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Javier E

The Not-So-Distant Future When We Can All Upgrade Our Brains - Alexis C. Madrigal - The... - 0 views

  • "Magna Cortica is the argument that we need to have a guidebook for both the design spec and ethical rules around the increasing power and diversity of cognitive augmentation," said IFTF distinguished fellow, Jamais Cascio. "There are a lot of pharmaceutical and digital tools that have been able to boost our ability to think. Adderall, Provigil, and extra-cortical technologies."
  • Back in 2008, 20 percent of scientists reported using brain-enhancing drugs. And I spoke with dozens of readers who had complex regimens, including, for example, a researcher at the MIT-affiliated Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. "We aren't the teen clubbers popping uppers to get through a hard day running a cash register after binge drinking," the researcher told me. "We are responsible humans." Responsible humans trying to get an edge in incredibly competitive and cognitively demanding fields. 
  • part of Google Glass's divisiveness stems from its prospective ability to enhance one's social awareness or provide contextual help in conversations; the company Social Radar has already released an app for Glass that shows social network information for people who are in the same location as you are. A regular app called MindMeld listens to conference calls and provides helpful links based on what the software hears you talking about.
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  • These are not questions that can be answered by the development of the technologies. They require new social understandings. "What are the things we want to see happen?" Cascio asked. "What are the things we should and should not do?"
  • he floated five simple principles: 1. The right to self-knowledge 2. The right to self-modification 3. The right to refuse modification 4. The right to modify/refuse to modify your children 5. The right to know who has been modified
carolinewren

Modified immune cells show promise in treating brain cancer, Penn scientists find - New... - 0 views

  • Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a personalized immune therapy that redirects T cells to seek and destroy a type of glioblastoma, or brain tumor.
  • About 30 percent of glioblastoma patients have tumors with a mutation in a growth receptor called EGFR.
  • "Patients that have that kind of mutation tend to have a worse prognosis than patients who don't have it."
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  • because the mutation is specific to the tumor — and can serve as a sort of beacon to properly designed immune cells — it might actually be this cancer's Achilles' heel.
  • treatment involves taking patients' T cells, then inserting a new gene that allows the cells to recognize the mutant protein.
  • the cells can be reinfused and begin their task of zeroing in on and eliminating cells with the mutation.
  • "It's taking an antibody, which is typically a kind of molecule that's circulating around in the blood," said Maus. "And it's fusing it to proteins that will cross the membrane and that then will signal to T cells to replicate and kill."
Javier E

Skinner Marketing: We're the Rats, and Facebook Likes Are the Reward - Bill Davidow - T... - 0 views

  • the age of Skinnerian Marketing. Future applications making use of big data, location, maps, tracking of a browser's interests, and data streams coming from mobile and wearable devices, promise to usher in the era of unprecedented power in the hands of marketers, who are no longer merely appealing to our innate desires, but programming our behaviors.
  • In the 1930's, B. F. Skinner developed the concept of operant conditioning. He put pigeons and rats in Skinner boxes to study how he could modify their behavior using rewards and punishments.
  • Skinner's techniques of operant conditioning and his notorious theory of behavior modification were denounced by his critics 70 years ago as fascist, manipulative vehicles that could be used for government control.
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  • They were right about control but wrong about the controllers. Our Internet handlers, not government, are using operant conditioning to modify our behavior today.
  • we now know how to design cue, activity, and reward systems to more effectively leverage our brain chemistry and program human behavior.
  • The beauty of the Internet is that by combining big data, behavioral targeting, wearable and mobile devices, and GPS, application developers can design more effective operant conditioning environments and keep us in virtual Skinner boxes as long as we have a smart phone in our pockets.
  • Operant conditioning techniques will and are currently being used to program the behavior of susceptible Internet users -- young men who play MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) for forty hours a week, women who commit hours to social networks, shoppers seeking the thrill of a deal, and poker players.
  • As smart devices become integrated into our lives, retailers who will know where we are standing in stores and fast food restaurants and bars will find ways to provide us with cues to trigger behaviors.
  • The real question is how many hundreds of millions of us will become susceptible to what I believe will prove to be history's most potent marketing techniques.
sissij

Common Science Myths That Most People Believe | IFLScience - 0 views

  • We only use 10% of our brains.ADVERTISINGinRead invented by TeadsADVERTISINGinRead invented by Teads It's true that there’s a great deal we don’t know about the brain, but we certainly do know that we use our entire brain.
  • Sugar makes children hyperactive. Attending any child’s birthday party where cake, ice cream, and sugary drinks about would make just about anyone a believer that sugar influences hyperactivity. There has not been much evidence to suggest that the so-called “sugar buzz” is actually real for children (aside from a small subset with an insulin disorder coupled with certain psychiatric disorders).
  • Antibiotics kill viruses.  This one pops up every cold and flu season. Antibiotics, by their very definition, kill bacteria.
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    This article really surprise me that some of my intuitions are wrong. I always thought that if we swallow the gum, then the gum will stick in our stomach and never go away. However, it will pass along as waste. This shows that for many people, some fields of science they learned about are usually second-handed. Many "scientific knowledge" we have are not first handed and they have been modified. Before we are using them as scientific knowledge, we need first to make sure that they are really science, not another myth. --Sissi (1/10/2017)
Emilio Ergueta

Human engineering | New Philosopher - 0 views

  • You know the situation is getting desperate when three bioethicists propose genetically modifying humans to reduce our environmental impact. In a bizarre paper titled ‘Human engineering and climate change’, Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg and Rebecca Roache argue we should seriously consider technologies to engineer human bodies to reduce carbon emissions.
  • The paper, to be published in a respectable journal, is beyond satire and its only likely effect is to bring the philosophy profession into disrepute. Philosophy, it seems, does not have a ‘laugh test’ for filtering out whacky proposals. So why stop at cat’s eyes and midget babies? Why not genetically modify people to make them white in order to cool the Earth by increasing its reflectivity?
  • The three bioethicists suggest that people who are appalled at the idea of human engineering may have a “status quo bias”, resisting their innovative ideas because of an inherent conservatism.
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  • But perhaps the paper by Liao, Sandberg and Roache will turn out to be a prank played on the journal, like the Sokal hoax, named after the physicist whose paper deploying post-modern gobbledegook to show that “quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct” was published in a cultural studies journal.
  • It’s easy to imagine academics sitting around swapping the most outrageous solutions to climate change and then daring one another to have them published. I hope this will turn out to be the case. In the meantime I cringe at the thought of what the long-dead giants of Western philosophy would make of their discipline’s response to the climate crisis.
Javier E

How Humans Ended Up With Freakishly Huge Brains | WIRED - 0 views

  • paleontologists documented one of the most dramatic transitions in human evolution. We might call it the Brain Boom. Humans, chimps and bonobos split from their last common ancestor between 6 and 8 million years ago.
  • Starting around 3 million years ago, however, the hominin brain began a massive expansion. By the time our species, Homo sapiens, emerged about 200,000 years ago, the human brain had swelled from about 350 grams to more than 1,300 grams.
  • n that 3-million-year sprint, the human brain almost quadrupled the size its predecessors had attained over the previous 60 million years of primate evolution.
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  • There are plenty of theories, of course, especially regarding why: increasingly complex social networks, a culture built around tool use and collaboration, the challenge of adapting to a mercurial and often harsh climate
  • Although these possibilities are fascinating, they are extremely difficult to test.
  • “What kinds of mutations occurred, and what did they do? We’re starting to get answers and a deeper appreciation for just how complicated this process was.”
  • contrary to long-standing assumptions, larger mammalian brains do not always have more neurons, and the ones they do have are not always distributed in the same way.
  • The human brain has 86 billion neurons in all: 69 billion in the cerebellum, a dense lump at the back of the brain that helps orchestrate basic bodily functions and movement; 16 billion in the cerebral cortex, the brain’s thick corona and the seat of our most sophisticated mental talents, such as self-awareness, language, problem solving and abstract thought; and 1 billion in the brain stem and its extensions into the core of the brain
  • In contrast, the elephant brain, which is three times the size of our own, has 251 billion neurons in its cerebellum, which helps manage a giant, versatile trunk, and only 5.6 billion in its cortex
  • primates evolved a way to pack far more neurons into the cerebral cortex than other mammals did
  • The great apes are tiny compared to elephants and whales, yet their cortices are far denser: Orangutans and gorillas have 9 billion cortical neurons, and chimps have 6 billion. Of all the great apes, we have the largest brains, so we come out on top with our 16 billion neurons in the cortex.
  • Although it makes up only 2 percent of body weight, the human brain consumes a whopping 20 percent of the body’s total energy at rest. In contrast, the chimpanzee brain needs only half that.
  • there was a strong evolutionary pressure to modify the human regulatory regions in a way that sapped energy from muscle and channeled it to the brain.
  • Accounting for body size and weight, the chimps and macaques were twice as strong as the humans. It’s not entirely clear why, but it is possible that our primate cousins get more power out of their muscles than we get out of ours because they feed their muscles more energy. “Compared to other primates, we lost muscle power in favor of sparing energy for our brains,” Bozek said. “It doesn’t mean that our muscles are inherently weaker. We might just have a different metabolism.
  • a pioneering experiment. Not only were they going to identify relevant genetic mutations from our brain’s evolutionary past, they were also going to weave those mutations into the genomes of lab mice and observe the consequences.
  • Silver and Wray introduced the chimpanzee copy of HARE5 into one group of mice and the human edition into a separate group. They then observed how the embryonic mice brains grew.
  • After nine days of development, mice embryos begin to form a cortex, the outer wrinkly layer of the brain associated with the most sophisticated mental talents. On day 10, the human version of HARE5 was much more active in the budding mice brains than the chimp copy, ultimately producing a brain that was 12 percent larger
  • “It wasn’t just a couple mutations and—bam!—you get a bigger brain. As we learn more about the changes between human and chimp brains, we realize there will be lots and lots of genes involved, each contributing a piece to that. The door is now open to get in there and really start understanding. The brain is modified in so many subtle and nonobvious ways.”
  • As recent research on whale and elephant brains makes clear, size is not everything, but it certainly counts for something. The reason we have so many more cortical neurons than our great-ape cousins is not that we have denser brains, but rather that we evolved ways to support brains that are large enough to accommodate all those extra cells.
  • There’s a danger, though, in becoming too enamored with our own big heads. Yes, a large brain packed with neurons is essential to what we consider high intelligence. But it’s not sufficient
  • No matter how large the human brain grew, or how much energy we lavished upon it, it would have been useless without the right body. Three particularly crucial adaptations worked in tandem with our burgeoning brain to dramatically increase our overall intelligence: bipedalism, which freed up our hands for tool making, fire building and hunting; manual dexterity surpassing that of any other animal; and a vocal tract that allowed us to speak and sing.
  • Human intelligence, then, cannot be traced to a single organ, no matter how large; it emerged from a serendipitous confluence of adaptations throughout the body. Despite our ongoing obsession with the size of our noggins, the fact is that our intelligence has always been so much bigger than our brain.
Javier E

Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • A group of leading biologists on Thursday called for a worldwide moratorium on use of a new genome-editing technique that would alter human DNA in a way that can be inherited.
  • The biologists fear that the new technique is so effective and easy to use that some physicians may push ahead before its safety can be assessed. They also want the public to understand the ethical issues surrounding the technique, which could be used to cure genetic diseases, but also to enhance qualities like beauty or intelligence. The latter is a path that many ethicists believe should never be taken.
  • a technique invented in 2012 makes it possible to edit the genome precisely and with much greater ease. The technique has already been used to edit the genomes of mice, rats and monkeys, and few doubt that it would work the same way in people.
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  • The technique holds the power to repair or enhance any human gene. “It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to view our humanity in the future and whether we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny, which raises enormous peril for humanity,”
  • The paper’s authors, however, are concerned about countries that have less regulation in science. They urge that “scientists should avoid even attempting, in lax jurisdictions, germline genome modification for clinical application in humans” until the full implications “are discussed among scientific and governmental organizations.”
  • Though such a moratorium would not be legally enforceable and might seem unlikely to exert global influence, there is a precedent. In 1975, scientists worldwide were asked to refrain from using a method for manipulating genes, the recombinant DNA technique, until rules had been established.
  • Though highly efficient, the technique occasionally cuts the genome at unintended sites. The issue of how much mistargeting could be tolerated in a clinical setting is one that Dr. Doudna’s group wants to see thoroughly explored before any human genome is edited.
  • “We worry about people making changes without the knowledge of what those changes mean in terms of the overall genome,” Dr. Baltimore said. “I personally think we are just not smart enough — and won’t be for a very long time — to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual.”
  • Many ethicists have accepted the idea of gene therapy, changes that die with the patient, but draw a clear line at altering the germline, since these will extend to future generations. The British Parliament in February approved the transfer of mitochondria, small DNA-containing organelles, to human eggs whose own mitochondria are defective. But that technique is less far-reaching because no genes are edited.
  • There are two broad schools of thought on modifying the human germline, said R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin and a member of the Doudna group. One is pragmatic and seeks to balance benefit and risk. The other “sets up inherent limits on how much humankind should alter nature,” she said. Some Christian doctrines oppose the idea of playing God, whereas in Judaism and Islam there is the notion “that humankind is supposed to improve the world.” She described herself as more of a pragmatist, saying, “I would try to regulate such things rather than shut a new technology down at its beginning.
  • The Doudna group calls for public discussion, but is also working to develop some more formal process, such as an international meeting convened by the National Academy of Sciences, to establish guidelines for human use of the genome-editing technique.“We need some principled agreement that we want to enhance humans in this way or we don’t,” Dr. Jaenisch said. “You have to have this discussion because people are gearing up to do this.”
Javier E

Opinion | In Memoriam: What Would Gary Gutting Do? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • He was an adviser and mentor to both me and The Stone’s co-founder and moderator, the philosopher Simon Critchley, who first met and worked with Gary at Notre Dame more than 15 years ago. Simon described Gary’s work well as “a properly American voice, clear, without ever being shrill, tolerant without ever being uncritical, and instinctively committed to the idea that philosophy could be communicated to a larger public audience.”
  • The most bitter cultural arguments in American intellectual life were comfortable places for Gary — or perhaps he saw them as opportunities — and I believe that he entered in them not so much to establish the dominance of his own view — as a believer in God, in humanistic education, or in the promise of the United States — but to help put the debates on sane ground, to level them through reason and friendly engagement, to be a peacemaker and to advance the invaluable work of civil public discourse and argument.
  • I often found myself considering the merit of a certain idea or argument, or wondering about the philosophical soundness of a particular essay. I would quite literally ask, sometimes out loud, “What would Gary do?” I would then think hard about that and try to act accordingly. But when I got stuck, I would write or call him for guidance — a session, I might call it. The pleasure of those calls came not just from having my thinking clarified and gently set right by a person wiser than me, but also from hearing once again his reassuring, friendly, articulate Midwestern tenor, and what seemed to be his endlessly renewable excitement about people and ideas.
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  • A digestible portion of Gary’s thinking on his work and career can be found at 3AM Magazine in this 2012 interview with Richard Marshall. And this quote from that talk is as good as any to return to now, as a reminder of the continual work he saw as necessary for remaining true to both ourselves and to the world around us: “Our fundamental beliefs don’t need intellectual justification, but they do need intellectual maintenance. We need to understand their implications, modify them to eliminate internal contradictions, defend and perhaps modify them in response to objections.”
anonymous

Researchers identify gene that helps prevent brain disease: Protein 'proofreading' erro... - 0 views

  • Researchers identify gene that helps prevent brain disease: Protein 'proofreading' errors lead to neurodegenerative disease
  • Without normal levels of Ankrd16, these nerve cells, located in the cerebellum, incorrectly activate the amino acid serine, which is then improperly incorporated into proteins and causes protein aggregation.
  • Elevating the level of Ankrd16 protects these cells from dying, while removing Ankrd16 from other neurons in mice with a proofreading deficiency caused widespread buildup of abnormal proteins and ultimately neuronal death.
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  • The researchers note that only a few modifier genes of disease mutations such as Ankrd16 have been identified and a modifier-based mechanism for understanding the underlying pathology of neurodegenerative diseases may be a promising route to understand disease development.
Javier E

Health Facts Aren't Enough. Should Persuasion Become a Priority? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In a paper published early this year in Nature Human Behavior, scientists asked 500 Americans what they thought about foods that contained genetically modified organisms.
  • The vast majority, more than 90 percent, opposed their use. This belief is in conflict with the consensus of scientists
  • The second finding of the study was more eye-opening. Those who were most opposed to genetically modified foods believed they were the most knowledgeable about this issue, yet scored the lowest on actual tests of scientific knowledge.
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  • A small percentage of the public believes that vaccines are truly dangerous. People who hold this view — which is incorrect — also believe that they know more than experts about this topic.
  • the study was also conducted in France and Germany, with similar results.
  • those with the least understanding of science had the most science-opposed views, but thought they knew the most
  • Many Americans take supplements, but the reasons are varied and are not linked to any hard evidence
  • Most of them say they are unaffected by claims from experts contradicting the claims of manufacturers. Only a quarter said they would stop using supplements if experts said they were ineffective. They must think they know better.
  • the Dunning-Kruger effect, named for the two psychologists who wrote a seminal paper in 1999 entitled “Unskilled and Unaware of It.”
  • A lack of knowledge leaves some without the contextual information necessary to recognize mistakes, they wrote, and their “incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.”
  • communication strategies on G.M.O.s — intended to help the public see that their beliefs did not align with experts — wound up backfiring
  • attempting to provide corrective information to voters about death panels wound up increasing their belief in them among politically knowledgeable supporters of Sarah Palin.
  • A 2015 study published in Vaccine showed that giving corrective information about the flu vaccine led patients most concerned about side effects to be less likely to get the vaccine.
  • “knowledge deficit model,” an idea that the lack of support for good policies, and good science, merely reflects a lack of scientific information.
  • Scientists need to be formally trained in communication skills, they said, and they also need to realize that the knowledge deficit model makes for easy policy, but not necessarily good results.
  • It seems important to engage the public more, and earn their trust through continued, more personal interaction, using many different platforms and technologies
  • Bombarding people with more information about studies isn’t helping. How the information contained in them is disseminated and discussed may be much more important.
sissij

Is the New York Times a Serious News Source? | Power Line - 2 views

  • The New York Times tells us we should subscribe because truth propaganda is expensive
  • They can’t keep their partisanship under control.
  • What a dopey comedian says is “news,” according to this once-respected newspaper.
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  • This is just one more indication that the Times can’t tell the difference between real news and fake news. Earlier today, the paper had to recant because it reported an obviously fake tweet as news.
  • The New York Times, overwhelmed by ignorance and bias, may have arrived at that juncture.
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    I found it very interesting that there is actually people accusing the New York Times. I remember on the biased news graph we saw in the TOK, the New York Times, it is in the rank-two group of media. Although it is obviously not the best source of news, it is not that bad that is "overwhelmed by ignorance and bias". The first quote in this article is very interesting as the author modified the advertisement from "truth" to "propaganda", suggesting that the mass media now value profit more than providing fair news sources. --Sissi (February. 15, 2017)
Javier E

A New Alternative to Dark Matter - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The challenges for alternative gravity theories—collectively known as modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND—were spelled out in a separate preprint coincidentally published the day after the new model appeared. Chief among them is recasting the leading role dark matter plays in drawing the universe together, as described by a well-established cosmological model known as LCDM, or Lambda cold dark matter.
  • Simply put, LCDM says that we wouldn’t be here without dark matter. The infant universe was so smooth that the gravitational attraction of ordinary matter alone wouldn’t have been enough to gather particles into galaxies, stars, and planets. Enter dark-matter particles. Under the LCDM model, their collective bulk sculpts normal matter into the modern cosmic structures studied by astronomers.
  • LCDM became the standard model of cosmology in part because it so precisely agrees with the CMB. This map of the early universe shows almost imperceptibly thick and thin spots rippling through the cosmos. More recently, researchers have been able to measure the orientation or polarization of the CMB’s light more precisely. Any successful cosmology will need to establish a comprehensive history of the cosmos by reproducing these three observations: the CMB’s temperature, the CMB’s polarization, and the current distribution of galaxies and galaxy clusters.
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  • Recreating these and other features without LCDM’s titular ingredient, Spergel showed, requires the finest of theoretical needle threading. “We haven’t disproven the existence of all these [modified-gravity theories],” he says. “But any alternative theory has to jump through these hoops.”
  • Złosnik and Skordis believe they’ve done just that—although in a way that might surprise MOND skeptics and fans alike. They managed to construct a theory of gravity that contains an ingredient that acts exactly like an invisible form of matter on cosmic scales, blurring the line between the dark matter and MOND paradigms.
  • Their theory, dubbed RelMOND, adds to the equations of general relativity an omnipresent field that behaves differently in different arenas. On the grandest scales, where the universe noticeably stretches as it expands, the field acts like invisible matter. In this mode, which Złosnik calls “dark dust,” the field could have shaped the visible universe just as dark matter would
  • RelMOND “cannot do worse than LCDM,” says Złosnik, who notes that it very closely mimics that theory for the universe as a whole.
  • But if we zoom in on a galaxy, where the fabric of space holds rather still, the field acts in a way that’s true to its MOND roots: It entwines itself with the standard gravitational field, beefing it up just enough to hold a galaxy together without extra matter
  • (The researchers aren’t yet sure how the field acts for larger clusters of galaxies, a perennial MOND sore spot. They suggest that this intermediate scale might be a good place to look for observational clues that could set the theory apart.)
  • Despite this mathematical achievement by Złosnik and Skordis, dark matter remains the simpler theory. Constructing the new field takes four new moving mathematical parts, while LCDM handles dark matter with just one. Hooper likens the situation to a detective debating whether a person at a murder scene is the murderer or has been framed by the CIA. Even if the available evidence matches both theories, one requires less of a leap.
Javier E

The Danger of Making Science Political - Puneet Opal - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • there seems to be a growing gulf between U.S Republicans and science. Indeed, by some polls only 6 percent of scientists are Republican, and in the recent U.S. Presidential election, 68 science Nobel Prize winners endorsed the Democratic nominee Barack Obama over the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
  • What are the reasons for this apparent tilt?
  • he backs up his statement by suggesting a precedent: the social sciences, he feels, have already received this treatment at the hands of conservatives in government by making pointed fingers at their funding.
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  • Moreover, when they attempt to give their expert knowledge for policy decisions, conservatives will choose to ignore the evidence, claiming a liberal bias.
  • most of the bad news is the potential impact on scientists. Why? Because scientists, he believes -- once perceived by Republicans to be a Democratic interest group -- will lose bipartisan support for federal science funding.
  • this sort of thinking might well be bad for scientists, but is simply dangerous for the country. As professionals, scientists should not be put into a subservient place by politicians and ideologues. They should never be felt that their advice might well be attached to carrots or sticks.
  • Political choices can be made after the evidence is presented, but the evidence should stand for what it is. If the evidence itself is rejected by politicians -- as is currently going on -- then the ignorance of the political class should indeed be exposed, and all threats resisted.
  • This might seem to be a diatribe against conservatives. But really this criticism is aimed at all unscientific thinking.
  • there are a number on the left who have their own dogmatic beliefs; the most notable are unscientific theories with regard to the dangers of vaccinations, genetically modified produce, or nuclear energy.
Javier E

A 5-Step Technique for Producing Ideas circa 1939 | Brain Pickings - 0 views

  • In learning any art the important things to learn are, first, Principles, and second, Method. This is true of the art of producing ideas. Particular bits of knowledge are nothing, because they are made up [of] so called rapidly aging facts. Principles and method are everything.
  • So with the art of producing ideas. What is most valuable to know is not where to look for a particular idea, but how to train the mind in the method by which all ideas are produced and how to grasp the principles which are at the source of all ideas.
  • Every really good creative person…whom I have ever known has always had two noticeable characteristics. First, there was no subject under the sun in which he could not easily get interested — from, say, Egyptian burial customs to modern art. Every facet of life had fascination for him. Second, he was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information.
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  • What you do is to take the different bits of material which you have gathered and feel them all over, as it were, with the tentacles of the mind. You take one fact, turn it this way and that, look at it in different lights, and feel for the meaning of it. You bring two facts together and see how they fit. What you are seeking now is the relationship, a synthesis where everything will come together in a neat combination, like a jig-saw puzzle.
  • Then and only then, Young promises, everything will click in the fourth stage of the seemingly serendipitous a-ha! moment: Out of nowhere the Idea will appear. It will come to you when you are least expecting it
  • In his third stage of the creative process, Young stresses the importance of making absolutely “no effort of a direct nature”: It is important to realize that this is just as definite and just as necessary a stage in the process as the two preceding ones. What you have to do at this time, apparently, is to turn the problem over to your unconscious mind and let it work while you sleep.
  • [W]hen you reach this third stage in the production of an idea, drop the problem completely and turn to whatever stimulates your imagination and emotions. Listen to music, go to the theater or movies, read poetry or a detective story.
  • articulates the increasing importance of quality information filters in our modern information diet. This notion of gathering raw material is the first step in his outline of the creative process:
  • Young calls the last stage “the cold, gray dawn of the morning after,” when your newborn idea has to face reality: It requires a deal of patient working over to make most ideas fit the exact conditions, or the practical exigencies, under which they must work. And here is where many good ideas are lost. The idea man, like the inventor, is often not patient enough or practical enough to go through with this adapting part of the process. But it has to be done if you are to put ideas to work in a work-a-day world. Do not make the mistake of holding your idea close to your chest at this stage. Submit it to the criticism of the judicious. When you do, a surprising thing will happen. You will find that a good idea has, as it were, self-expanding qualities. It stimulates those who see it to add to it. Thus possibilities in it which you have overlooked will come to light.
  • what’s perhaps most interesting is the following note he made to the postscript of a reprint: From my own further experience in advertising, government, and public affairs I find no essential points which I would modify in the idea-producing process. There is one, however, on which I would put greater emphasis. This is as to the store of general materials in the idea-producer’s reservoir. […] I am convinced, however, that you gather this vicarious experience best, not when you are boning up on it for an immediate purpose, but when you are pursuing it as an end in itself.
dicindioha

These Foods Aren't Genetically Modified but They Are 'Edited' - The New York Times - 1 views

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    this is very interesting at the beginning because people may not know that their food was altered in a way, even though they are saying this just cuts short certain aspects of the genes in order to change them, instead of cross breeding or something like that. it seems not all knowledge that is shared is shared to all, and it can depend on status, or even just job here. they regulate gene expression, but that is still an alteration made by humans. this begs the question of if this is a somewhat natural thing or is it still under the category of GMOs? Genetics are an interesting area of science in regards to human editing them, one that is very controversial, and this article presents gene editing as seemingly okay, but it would be interesting to hear another side.
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    I apologize, for some reason my highlights did not come up on this article, and only two on the article about climate change and the incoming trump government that I did right before this. Sorry I'm not sure how to fix that -Hailey
nataliedepaulo1

The Mistrust of Science - The New Yorker - 0 views

  • The Mistrust of Science
  • The scientific orientation has proved immensely powerful. It has allowed us to nearly double our lifespan during the past century, to increase our global abundance, and to deepen our understanding of the nature of the universe. Yet scientific knowledge is not necessarily trusted. Partly, that’s because it is incomplete. But even where the knowledge provided by science is overwhelming, people often resist it—sometimes outright deny it. Many people continue to believe, for instance, despite massive evidence to the contrary, that childhood vaccines cause autism (they do not); that people are safer owning a gun (they are not); that genetically modified crops are harmful (on balance, they have been beneficial); that climate change is not happening (it is).
  • People are prone to resist scientific claims when they clash with intuitive beliefs. They don’t see measles or mumps around anymore. They do see children with autism. And they see a mom who says, “My child was perfectly fine until he got a vaccine and became autistic.”
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  • Even more than what you think, how you think matters. The stakes for understanding this could not be higher than they are today, because we are not just battling for what it means to be scientists. We are battling for what it means to be citizens.
Ellie McGinnis

The Mammoth Cometh - NYTimes.com - 2 views

  • Brand helped to establish in 1996 to support projects designed to inspire “long-term responsibility.”
  • The theme of the talk was “Is Mass Extinction of Life on Earth Inevitable?”
  • the resurrection of extinct species, like the woolly mammoth, aided by new genomic technologies developed by the Harvard molecular biologist George Church.
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  • Just as the loss of a species decreases the richness of an ecosystem, the addition of new animals could achieve the opposite effect.
  • National Geographic Society hosted a larger conference to debate the scientific and ethical questions raised by the prospect of “de-extinction.
  • “De-extinction went from concept to potential reality right before our eyes,
  • “This may be the biggest attraction and possibly the biggest benefit of de-extinction. It would surely be very cool to see a living woolly mammoth.”
  • less scientific, if more persuasive, argument was advanced by the ethicist Hank Greely and the law professor Jacob Sherkow, both of Stanford. De-extinction should be pursued, they argued in a paper published in Science, because it would be really
  • They will replace chunks of band-tailed-pigeon DNA with synthesized chunks of passenger-pigeon DNA, until the cell’s genome matches their working passenger-pigeon genome.
  • Scientists predict that changes made by human beings to the composition of the atmosphere could kill off a quarter of the planet’s mammal species, a fifth of its reptiles and a sixth of its birds by 2050
  • This cloning method, called somatic cell nuclear transfer, can be used only on species for which we have cellular material.
  • There is a shortcut. The genome of a closely related species will have a high proportion of identical DNA, so it can serve as a blueprint, or “scaffold.”
  • By comparing the fragments of passenger-pigeon DNA with the genomes of similar species, researchers can assemble an approximation of an actual passenger-pigeon genome.
  • “We’ve framed it in terms of conservation,”
  • the genome will have to be inscribed into a living cell.
  • As with any translation, there may be errors of grammar, clumsy phrases and perhaps a few missing passages, but the book will be legible. It should, at least, tell a good story.
  • MAGE (Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering). MAGE is nicknamed the “evolution machine” because it can introduce the equivalent of millions of years of genetic mutations within minutes
  • Developmental and behavioral biologists would take over, just in time to answer some difficult questions. Chicks imitate their parents’ behavior. How do you raise a passenger pigeon without parents of its own species? And how do you train band-tailed pigeons to nurture the strange spawn that emerge from their eggs; chicks that, to them, might seem monstrous: an avian Rosemary’s Baby?
  • For endangered species with tiny populations, scientists would introduce genetic diversity to offset inbreeding.
  • They will try to alter the birds’ diets, migration habits and environment. The behavior of each subsequent generation will more closely resemble that of their genetic cousins.
  • “There’s always this fear that somehow, if we do it, we’re going to accidentally make something horrible, because only nature can really do it right. But nature is totally random. Nature makes monsters. Nature makes threats. Many of the things that are most threatening to us are a product of nature. Revive & Restore is not going to tip the balance in any way.”
  • For species threatened by contagion, an effort would be made to fortify their DNA with genes that make them disease-resistant
  • This optimistic, soft-focus fantasy of de-extinction, while thrilling to Ben Novak, is disturbing to many conservation biologists, who consider it a threat to their entire discipline and even to the environmental movement.
  • The first question posed by conservationists addresses the logic of bringing back an animal whose native habitat has disappeared. Why go through all the trouble just to have the animal go extinct all over again?
  • There is also anxiety about disease
  • “If you recreate a species genetically and release it, and that genotype is based on a bird from a 100-year-old environment, you probably will increase risk.”
  • The scientific term for this type of genetic intervention is “facilitated adaptation.”
  • De-extinction also poses a rhetorical threat to conservation biologists. The specter of extinction has been the conservation movement’s most powerful argument. What if extinction begins to be seen as a temporary inconvenience?
  • De-extinction suggests that we can technofix our way out of environmental issues generally, and that’s very, very bad.
  • How will we decide which species to resurrect?
  • Philip Seddon recently published a 10-point checklist to determine the suitability of any species for revival, taking into account causes of its extinction, possible threats it might face upon resurrection and man’s ability to destroy the species “in the event of unacceptable ecological or socioeconomic impacts.”
  • But the most visceral argument against de-extinction is animal cruelty.
  • “Is it fair to do this to these animals?” Shapiro asked. “Is ‘because we feel guilty’ a good-enough reason?” Stewart Brand made a utilitarian counterargument: “We’re going to go through some suffering, because you try a lot of times, and you get ones that don’t take. On the other hand, if you can bring bucardos back, then how many would get to live that would not have gotten to live?”
  • In “How to Permit Your Mammoth,” published in The Stanford Environmental Law Journal, Norman F. Carlin asks whether revived species should be protected by the Endangered Species Act or regulated as a genetically modified organism.
  • He concludes that revived species, “as products of human ingenuity,” should be eligible for patenting.
  • The term “de-extinction” is misleading. Passenger pigeons will not rise from the grave
  • Our understanding of the passenger pigeon’s behavior derives entirely from historical accounts.
  • There is no authoritative definition of “species.” The most widely accepted definition describes a group of organisms that can procreate with one another and produce fertile offspring, but there are many exceptions.
  • Theseus’ ship, therefore, “became a standing example among the philosophers . . . one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.”
  • What is coming will go well beyond the resurrection of extinct species. For millenniums, we have customized our environment, our vegetables and our animals, through breeding, fertilization and pollination. Synthetic biology offers far more sophisticated tools. The creation of novel organisms, like new animals, plants and bacteria, will transform human medicine, agriculture, energy production and much else.
Javier E

Practice And The Self - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast - 0 views

  • Just about everything we do modifies connections between brain cells—learning and memory are dependent on this flexibility. When we improve a skill through practice, we strengthen connections between neurons involved in that skill
  • it reflects what one might call a conservative truth: we become what we do. We are not Etch-A-Sketches, blank slates on whom a new abstract idea can simply and easily be applied to turn our lives around. We are constantly evolving organisms, each choice leading to another fate and another choice and all of these creating us, slowly, by will and habit.
  • . I'm also reminded of Pascal's rather controversial dictum that merely practicing faith will instill it. Acts become thoughts which become acts, and habits become personality which becomes character. There can be no total rupture - which is why I am not a fan of "born-again" Christianity. It only takes if it reorients practice.
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  • what exercize and diet and sleep do for the body, thought and practice and sleep do for the brain. And when this kind of practice of something becomes effortless, when it becomes second nature, instinctual, it becomes part of you and you of it. You simply cannot describe the great skill of a craftsman, or a cook, or a priest, or an artist except by observing how he or she has become what she creates and does.
  • where the idea and the practice and the person simply become one, human activity takes flight. It becomes integral.
grayton downing

BBC News - First human trial of new bone-marrow transplant method - 0 views

  • Doctors at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital have carried out a pioneering bone-marrow transplant technique.
  • Mohammed Ahmed, who is nearly five years old, was among the first three children in the world to try out the new treatment.
  • Mohammed's doctors then modified these donated immune cells, called "T-cells", in the lab to engineer a safety switch - a self-destruct message that could be activated if Mohammed's body should start to reject them once transplanted.
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  • "We waited for a full match but it did not come. By the grace of God, we took the decision to have the treatment.
  • There are currently about 1,600 people in the UK waiting for a bone-marrow transplant and 37,000 worldwide.
charlottedonoho

Public and Scientists' Views on Science and Society | Pew Research Center - 0 views

  • Science holds an esteemed place among citizens and professionals. Americans recognize the accomplishments of scientists in key fields and, despite considerable dispute about the role of government in other realms, there is broad public support for government investment in scientific research.
  • 79% of adults say that science has made life easier for most people and a majority is positive about science’s impact on the quality of health care, food and the environment.
  • At the same time, both the public and scientists are critical of the quality of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM subjects) in grades K-12.
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  • Compared with five years ago, both citizens and scientists are less upbeat about the scientific enterprise. Citizens are still broadly positive about the place of U.S. scientific achievements and its impact on society, but slightly more are negative than five years ago. And, while a majority of scientists think it is a good time for science, they are less upbeat than they were five years ago.
  • While a majority of the public sees U.S. scientific achievements in positive terms, the share saying U.S. scientific achievements are the best in the world or above average is down 11 points to 54% today, compared with 65% in 2009.
  • The largest differences between the public and the AAAS scientists are found in beliefs about the safety of eating genetically modified (GM) foods.
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