During our recent meeting to discuss animal intelligence, Eve mentioned elephants communicating over large distances by transmitting and receiving low-frequency waves through their skeletons and feet. This was in the context of my question, “Is physical embodiment necessary to higher cognition?” This article and video from KQED show and explain the phenomenon.
Kurzweil builds and supports a persuasive vision of the emergence of a human-level engineered intelligence in the early-to-mid twenty-first century. In his own words, With the reverse engineering of the human brain we will be able to apply the parallel, self-organizing, chaotic algorithms of human intelligence to enormously powerful computational substrates. This intelligence will then be in a position to improve its own design, both hardware and software, in a rapidly accelerating iterative process. In Kurzweil’s view, we must and…
Listen to this 3-part podcast entitled “Solving the generator problems of existence” with Daniel Schmachtenberger, co-founder of the Neurohacker Collective and founder of Emergence Project. A few brief excerpts from the blurb follow. See the link to listen if you feel it’s to your taste and passes the smell test. Had to get all the senses in there. “In order to avoid extinction, we have to come up with different systems altogether, and replace rivalry with anti-rivalry. One of the…
Charles Cockell’s The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution argues physics sets the boundaries and shape possibilities for what evolution can produce in the universe. Read a review here. Chapter by chapter, he aims his lens at all levels of biological organization, from the molecular machinery of electron transport to the social organisms formed by ant colonies. In each instance, Cockell shows that although these structures might be endless in their detail, they are bounded in their form.
This evolutionary biologist dispels the myth of linear evolution with humans as the epitome of the process.
From season 2, episode 10, the season finale of Westworld, starting around 1:15 in the video below. Bernard: “I always thought it was the hosts [robots] that were missing something, who were incomplete, but it was them [people]. They’re just algorithms designed to survive at all costs, sophisticated enough to think they’re calling the shots. They think they’re in control when they’re really just…” Ford: “Passengers.” Bernard: “Is there really such a thing as free will for any of us?…
Some evolutionary science for you.
By Fox et al. (2018), Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 12 May, pp. 1 – 27. The abstract: “Despite increasing scientific interest in self-generated thought—mental content largely independent of the immediate environment—there has yet to be any comprehensive synthesis of the subjective experience and neural correlates of affect in these forms of thinking. Here, we aim to develop an integrated affective neuroscience encompassing many forms of self-generated thought—normal and pathological, moderate and excessive, in waking and in…
The link has videos of all the presentations. The blurb: “NYU Stern’s Business & Society Program and the Evolution Institute co-hosted a one-day symposium ‘Darwin’s Business: New Evolutionary Thinking About Cooperation, Groups, Firms, Societies’ featuring an international roster of experts on evolution, economics, and human nature. Participants and audience members assessed the possible applications of evolutionary thinking for business and business ethics.”