“A crime happens, and there is a witness. Instead of a sketch artist drawing a portrait of the suspect based on verbal descriptions, the police hook the witness up to EEG equipment. The witness is asked to picture the perpetrator, and from the EEG data, a face appears. … Is it mind reading? Sort of.” And Canadian researchers are just beginning to make it a reality.
Category: ideas
Ireland Makes Big Investments In Teaching Philosophy In Schools
President Michael Higgins began calling for philosophy to be introduced to secondary schools a few years ago, citing the need for more critical thinking. Temple Carrig began piloting the first course in 2014. This school year, nearly 60 schools began offering either philosophy electives or philosophy-based modules within other courses. In November, Higgins announced the Irish Young Philosopher Awards, which have drawn applicants from 30 schools.
Rousseau – That Famous Enlightenment Thinker – Advocated Book Burning
Whew, Jean-Jacques, WYD? “Rousseau did not pull any punches: according to him, far from contributing to the purification of morals, the sciences and the arts had had the opposite effect. The progress brought about by the restoration of letters in the Renaissance had only been superficial, exclusively affecting appearances; in reality, letters provoke the degeneration of morals, today just as in Antiquity.”
Why Is This The Very First Year A Woman Is Nominated For Cinematography?
The numbers are, to put it mildly, shite. “That gives us 85 percent male at our most conservative estimate and around 91 percent looking at our two more probabilistic estimates. That would make professional cinematography and its related fields more male than barbers, civil engineers, police officers, taxi drivers and clergy, according to Department of Labor statistics.”
Your Colleagues Probably Know You Way Better Than You Know Yourself
Adam Grant: “As a social scientist, if I want to get a read on your personality, I could ask you to fill out a survey on how stable, dependable, friendly, outgoing, and curious you are. But I would be much better off asking your coworkers to rate you on those same traits: They’re up to 12 times more accurate. They can see things that you can’t or won’t – and these studies reveal that whatever you know about yourself that your coworkers don’t is basically irrelevant to your job performance.”
Paul Allen Invests $125 Million In Teaching AI Common Sense
In some ways, an AI system is smarter than the average child – it can read and store massive amounts of scientific research, for example. But it’s lacking the common sense that most children have, Allen said in a statement. “If we want AI to approach human abilities and have the broadest possible impact in research, medicine and business, we need to fundamentally advance AI’s common sense abilities,” he said.
Is The Octopus Really The Resourceful, Impish Genius Of The Invertebrate World?
Videos and anecdotes of octopuses escaping from predators (and research labs), manipulating tools (and researchers), and so on have made the clever cephalopods the internet’s favorite animals after cat and dogs. In a notable bit of debunking (or party-pooping) – subtitled “It’s not a crafty, soulful genius. It’s dinner.” – Daniel Engber argues that we shouldn’t overestimate these mollusks.
Distracted? We Need A “Slow Thought” Movement. And Here’s A Manifesto
Slow Thought is a porous way of thinking that is non-categorical, open to contingency, allowing people to adapt spontaneously to the exigencies and vicissitudes of life. Italians have a name for this: arrangiarsi – more than ‘making do’ or ‘getting by’, it is the art of improvisation, a way of using the resources at hand to forge solutions. The porosity of Slow Thought opens the way for potential responses to human predicaments.
The Artist Whose Medium Is Big Data
Laurie Frick imagines a future in which your smart watch will know how your body is responding to someone. Then it will combine with Facebook data about their personality. And that will let you know whether that person makes you lethargic, raises your blood pressure or depresses you. “If you start training people that, ‘Look at what’s happening to your inflammation levels or whatever. This is the best thing for you and you can let go of the guilt.’ “
The Medieval Origins Of The Word Craft, Not To Mention Craft Beer
You can start a big fight by calling something a craft instead of an art, but that’s not how it got started. “The Anglo-Saxon word ‘craeft’ is distinct from our modern word ‘craft’ in spirit and in practice. ‘Craeft’ means having the wisdom of one’s surroundings, understanding nature and the seasons, and knowing one’s materials, as well as how objects and systems fall apart.”