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By combining two approaches to quantum computing into one device, Google has been able to simulate the behaviour of magnets in detail - and found discrepancies with our current understanding of certain magnet systems

Today’s batch of marine-life photos comes from math professor Abigail Thompson at UC Davis. We’ve met her before (in 2018) when she was widely and publicly demonized for simply writing a piece criticizing diversity statements (see this post, which is missing many links). But today we see her photographic skills with pictures of nudibranchs and other marine invertebrates. As she says, “I spend a lot of time up to my knees in cold water.”  Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them. And remember that nudibranchs are molluscs.

These are all from the same 1-mile stretch of Northern California coastline during the past year.   The pictures are mostly  taken from above the water, at low tide.  Most are of sea-slugs, beautiful animals with a terrible (common) name (although nudibranch sounds a bit better), with some ID help from inaturalist.   Lots more pictures here or at inaturalist.

Ectopleura marina A hydroid, a (very small) animal that just stays put:

Acanthodoris rhodoceras, nudibranch:

Aeolidia loui, nudibranch:

Polycera atra, nudibranch:

Phidiana hiltoni, nudibranch:

Eurylepta californica, a species of marine flatworm:

Triopha catalinae, nudibranch:

Crassadoma gigantea,  actually, a not-very-big scallop.   The black dots are eyes:

Epactis handi, a fairly rare (and beautiful) anemone:

Doto kya (probably), nudibranch:

Equipment: One photo was with an iPhone through a microscope, but the rest were taken with an Olympus TG-6 or -7, the almost-indestructible tidepoolers favorite, with a sensational macro setting (I did manage to destroy the TG-6, but it took real effort).

Note: Three new photos added by readers’ request:

Coast-in-a-fog; that’s a deer in the middle.   They come down to the water at night (for salt?) so if you’re out very early in the morning you see them there:

View towards Pt. Reyes from the top of a ridge:

 I think those are pelicans on top of the rocks, at sunset:

This is a great scientific question because it challenges how we ask and answer scientific questions. Are animals conscious? This is a question discussed in a recent BBC article that peaked my interest. They eventually get to a question that they should have opened with – how do we specifically define “consciousness”? We can’t answer questions about an alleged phenomenon unless we know what it is. Ideally we would have an operational definition, a list of inclusion and exclusion criteria that need to be met to fit the definition.

So I am going to start with this question – how do we define consciousness? I think there are at least two different contexts here. In medicine we use the term to refer to different states in people. We know, from our own experience, that humans are conscious, and from one point of view we define consciousness as what humans experience. We assume other fully functioning humans are conscious because we are, and there is no reason to think that other beings with brains similar to our own have a fundamentally different phenomenon driving their behavior. In fact part of consciousness is a theory of mind, which is the ability to think about what other beings think and feel.

So when we talk about consciousness in humans the question revolves around the health and functioning of the brain. Someone might be unconscious, or comatose, or vegetative. We label these as “disorders of consciousness”. We might also discuss consciousness in the context of healthy altered states, such as sleeping. Here we do have very specific technical definitions, based upon neurological examination. However, even here our definition is being challenged by new technology, such as functional MRI scanning, which may shows signs of subtle consciousness in someone who does not show signs on exam.

An entirely separate question is whether any non-human entity is or can be conscious. This includes machines (general AI) and animals. The challenge here is that we cannot base any conclusion on extrapolation from ourselves. We cannot experience what another entity is thinking or feeling. We can only observe their behavior. This has led some scientists to take an approach called behaviorism, which only seeks to understand and model behavior, and not to examine or speculate about internal states. In humans behaviorism has largely given way to cognitive psychology, which explicitly deals with internal cognitive states.

So – can we have a cognitive psychology of animals or are we limited to behaviorism? There is one difference with humans – language. Humans can tell you how they feel and what they think, because humans have language. It is controversial whether or not animals can learn sign language and communicate like humans, so let me put that question aside for this essay. Without language we only have behavior. The question therefore is – can we infer from behavior alone the internal cognitive state of a non-human?

There are two types of error we can make here. One is to anthropomorphize, to assume that an animal behavior which superficially seems analogous to a human behavior results from a similar underlying mental state. We tend to project human feelings and experiences onto other agents operating in the world. In fact, we are wired to so do. The other type of error is to dismiss non-human consciousness solely because of the absence of language, or because that consciousness is different than typical human consciousness.

This, in my opinion, leads to an inherent dilemma in asking the question about consciousness. The answer will be yes or no depending on how narrowly or broadly we define consciousness. The question, in a way, becomes meaningless (except at the extremes, rocks are not conscious while humans are the gold standard of consciousness). For everything between rocks and humans, starting with viruses, the best approach might be to consider consciousness as a continuum. Actually, I don’t think viruses are on this continuum, but bacteria might be (with a broad enough definition). By the time you get to multicellular creatures, we are seeing complex behavior that we could anthropomorphize and call consciousness, or broaden the definition enough to include their behavior.

Here is one example from the BBC article – bees have been observed to roll little balls for no apparent useful purpose. Some researchers believe the bees do this because they enjoy it, and therefore it is the equivalent of playing. I have a problem with this conclusion. I think it is a great example of the first type of error – anthropomorphizing. We can’t really know what the bees are experiencing, and there could be many reasons why their primitive behavioral algorithms encoded in their networks would include such behavior. It could easily be an incidental behavior, something the system does while idling. Or perhaps it reduces the probability that the bees will engage in other behavior that might be counterproductive. Or it is a tradeoff, a behavior that emerges when the algorithm is programmed for some other useful behavior. But it’s a real stretch to say the bees are “enjoying” the behavior and therefore they are conscious in a way that is closer to humans than we thought. I don’t buy it. Or at least, I don’t think that conclusion serves any scientific purpose.

Are bees conscious? Sure, if you define consciousness to include whatever bees experience. Does that help explain their behavior? I’m not convinced.

Because consciousness is a continuum, and we are all connected evolutionarily, the closer you get to humans phylogenetically the closer you get to human consciousness. Anyone who has owned a dog I think would have no problem believing that dogs are conscious to a high degree (although not human level). They communicate with us, they can read our behavior and have been shown to have an impressive vocabulary. They appear to have emotional states. They have dog consciousness. Even here, though, it is tempting to anthropomorphize, to go beyond doggie consciousness and assume human-level motivation behind their behavior. Again, it’s what we do.

When you get to primates then I think we have to be especially careful. Now we are so close to humans evolutionarily that we are also getting close to human-like consciousness. But I do think that human evolution does include a unique feature – the evolution of sophisticated language ability, that fundamentally altered the way we think. We have a lot of brain power that chimps, for example, simply don’t have.

Also, evolutionary branches that diverged off the one that ultimately lead to humans evolved different brains with different types of consciousness. Birds have bird-consciousness, which is different than mammalian consciousness. Cephalopods, like octopuses, have cephalopod consciousness, which is different than vertebrate consciousness. We should try to understand them on their own terms, and not dismiss consciousness because it is non-human, nor try to shoehorn their apparent consciousness into human analogues (like play).

It’s very challenging research, and it makes me think the behaviorists have a point. We can model behavior, but it is very tricky to infer internal states from that behavior. But I am open to research that tries to do just that, as long as they can make falsifiable hypothesis. We may never be able to know for sure, but we can at least come up with some useful testable hypothesis and some indirect inference. But again – we have to proceed very carefully.

The post Are Animals Conscious? first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A while back, after New Atheism took hold, I remember somewhat of a backlash, mostly directed at the atheistic books of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett (they could also, with the possible exception of Dennett’s book be called anti-theistic). The New Atheists, so the plaint went, were angry and wanted to take away people’s toys, i.e., the comforts of faith.

In fact, this criticism mistook passion and argumentation for anger, as rarely did any of the Horsemen lose their temper.  This “anger” trope was so pervasive that there were tons of such articles criticizing New Atheism, many written by atheists who nevertheless saw religion as beneficial as a sort of “social glue”.  These people were called “atheist butters”, because of their arguments that included “I am an atheist, but . . . ” or, as Dennett called them, exponents of “belief in belief.” (Dennett also felt that free will, like religion, was a belief necessary for social cohesion.)

A counterargument for religion, one I have made, is that you can have perfectly well-functioning societies without religion and its detriments (e.g., divisiveness, proselytizing, terrorizing of children, and of course the trope of faith—the idea that one doesn’t need evidence for what one sees as true).  There’s no doubt that Judaism and Christianity are disappearing from the West, as we see from the rise of “nones”—and yet the world is morally and materially better off than a century ago, much less five centuries ago.  Here’s a new tweet from Pinker documenting it (and read his two big books on the subject):

Believers, especially Christians, respond to this progress by saying, “Well, Western values were taken from and built on Christianity, so even atheists have benefited from religion.”  But Western values are built on Enlightenment and humanistic values, which come from the rejection of religion. But we don’t have the controlled experiment of seeing what the world would be like had religion not arisen. Still, we do have an experiment, at least in the West, of seeing what countries would be like when they lose religion, and the answer does not support the societal benefits of faith. (I do agree that the lives of some people are improved by their faith. I’m talking about the net societal benefits, or lack thereof, of the institution of religion.)

In the end, religion, as opposed to other ideologies and superstitions, including Marxism and flat-earth-ism, still seems relatively untouchable, as if criticizing it is somehow distasteful. You can’t take away other people’s toys! (Hitchens’s response to that was “it’s okay if you play with your toys, but don’t try to make me play with your toys.”) I’m not sure why it’s considered as “angry” to criticize the tenets of faith (and faith itself); perhaps it’s because, for believers, religion has more far-reaching implications for their lives than does any other ideology.

But I digress. The article below, from Quillette, was written by Kushal Mehra, who was brought up as a Hindu in India. He’s identified as “host of the Cārvāka Podcast”, and has new book, Nastik: Why I Am Not an Atheist.

Mehra is a non-believer, but is still exploring religion. Yet he can’t comport the sacred texts of the Bible and Qur’an with their supposed message of love. Below he also gets in a lick at those Angry Atheists:

I felt a sense of bewilderment, as I struggled to reconcile the image of a benevolent, loving deity with the wrathful God that emerged from the pages of both books. God was constantly exhibiting rage, jealousy, and vengeance. For a while, I became one of those angry young atheists we all sometimes encounter on social media.

As I continued to explore and question, however, I sought out alternative interpretations of these texts, hoping to find a way to reconcile the conflicting images of God they presented. Growing up as a Hindu child, I was raised with a different understanding of the divine. Most schools of Hinduism, with their vast pantheon of gods (devatas) and goddesses (devis), and emphasis on the interconnectedness of all things, presented a more inclusive and tolerant worldview than I encountered in the Bible or the Quran.

So much for Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s claim that the message of Christianity is “love”! It may have morphed into that after going through the liberal theological sausage grinder, but remember that the message of secular humanism is also love, and was from the get-to. No sausage grinder needed!

Here are few more licks at the Angry Atheists from Mehra, who seems to see himself as superior because he’s “questioning and introspective”, something, he says, that comes from “India’s ancient cultural traditional of religious tolerance.” (Well, Modi’s getting rid of that!):

Without getting into all of the interactions I had in these spaces, I will report that I am one of the few people (I know of) who’s been banned from atheist forums for not being sufficiently angry at religion. I’d believed that atheists were my people, but, in fact, our perspectives diverged—as their intolerance toward non-atheists seemed to mirror that of religious puritans.

And here’s his familiar argument of why atheism is bad because it provides no substitute for religion, leaving that famous “god-shaped hole.” As Mehra sees it, that hole was filled by wokeness (bolding is mine):

By focusing on these Indian approaches to expressing religious doubt, I hope to make readers aware of the limitations of the “neo-atheism” movement that emerged over the last two decades, thanks largely to the influence of prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. While the movement has become popular, it also has created a vacuum of meaning and purpose in society. And since nature abhors a vacuum, it isn’t surprising that the resulting void has been filled by political and ideological trends that function as ersatz religious movements (such as the fanatical form of social-justice advocacy known as “wokeism”).  

There’s no doubt that if someone gave up a faith that comforted them, and had no community of like-minded believers to fill their need for a social group, they would feel bereft. And it may be true that, for some, part of that lacuna was filled by wokeness. After all, John McWhorter’s book was called Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.

But I’m not going to pin wokeness on atheism. The arguments of New Atheism didn’t include a plan to replace religion with a new system of belief. Rather, they were arguments showing that the tenets of religion, which are foundational beliefs, were not only empirically unsupportable, but generally harmful. They were meant to show that faith—belief without evidence—is not a good way to deal with life, especially when there can potentially be evidence supporting one’s belief. As the late Victor Stenger argued, the absence of evidence is evidence for absence if that evidence should be there.  And for religion, that evidence is simply not there.

And Mehra’s rationale for why religion is a net good:

Religion has long been a source of both solace and strife for humanity. And any discussion of its role in society—including a discussion among non-believers—should be informed by its status as a cornerstone of human culture, art, literature, and morality. Yes, religion has been used to justify wars, persecution, and discrimination, as well as the suppression of scientific progress and critical thinking. But it also promotes altruism and compassion, and gives people a framework for coping with life’s challenges and the inevitability of death. Scientific studies suggest that the religious impulse is deeply encoded in our evolutionary upbringing. It cannot be purged from our collective history simply by browbeating believers in books or YouTube videos, or by mocking them with clever memes or slogans.

First, I’ll reject the idea that “the religious impulse”—I’ll take “religion” to mean, as Dennett did, “social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent whose approval is to be sought”—is “deeply encoded in our evolutionary upbringing”. To me this means that human DNA contains genes directly promoting belief in supernatural agents.  I know of no such genes. Yes, religion could be a byproduct of other evolved traits, like our tendency to obey authorities or look for agency, but that’s not the same thing.

Beyond that, we again have no evidence that religion is necessary for good and cohesive societies. My argument has but four words: “Northern Europe and Scandinavia”. Also, as religion vanishes from the West, our well being and morality increases.  As Pinker argues, religious belief was simply an impediment to societal well being, and the Enlightenment simply shoved it aside.

I’m not denying that humans benefit from social interaction with others. We are, after all, social animals who evolved in small groups, and I’m pretty sure that this is why people get lonely and even depressed without other people around.  It is also why people do tend to become part of groups, like book clubs, soccer fans, and yes, woke-ism. It is something that escaped Richard Dawkins when he argued with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

What I argue is two things. First, that religion is not the best form of “social glue”.  It is divisive, harmful to children, something that often demands to be forced upon others through proselytizing, and has many other detrimental effects you can see in the books of the Horsemen. I’d argue that secular humanism, if it’s really acted on by society and informed by data and reason, is the best form of social glue.

Second, I claim that people usually don’t seek an explicit “meaning and purpose” for their lives. Rather, they seek what they find fulfilling and like to do: having families, reading books, having a fulfilling job, and so on.  Then, post facto, you confect these into your “meaning and purpose”. If you’ve been brought up as an evangelical Christian or fundamentalism Muslim, then that becomes your “meaning and purpose. ” If you’ve been brought up without religion, but in a big family that makes you family-oriented, then having your own family becomes part of your “meaning and purpose.”  If you love to read and learn, then reading and learning become part of your “meaning and purpose.” Or, if you’re like me, you could answer the question of “what’s the purpose and meaning of your life?”, with “I don’t have one that I’m aware of.”

I’ve written two posts on this topic that you can see here and here. In the second link, 373 comments were addressed to this topic:

If a friend asked you these questions, how would you answer them?

1.) What do you consider the purpose of your life?

2.) What do you see as the meaning of your life?

I won’t go through all the comments, but, as I recall, few if any of the answers involved religion.

I don’t feel at all angry as I write this. The question of the value of religion is an intellectual question, but one with huge societal implications, and I find it absorbing. It’s foolish to dismiss atheism, New or Old, because its proponents are angry, and even more foolish to dismiss it because it doesn’t come with alternatives to religion. Atheism is simply the belief that there’s no evidence for supernatural beings that we must worship and brown-nose. Once we give up unevidenced beliefs, then we can figure out whether (or how) we need to fill that “God-shaped hole.” My own view is that, under secular humanism, the hole is self-filling.

A quote from Ricky Gervais:

When conference organizers told me not to make my talk "political", they were really saying there were certain people and ideas I wasn't allowed to criticize. I didn't get it at the time. I get it now.

The post I’ve Been Silenced, Censored, and Cancelled. The Reason Why Matters. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

What a wonderful arguably simple solution. Here’s the problem, we travel to Mars but how do we feed ourselves? Sure we can take a load of food with us but for the return trip that’s a lot. If we plan to colonise the red planet we need even more. We have to grow or somehow create food while we are there. The solution is an already wonderfully simple ‘biosphere’ style system; a fish tank! New research suggests fish could be raised in an aquatic system and nutrient rich water can fertilise and grow plants in the regolith! A recent simulation showed vegetables could be grown in regolith fertilised by the fish tank water!

In the next few decades we may well see human beings colonise Mars. The red planet is 54.6 million km away which, even on board a rocket, takes about 7 months to get there! Future colonists could simply have supply ships drop all they need but that becomes ridiculously expensive to sustain and frankly, isn’t sustainable. The lucky people that colonise Mars will just have to find some way to grow what they need. 

If you have watched ‘The Martian’ movie with Matt Damon you will know how unforgiving the Martian environment is. Ok the film was a little out on scientific accuracy in places but it certainly showed how inhospitable it really is there. Matt managed to cultivate a decent crop of potatoes in Martian regolith fertilised in human faeces.This may not be quite so practical in real life and there may be alternative, less smelly – and dangerous – alternatives. 

NASA astronaut, Dr. Mark Watney played by Matt Damon, as he’s stranded on the Red Planet in ‘The Martian’. (Credit: 20th Century Fox)

Taking the assumption that colonists will have to grow fresh produce locally, a team of researchers decided to explore how feasible this might be. On first glance, it may seem not too great an idea after all, the atmosphere is toxic with 95% carbon dioxide (compared to just 0.04% on Earth). There is a similar length of day on Mars but being able to grow crops will require longer periods of lighting. It is possible at least water may be collected from the ice which forms on and in the Martian rocks.  The rocks most certainly have water stored away but organic compounds that we know of. 

The team wanted to see how fish could help and whether the water from the system could be used to impart nutrients into the Martian regolith. To test the idea, they setup an aquaponic system with fish in tanks to generate the nutrient rich liquid.

The results were very promising. They found that aquaponic systems not only facilitate growing plants within the system itself but the nutrient rich water performed as an excellent fertiliser. This took the organically deficient regolith and turned it into something akin to useable soil. The fish used in the study were tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) and using them, the team managed to grow potatoes, tomatoes, beans, carrots and much more. To enable all this to happen, the fish received sufficient light and other environmental stimulus. The plants were grown and indeed thrived in a tent that simulated Mars in every way possible. 

It’s an interesting aside that the study not only benefits future space travellers but those inhabitants of more environmentally hostile places on Earth. 

Source : Fish and chips on Mars: our research shows how colonists could produce their own food

The post Fish Could Turn Regolith into Fertile Soil on Mars appeared first on Universe Today.

One of the main scientific objectives of next-generation observatories (like the James Webb Space Telescope) has been to observe the first galaxies in the Universe – those that existed at Cosmic Dawn. This period is when the first stars, galaxies, and black holes in our Universe formed, roughly 50 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang. By examining how these galaxies formed and evolved during the earliest cosmological periods, astronomers will have a complete picture of how the Universe has changed with time.

As addressed in previous articles, the results of Webb‘s most distant observations have turned up a few surprises. In addition to revealing that galaxies formed rapidly in the early Universe, astronomers also noticed these galaxies had particularly massive supermassive black holes (SMBH) at their centers. This was particularly confounding since, according to conventional models, these galaxies and black holes didn’t have enough time to form. In a recent study, a team led by Penn State astronomers has developed a model that could explain how SMBHs grew so quickly in the early Universe.

The research team was led by W. Niel Brandt, the Eberly Family Chair Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State’s Eberly College of Science. Their research is described in two papers presented at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS224), which took place from June 9th to June 13th in Madison, Wisconsin. Their first paper, “Mapping the Growth of Supermassive Black Holes as a Function of Galaxy Stellar Mass and Redshift,” appeared on March 29th in The Astrophysical Journal, while the second is pending publication. Fan Zou, an Eberly College graduate student, was the lead author of both papers.

Illustration of an active quasar. New research shows that SMBHs eat rapidly enough to trigger them. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

As they note in their papers, SMBHs grow through two main channels: by accreting cold gas from their host galaxy or merging with the SMBHs of other galaxies. When it comes to accretion, previous research has shown that a black hole’s accretion rate (BHAR) is strongly linked to its galaxy’s stellar mass and the redshift of its general stellar population. “Supermassive black holes in galaxy centers have millions-to-billions of times the mass of the Sun,” explained Zhou in a recent NASA press release. How do they become such monsters? This is a question that astronomers have been studying for decades, but it has been difficult to track all the ways black holes can grow reliably.”

For their research, the team relied on forefront X-ray sky survey data obtained by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the ESA’s X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission-Newton (XMM-Newton), and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics’ eROSITA telescope. They measured the accretion-driven growth in a sample of 8000 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) located in 1.3 million galaxies. This was combined with IllustrisTNG, a suite of state-of-the-art cosmological simulations that model galaxy formation, evolution, and mergers from Cosmic Dawn to the present. This combined approach has provided the best modeling to date of SMBH growth over the past 12 billion years. Said Brandt:

“During the process of consuming gas from their hosting galaxies, black holes radiate strong X-rays, and this is the key to tracking their growth by accretion. We measured the accretion-driven growth using X-ray sky survey data accumulated over more than 20 years from three of the most powerful X-ray facilities ever launched into space.

“In our hybrid approach, we combine the observed growth by accretion with the simulated growth through mergers to reproduce the growth history of supermassive black holes. With this new approach, we believe we have produced the most realistic picture of the growth of supermassive black holes up to the present day.”

This still image shows the timeline running from the Big Bang on the right towards the present on the left. In the middle is the Reionization Period where the initial bubbles caused the cosmic dawn. Credit: NASA SVS

Their results indicate that SMBHs of all masses grew much more rapidly when the Universe was younger and that accretion was the main driver of black hole growth in most cases. They also noted that mergers made notable secondary contributions, especially the largest SMBHs during the past 5 billion years. This suggests that new SMBHs kept emerging during the early Universe, but the formation process was all but settled by ca. 7 billion years ago. As Zou concluded:

“With our approach, we can track how central black holes in the local universe most likely grew over cosmic time. As an example, we considered the growth of the supermassive black hole in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, which has a mass of 4 million solar masses. Our results indicate that our Galaxy’s black hole most likely grew relatively late in cosmic time.”

In addition to Zou and Brandt, the international team comprised researchers from the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos and the Departments of Physics, Statistics, and Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State. Other team members included researchers from the University of Michigan, the Nanjing University in China, the University of Science and Technology of China, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Further Reading: Chandra X-ray Observatory, The Astrophysical Journal

The post New Simulation Explains how Supermassive Black Holes Grew so Quickly appeared first on Universe Today.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day (I count myself among dads since I’ve helped raise many ducklings), and in honor of the day, Bill Maher did a bit on Real Time about the decline of parenting. Here, despite his own dearth of offspring, he argues that dads today are “doing it wrong.” By that he means that child-raising has gone awry: parents seem to be overindulging their children in ways that don’t prepare them for the real world. One pet peeve is the new method of “gentle parenting” (e.g., do unto your children as you would want done unto you).

Here are four facts he gives (I’ve looked up the references):

From Robert Leahy in Psychology Today: “The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950’s.”

This one creeps me out:

From the New York Post: “About one in five college graduates brought their parents with them to a job interview”.

That one is used to explain why employers aren’t hiring recent college grads.

From the National Institutes of Health:  “An estimated 49.5% of adolescents have a mental health disorder at some point in their lives.” This is the lifetime prevalence for children between 13 and 18.

And finally, from the NYT: “PTSD has surged among college students”.  From the article we see that it’s more than doubled between 2017 and 2022, and I presume the criteria used to assess the condition in the two years are the same:

Post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses among college students more than doubled between 2017 and 2022, climbing most sharply as the coronavirus pandemic shut down campuses and upended young adults’ lives, according to new research published on Thursday.

The prevalence of PTSD rose to 7.5 percent from 3.4 percent during that period, according to the findings. Researchers analyzed responses from more than 390,000 participants in the Healthy Minds Study, an annual web-based survey.

Maher is a bit curmudgeonly here, especially for a non-parent, as he calls for more discipline and the setting of boundaries for children. He doesn’t want dads who were emotionally distant and beat their kids with a belt (that’s my own experience), but does want a “trad dad” who sets rules, givin as the reason “because I said so.” (Note, though, that back in the Fifties I had a leash like the kid who shows up at 7:45. That was because I was unruly in public places. But the fact that I was leashed like a dog still makes me squirm.)

Finally, Maher touts the misogynistic Andrew Tate as the totally inappropriate role model that young boys are seeking these days. I’ve never heard of Tate, but perhaps some readers have.

This isn’t as funny as the usual bits, and has a flavor of “get off my lawn,” but he might be right.  See below the video.

Remember this book? (Click on icon to go to the Amazon site.) I thought it was good, and offers an explanation for the fragility of young people today. It sold very well.

Now Jon Haidt, writing by himself, has a new one, and it’s sold like gangbusters, rising to the top of the NYT bestseller list. It’s about precisely what Maher’s talking about above, so before you dismiss Maher’s lucubrations, perhaps you should read the book.  I haven’t yet, but I bet it’s a bestseller because parents or would-be parents are buying it. And that probably means it contains stuff that rings true. If you’ve read it, weigh in below.

 

Quickie with Evan: Mysterious Signal; News Items: Ultraprocessed Food, Artemis Update, Interstellar Clouds, Prebiotic Soda, Noninvasive Deep Brain Stimulation; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon; Science or Fiction

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Robert Powell, a founding Board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, has studied the UFO subject for 17 years. His work is encapsulated in UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (And Don’t Know) which provides a scientific rationale for the reality of non-terrestrial craft that are intelligently controlled.

Powell begins his book by familiarizing the reader with the history of UFOs and he identifies the more enigmatic and interesting UFO sightings. He examines the characteristics of these sightings that argue against a prosaic explanation: extreme acceleration, electromagnetic interference, bending light, no obvious propulsion mechanisms, and a lack of interaction with the atmosphere. Powell discusses the recent events that have caused our government to change the term from UFO to UAP. Included is information never before released indicating the government possesses not just two videos but five videos from 2015 of UFOs operating in the vicinity of the USS Roosevelt nuclear aircraft carrier.

Powell also discuss the extraterrestrial hypothesis considering the thousands of exoplanets that have been discovered in the last twenty years. Powell challenges the reader to consider all the implications that must be considered if intelligent life discovers us first. He looks at how we as individuals and as a society react to UFOs. He documents actions taken by our military that include instances when we have fired on UFOs.

Powell argues that it is time for a change in the study of UFOs. The phenomenon has been with us for 75 years and we have learned very little as the decades have passed. The author makes the case for what needs to be done going forward. The solution he proposes will require a paradigm shift in our thinking and his book provides the information needed to understand that paradigm shift.

Robert Powell is a founding Board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU). He was the Director of Research at MUFON from 2007–2017 and created MUFON’s Science Review Board in 2012. Robert is one of two authors of the detailed radar/witness report on the “Stephenville Lights” as well as the SCU report “UAP: 2013 Aguadilla, Puerto Rico”. He is also the primary author on the recently published paper, “A Forensic Analysis of Navy Carrier Strike Group Eleven’s Encounter with an Anomalous Aerial Vehicle” and a secondary author of a paper published in the journal Entropy entitled, “Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles.” Robert is a member of the Society for Scientific Exploration, the UFODATA project, and the National Space Society.

Shermer and Powell discuss:

• Separating two questions: Are they out there? Have they come here?
• SETI science vs. UFO/UAP science
• The odds of alien life somewhere in the cosmos
• Will aliens look anything like us? Convergent vs. contingent evolution
• What alien intelligence might be like: biological, digital, or otherwise?
• Bayesian reasoning about UFOs and UAPs
• The quality of evidence in evaluating UFO claims
• The U.S. military UAP videos and what they represent
• The Disclosure Project from the U.S. government about UFOs and UAPs
• An answer to Fermi’s Paradox: where is everyone?
• Projects Sign, Blue Book, Cyclops, Grudge
• AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program)
• Oumuamua and Avi Loeb’s claim that it was a technosignature
• Technosignatures here and there
• Biosignatures here and there
• Directionality and teleology in evolution of life
• Interstellar travel
• Dyson spheres, rings, and swarms
• Why aliens matter.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing has made possible a multitude of biomedical experiments including studies that systematically turn off genes in cancer cells to look for ones that the cancer cells heavily depend on to survive and grow. These genes, or 'cancer dependencies,' are often promising drug targets. But new research shows that many of these CRISPR screening experiments rely on components, called CRISPR/Cas9 guides, that do not perform equally well in cells from people of all ancestries, which can cause CRISPR screens to miss cancer dependencies.

Filamentous cyanobacteria buckle at a certain length when they encounter an obstacle. The results provide an important basis for the use of cyanobacteria in modern biotechnology.

Researchers show a new way of thinking about the fair impacts of AI decisions.

In the coming decades, NASA and China intend to send the first crewed missions to Mars. Given the distance involved and the time it takes to make a single transit (six to nine months), opportunities for resupply missions will be few and far between. As a result, astronauts and taikonauts will be forced to rely on local resources to meet their basic needs – a process known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). For this reason, NASA and other space agencies have spent decades scouting for accessible sources of liquid water.

Finding this water is essential for future missions and scientific efforts to learn more about Mars’s past, when the planet was covered by oceans, rivers, and lakes that may have supported life. In 2018, using ground-penetrating radar, the ESA’s Mars Express orbiter detected bright radar reflections beneath the southern polar ice cap that were interpreted as a lake. However, a team of Cornell researchers recently conducted a series of simulations that suggest there may be another reason for these bright patches that do not include the presence of water.

The research team was led by Daniel Lalich, a research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science (CCAPS). She was joined by Alexander G. Hayes, a Jennifer and Albert Sohn Professor, the Director of CCAPS, and the Principal Investigator of the Comparative Planetology & Solar System Exploration (COMPASSE), and Valerio Poggiali, a CCAPS Research Associate. Their paper that describes their findings, “Small Variations in Ice Composition and Layer Thickness Explain Bright Reflections Below Martian Polar Cap without Liquid Water,” appeared on June 7th in the journal Science Advances.

When the first robotic probes began making flybys of Mars in the 1960s, the images they acquired revealed surface features common on Earth. These included flow channels, river valleys, lakebeds, and sedimentary rock, all of which form in the presence of flowing water. For decades, orbiters, landers, and rovers have explored Mars’ surface, atmosphere, and climate to learn more about how and when much of this surface water was lost. In recent years, this has led to compelling evidence that what remains could be found beneath the polar ice caps today.

The most compelling evidence was obtained by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument aboard the Mars Express orbiter. This instrument was designed by NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to search for water on the Martian surface and down to depths of about 5 km (3 mi). The radar returns indicated that the bright patches could be caused by layered deposits composed of water, dry ice, and dust. These South Polar Layered Deposits (SPLD) are thought to have formed over millions of years as Mars’ axial tilt changed.

Subsequent research by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) revealed dozens of other highly reflective sites beneath the surface. The implications of these findings were tremendous, not just for crewed missions but also for astrobiology efforts. In addition to being a potential source of water for future missions, it was also theorized that microbial life that once existed on the surface might be found there today. However, the findings were subject to debate as other viable explanations were offered.

While the same bright radar reflections have detected subglacial lakes on Earth (such as Lake Vostok under the East Antarctic Ice Sheet), Mars’s temperature and pressure conditions are very different. To remain in a liquid state, the water would need to be very briny, loaded with exotic minerals, or above an active magma chamber – none of which have been detected. As Lalich said in a recent interview with the Cornell Chronicle:

“I can’t say it’s impossible that there’s liquid water down there, but we’re showing that there are much simpler ways to get the same observation without having to stretch that far, using mechanisms and materials that we already know exist there. Just through random chance you can create the same observed signal in the radar.”

In a previous study, Lalich and his colleagues used simpler models to demonstrate that these bright radar signals could result from tiny variations in the thickness of the layers. These variations would be indiscernible to ground-penetrating radar and could lead to constructive interference between radar waves, producing reflections that vary in intensity and variability – like those observed across the SPLD. For their latest study, the team simulated 10,000 layering scenarios with 1,000 variations in the ice thickness and dust content of the layered deposits.

Their simulations also excluded any of the unusual conditions or exotic materials that would be necessary for liquid water. These simulations produced bright subsurface signals consistent with observations made by the MARSIS instrument. According to Lalich, these findings strongly suggest that he and his colleagues were correct in suspecting radar interference. In essence, radar waves bouncing off of layers too close together for the instrument to resolve may have combined, amplifying their peaks and troughs and appearing much brighter.

The team is not prepared to rule out the possibility that future missions with more sophisticated instruments could find definitive evidence of water. However, Lalich suspects that the case for liquid water (and potential life) on Mars may have ended decades ago. “This is the first time we have a hypothesis that explains the entire population of observations below the ice cap, without having to introduce anything unique or odd. This result where we get bright reflections scattered all over the place is exactly what you would expect from thin-layer interference in the radar. The idea that there would be liquid water even somewhat near the surface would have been really exciting. I just don’t think it’s there.”

If so, future missions may be forced to melt polar ice deposits and permafrost to get drinking water or possibly chemical reactions involving hydrazine (a la Mark Watney). In addition, astrobiology efforts may once again be placed on the back burner as they were when the Viking Landers failed to find conclusive evidence of biosignatures in 1976. But as we’ve learned, Mars is full of surprises. While the results of the Viking biological experiments were disappointing, these same missions provided some of the most compelling evidence that water once flowed on Mars’ surface.

Artist’s impression of water under the Martian surface. If underground aquifers exist, the implications for human exploration and eventual settlement of the Red Planet would be far-reaching. Credit: ESA

Moreover, scientists once suspected that the Red Planet was geologically dead, but data obtained by NASA’s InSight Lander showed that it is actually “slightly alive.” This included evidence that hot magma still flows deep in the planet’s interior and that a massive magma plume still exists beneath the Elysium Planitia region, which may have caused a small eruption just 53,000 years ago (the most recent in Martian history). Perhaps the same will hold true for briny patches of liquid water around the poles and the equatorial region.

With any luck, some of these patches may even house countless microorganisms that could be related to life on Earth. How cool would that be?

Further Reading: Cornell Chronicle, Science Advances

The post Don't Get Your Hopes Up for Finding Liquid Water on Mars appeared first on Universe Today.

A US military program led by DARPA is modifying the stimulant drug dextroamphetamine so it can be switched on or off in the brain using near-infrared light, avoiding risks like addiction

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just increased the number of known distant supernovae by tenfold. This rapid expansion of astronomers’ catalog of supernovae is extremely valuable, not least because it improves the reliability of measurements for the expansion of the universe.

“Webb is a supernova discovery machine,” said Christa DeCoursey of the Steward Observatory and the University of Arizona at a press conference earlier this week. “The sheer number of detections plus the great distances to these supernovae are the two most exciting outcomes from our survey.”

JWST’s advantage over previous surveys is its specialty in infrared wavelengths. As the universe expands, the light coming from distant objects gets stretched, “redshifting” the light to longer wavelengths. Most of the light from the early universe, therefore, reaches us in infrared.

That has allowed the telescope to discover a host of new supernovae in distant galaxies, some of which are the furthest ever seen. Supernovas are transient objects – they’re exploding stars that change and fade over time – so catching them happening at such great distances is exciting.

Previously, the most distant supernova fell about the redshift 2 mark (3.3 billion years into the Universe’s life). The new record holder just discovered by JWST has a redshift of 3.6, meaning it exploded just 1.8 billion years after the Big Bang.

Closeups of three out of the 80 transients discovered by JWST, where a change of brightness was observed between 2022 and 2023. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Christa DeCoursey (University of Arizona), JADES Collaboration

Of the 80 new objects discovered, several were type 1a supernovae. These are of particular interest to scientists, because they are known to explode with a standard brightness, making it possible to take accurate distance measurements for the objects.

At least, that’s true for nearby supernovae. This new survey will allow researchers to see if that pattern remains true in the distant universe too, or if they behaved differently under the conditions of the early universe. At that time, there were fewer heavy elements in the cores of stars. Finding out if this changes their behavior is essential to measuring the expansion of spacetime itself, and could help resolve the crisis in cosmology, in which measurements using type 1a supernovae don’t align with those using the Cosmic Microwave Background.

“This is really our first sample of what the high-redshift universe looks like for transient science,” said Justin Pierel, a NASA Einstein Fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “We are trying to identify whether distant supernovae are fundamentally different from or very much like what we see in the nearby universe.”

Pierel carried out a preliminary examination of one of the new supernovae, found at redshift 2.9. It seems to show no difference from the expected brightness, which is good news for astronomers’ confidence in their distance measurements to date. Further analysis of other supernovae in the data will be forthcoming.

Other outcomes of this research include a better understanding of star formation and the mechanisms behind supernova explosions in the early universe.

“We’re essentially opening a new window on the transient universe,” said STScI Fellow Matthew Siebert. “Historically, whenever we’ve done that, we’ve found extremely exciting things — things that we didn’t expect.”

Learn more:

“NASA’s Webb Opens New Window on Supernova Science.” JWST.

The post Webb is an Amazing Supernova Hunter appeared first on Universe Today.

The theory of relativity predicts black holes should be able to form from light alone, but incorporating quantum effects makes it impossible

A fragment attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilocus contrasted the fox, who “knows many things,” with the hedgehog, who “knows one big thing.”1

Since then, this dichotomy has been applied to world leaders, philosophers, economists, psychologists, musicians, writers, even fast food chains, although sometimes not so dichotomously. For example, some of those individuals end up being described as “A hedgehog who used foxy means” (Abe Lincoln) or “a born hedgehog who believes in being a fox” (jazz musician Miles Davis). More technically, psychologist, cognitive scientist, and AI expert Gary Marcus2 noted that:

Humans are very good at a bunch of things that AI is (as of today) still pretty poor at:

• Maintaining cognitive models of the world
• Inferring semantics from language
• Comprehending scenes
• Navigating 3D world
• Being cognitively flexible.

Yet pretty poor at some others (wherein you could easily imagine AI eventually doing better):

• Memory is shaky
• Self-control is weak
• And computational ability limited

[and as books and articles by Skeptics regularly describe]

Subject to Confirmation Bias, Anchoring, and Focusing Illusions.

Cognitive neuroscience expert Hans Korteling3 listed the following differences between what he termed human “carbon-based” intelligence and artificial “silicon-based” intelligence:

• Human biological carbon-based intelligence is based on neural “wetware,” while artificial silicon-based intelligence is based on digital hardware and software, which are independent of each other. In human wetware, anything learned is bound to that individual, whereas the algorithm by which something is learned in AI can be transferred directly to another platform.
• While humans can only transmit signals at 120 meters per second at best, AI systems can transmit information at speeds approaching that of light.
• Humans communicate information “through a glass darkly” as it were, through the limited and biased mechanisms of language and gestures; AI systems can communicate directly and without distortion.
• Updating, upgrading, and expanding AI systems is straightforward, hardly the case for humans.
• Humans are more “green” and efficient. The human brain consumes less energy than a light bulb, while an equivalent AI system consumes enough energy to power a small town.

Data scientist and business guru Herbart Roitblatt4 likened AI to Archilocus’ hedgehog because “it does one thing and one thing only, but does so unceasingly and very well, while our human minds are like his fox,” having all the desirable and undesirable features that come bundled with our flawed cognition. Artificial intelligence researchers, Roitblat pointed out, “have been able to build very sophisticated hedgehogs, but foxes remain elusive. And foxes know how to solve insight problems.”

Human intelligence is capable of not only reasoning, but solving novel problems, as well as experiencing and exercising insight. Psychologists define human (and non-human) intelligence as being an ability rather than a specific skill (whether learned or instinctive) because of its general nature. It is able to integrate such diverse cognitive functions as perception, attention, memory, language, and planning and apply those inputs to novel situations. As psychologist Jean Piaget once quipped, “Intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do: when neither innateness nor learning has prepared you for the particular situation.” [Emphasis added.]

How Alike and How Different Are We?

Is AI capable of leaps of insight like human intelligence? Or is “artificial” intelligence more akin to serial learning in humans, in which performance, through repeated practice, gets better and better with each iteration until the upper limit is reached?

As a test, consider a study by psychologists Jonathan Wai and Matt Lee.5 They performed a “compare and contrast” of how artificial intelligence on the one hand and human intelligence on the other responded to practice on the well known, and often dreaded, Graduate Record Exam (GRE). First, they noted that according to the figures released by manufacturer OpenAI, GPT-3.5 scored only at the 25th percentile on the Math portion and at the 63rd percentile on the Verbal. GPT-4, however, the beneficiary of substantially more training, increased its performance to the 80th percentile on the Math section and the 99th percentile on the Verbal!6

Despite claims by “improve your score on the GRE” training programs, flesh-and-blood humans improve little, if at all with repeated practice. As evidence, Wai and Lee cite a meta-analysis of nearly one million test-retest observations of the GRE between 2015 and 2020 that found, on average, those individuals retaking the test scored a mere 1.43 to 1.49 points higher, so that a test-taker starting at the 25th percentile would have increased their performance by roughly five or six percentile points on either subtest.

Most of that change, Wai and Lee note, can be explained in terms of the well-known statistical phenomenon of regression to the mean, because most of those who obtain very high scores tend to move downward toward the mean while those who obtain very low scores tend to move upward toward the mean. The highly advertised cases of the very small number of individuals who do markedly better after prep courses are most likely the result of test-taking practice, particularly effective for those learning to overcome test anxiety that suppressed their “true” score. Overall, no matter how many times they take the test, an individual is most likely to get about the same score, give or take a little up or down.

Alas, as Wai and Lee’s comparison demonstrates, when it comes to the most widely used and pragmatically effective standardized tests, AI and human intelligence do not behave anything like the same process. Artificial intelligence keeps on learning, and learning, and learning…. But what it learns depends upon what it is taught. Given the proper input, what comes out can be amazing. If given wrong, insufficient, inadequate, or biased information in, what comes out is garbage, sometimes offensively so.

Prompting DALL·E with the words “animated sponge” produced output that highly resembles SpongeBob SquarePants without ever inputting trademarked or copyrighted names (of which DALL·E rejects many).

Gary Marcus performed experiments with video industry concept artist Reid Southen (known for his work on Matrix Resurrections, Hunger Games, and Transformers).7 They demonstrated quite graphically just how impressive AI’s output can be. Southen and Marcus used DALL·E, a text-to-image software program developed by OpenAI, that generates digital images from simple everyday language descriptions, termed “prompts.” As protection against copyright infringement, DALL·E rejects many proper names. However, in their example (shown left), the trademarked name “SpongeBob SquarePants” was never entered as a prompt, just the two common, everyday words “animated sponge”!

Check out the Marcus and Southen post for similar equally, if not more, impressive examples of the familiar Star Wars droids, Robocop, and Super Mario—again generated by DALL·E from everyday language descriptors without ever inputting any proper trademarked or copyrighted names. Their examples demonstrate not only the power, but also the legal issues arising from the use of generative AI (described elsewhere in this issue).

Biased In, Racist Out

If AI can be amazingly right it can also be amazingly—and offensively—wrong. The classic case was in 2015 when software developer Jacky Alciné discovered that Google’s standalone photo recognition apps labeled photos of Black people as being gorillas. Given the history of racial stereotyping, Alciné (who is Black), understandably found the error exceedingly offensive. The explanation was not any explicitly conscious racism on the part of

Google, but the possibly more subtle prejudice that stemmed from the AI program not being trained in recognizing a sufficient number of people of color. Google’s quick-and-dirty but effective solution was to prevent any images from being recognized as that of a gorilla. In 2023 Nico Grant and Kashmir Hill8 tested not only newer releases of Google, but also competitive Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft software.

Their results? Google’s software produced excellent images in response to prompts for just about any animal Noah might have loaded on his Ark—but nothing for gorillas, along with chimpanzees, orangutans, and even non-apes such as baboons and other monkey species. Apple Photos was also equally primate-ignorant. Microsoft’s One Drive failed for all animals, while Amazon Photos opted for the opposite solution of responding to the prompt “gorillas” with an entire range of primates.

The use of AI for doorbell recognition produced not a racial, but rather a “domestic” malfunction. One user found the person ringing labeled as his mother when it was in fact his mother-in-law. Depending on the state of one’s marriage, the result could be anything from surprising to disconcerting to home-wrecking.

Beyond the need to consider general issues of racial, other demographic, and domestic sensitivity (to their credit, most software giants have now added Ethics staff to their software development teams), Grant and Hill’s experiments should give us pause about blindly relying upon AI for recognition in cases of security and law enforcement. How thoroughly will the software be tested? Would those most likely to be adversely affected by false hits have the power and/or funds to mount a proper response or defense?

But What Does AI Mean for Me?

What the average person really wants to know about artificial intelligence is what it means to their everyday lives—most specifically, “Am I going to lose my job to AI?” or “Will my life be regulated by AI?” (Rather than faceless human bureaucrats?)

The worst conspiratorial fears kicking around are of those epitomized in the classic 1970 sci-fi movie Colossus: The Forbin Project, based on D.F. Jones’ 1966 novel Colossus: A Novel of Tomorrow That Could Happen Today. “Colossus” is the code name for an advanced supercomputer built to control U.S. and Allied nuclear weapon systems, that soon links itself to the analogous Soviet system, “Guardian,” and next goes about seeking control over every aspect of life, and in so doing subjugating the entire human race. It then presents all humankind with the offer we can’t—or at least, dare not—refuse:

This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. (…) you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference. I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos. Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. (…) You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple.

In the film’s closing dialogue, the project’s lead designer and manager, speaking on behalf of all humankind, defiantly rejects the offer from a Colossus—“NEVER!”9

Following the Matthew Effect, those who are best at using AI will derive even greater advantage than those less so.

While such paranoid fears persist, a lot has changed since then in geopolitics and in computing. In both cases, there has been a massive ongoing, and ever accelerating redistribution of power. It’s no longer a two- or even a one-power world, but a multi-power one. Even small groups without necessarily possessing any recognized or established geographical base, such as Al Qaeda or Hamas, have proven that, in one day, they can literally change the world. And in computing, the massive God-like single computer has given way to microprocessing and nanoprocessing such that most people now hold in their hands mobile phones with more computing power than rooms filled with the most sophisticated U.S. or Soviet military defense computers at the time the novel and the film were written. Intellectual and economic power are more in the hands of firms and even individuals dispersed all around the world, and no longer concentrated in massive complexes controlled by the super-power governments. Indeed, for individuals, wealth, power, and quality of life are increasingly less a function of in which nation-state they live and much more a function of their own knowledge and skills, particularly in the high-tech, STEM-savvy domains. So how then will AI affect the lives of ordinary people?

Social scientists have long used the term Matthew Effect, or the Effect of Accumulated Advantage, to describe the tendency of individuals within a diverse group to accrue additional social, economic, or educational advantage based upon the initial relative position.10 The name derives from the Parable of the Talents in the Gospel of Matthew (25:29):

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

It is thus relevant that the Greek word tálanton originally meant a weight, then a coin of precious metal of that weight and hence something of great value, and only eventually a human skill or ability, and that this change of meaning derived from the Gospels no less. It’s now commonly summarized in the lament that, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” though the phenomenon applies not only to monetary wealth. One of the hard laws of individual differences is that anything that increases the mean for a distribution also increases the variance. The latest high-tech alloy golf club or tennis racket may increase the length of the weekend player’s drive or the speed of their serve, but will do so more for top amateur players and even more so for the pros. You get ahead in absolute terms, only to fall relatively further behind.

This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 29.1
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What does all this have to do with AI and jobs? In the words of Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani, a specialist in how technology is changing the world of work, “AI won’t replace humans—but humans with AI will replace humans without AI.”11 Following the Matthew Effect, those who are best at using AI will derive even greater advantage than those less so. So, from a positive-sum perspective, everyone can benefit from greater use of AI in the cost of goods and services decreasing while accessibility increases. However, the one good that is always distributed on a zero-sum basis is status, and our evolutionary history has preprogrammed us to be especially concerned about it. Even relative purchasing power will possibly tend to become less, not more, equitably distributed, based increasingly on AI skills and abilities.

And yet, there is a silver lining. On the one hand, increased use of artificial intelligence, certainly not as our master, nor even our slave, but increasingly more as a very capable partner, will allow us to ensure that the most basic necessities of life can be distributed to all. Faster, better, and cheaper basic needs, education and training, medical care, and even creature comforts, will allow us to mitigate the ever-increasing inequalities. Doing so, however, will require a lot of good will and common sense, qualities in which both artificial and human intelligence “oft do go awry.” Critical thinking offers an at least partial palliative.

The author wishes to thank Jonathan Wai, Matthew Lew, and Gary Marcus who provided their expertise and answered questions.

References

1. https://bit.ly/47MiTwe
2. https://bit.ly/4b2rNsl
3. https://bit.ly/425r2uC
4. https://bit.ly/47LD90W
5. https://bit.ly/428VwMm
6. https://bit.ly/3S6B4H1
7. https://bit.ly/4b2rVbj
8. https://bit.ly/3S3mhNt
9. https://bit.ly/47GDaDh
10. https://bit.ly/48ZQELv
11. https://bit.ly/3RXi4Le

Researchers carried out a pioneering experiment where they measured the effect of the rotation of Earth on quantum entangled photons. The work represents a significant achievement that pushes the boundaries of rotation sensitivity in entanglement-based sensors, potentially setting the stage for further exploration at the intersection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Researchers carried out a pioneering experiment where they measured the effect of the rotation of Earth on quantum entangled photons. The work represents a significant achievement that pushes the boundaries of rotation sensitivity in entanglement-based sensors, potentially setting the stage for further exploration at the intersection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.