A short quote to sum up the main idea behind the article: [...] according to researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Basel, we’ve pretty much hit the limits, and we’re never going to develop a science fiction-style ‘supermind’. Thomas Hills and Ralph Hertwig looked at a range of studies, including research [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Thought and Learning category.
“Ravens’ secret sign code probed”
More evidence — should any still be needed — that intelligence isn’t limited to humans, or even to primates.
“Swearing doesn’t help pain if you do it too much”
So keep it clean, boys and girls. (It’ll be interesting to find out the whys and wherefores of the brain mechanism responsible. I hope someone manages it in my lifetime.)
“Detecting Psychopaths by their Speech Patterns”
This is a little worrisome. As Schneier says at the bottom, “I worry about people being judged by these criteria. Psychopaths make up about 1% of the population, so even a small false-positive rate can be a significant problem.” On a complete tangent, the statistic that 1% of the population counts as psychopathic is disturbing. [...]
“Wooden Mars ark voyagers set to step out on Earth”
Remember that wooden “spaceship” I mentioned a few months ago? Well, it has almost completed its journey, and I’m happy to say that the astronauts survived without major conflict for the full trip. Of course, they knew in the back of their minds that it wasn’t the real thing, so the stress wasn’t as bad [...]
“We like zombies… because we *are* zombies”
I always wondered at the popularity of zombies in popular fiction. They have no skill and no intelligence, and they move very slowly, their only truly horrifying trait (other than their dire need of cosmetics) is that they won’t stop so long as they can move even a single digit in your direction. It requires [...]
“iPad baby baffled by paper magazine”
I saw something in a science fiction book once (I don’t recall which one, but it might have been David Brin’s Earth, though I can’t locate my copy of it now to verify that). It described a young man’s first encounter with a printed book, after spending all his life with a World Wide Web [...]
“Boffins place living creature under control of brain chip”
Hm… could the world of Darrell Bain’s The Pet Plague be far behind? Or more seriously, the brain enhancements of Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy, or any of a dozen similar science fiction works? Scary stuff, but ooh so exciting, too.
“Autism Traits Prove Valuable for Software Testing”
As mentioned previously here, autistic people tend to interpret things as black and white, all-true or all-false, no shades of gray allowed. That’s almost certainly why many of us are drawn to working with computers, because computers “think” the same way. Nice to see someone recognizing that as a strength and putting it to good [...]
“Porn Then and Now: Welcome to Brain Training”
Some fascinating brain research on how the ready availability of Internet porn has changed things for younger generations — and more importantly, the medical reason why: [...] Your brain didn’t evolve to handle today’s erotica-at-a-click. It doesn’t just see videos; it perceives endless fertilization opportunities, and it will use its dopamine “whip” to make sure [...]