstream media now drop the ball on news coverage. The usually apolitical TV psychologist Dr. Phil, for example, was recently holding forth to podcaster Joe Rogan on their inability to report honestly on many sensitive political subjects. Medical doctor Drew Pinsky, who has offered relationship advice in a number of media venues, is saying similar things. News about every cultural flashpoint now seems to be managed in the way that facts about COVID-19 were at the height of the pandemic scare. Why fight censorship if you can just censor yourself? An inevitable outcome of the strategic lack of curiosity among journalists is a marked Read More ›
So Who Are Today’s Disinformation Police?
Social scientists are striving to develop ways to blunt the force of information that governments would rather the public did not know or heedPrehistoric Children with Down Syndrome Were Valued, Burials Show
The six found so far from one culture, identified by DNA evidence, did not live long but they were buried with grave goodsPhilosopher: Non-Materialism Is Fashionable Orthodoxy Now
Non-reductionism, which means that the mind is not simply reducible to the brain, is now well accepted, she arguesIf Information Is Wealth, Are Deepfakes a Form of Counterfeiting?
The current tech media overdose on panic over deepfakes. They could be drowning out practical ways of fighting backWhen Censorship Parades Itself as a Science…
A House Subcommittee discovered that the National Science Foundation — which is supposed to support science and engineering — is readying censorship toolsPalliative Care Doctor: What Dying Feels Like
Although a dying person tends to spend more and more time asleep or unconscious, there may be a surge of brain activity just before deathHall of Mirrors: The Many Ways Consciousness Baffles Researchers
Does consciousness have a seat at the table? Wait a minute. Isn’t consciousness the table? Or is it?Book Banning Today: Silently … Not Like in the Old Days
Traditional anti-book banning groups are simply not where the action is and maybe don’t want to beLast week we looked at the way censorship in the age of the internet is typically invisible. It’s not the police raiding bookstores; it’s — for example — sudden downranking of posts so that information that might have reached millions of people reaches only dozens. Constantly suppressed, it can’t go viral. We can see the change more clearly if we look at the difference between how books (and other information) used to get banned and how they get banned today. Book banning before the internet When the word “book bans” is used today, it usually means something different from what it meant even a few decades ago. Ulysses, a groundbreaking work by Irish novelist James Joyce (1882–1941) was indeed banned Read More ›