New statistical research “reports a strong correlation within First World democracies between socioeconomic well-being and secularity. In short, prosperity is highest in societies where religion is practiced least. … Of particular note, the U.S. holds the distinction of most religious and least prosperous among the 17 countries included in the study.”
Category: ideas
Without Oxytocin, Would We Be Mired In Barbarism?
“Scientists have long known that the hormone plays essential physiological roles during birth and lactation, and animal studies have shown that oxytocin can influence behavior too…. Now a raft of new research in humans suggests that oxytocin underlies the twin emotional pillars of civilized life, our capacity to feel empathy and trust.”
How Our Brains Learned To Read
“Evidence suggests that reading – which depends on an alphabet, writing materials, papyrus and such – is only about 5000 years old. The brain in its modern form is about 200,000 years old, yet brain imaging shows reading taking place in the same way and in the same place in all brains.”
Is HAL Possible? Could Computer Networks Ultimately Think For Themselves?
“If the human brain is data being passed from neuron to neuron at its basic level and we can simulate that in a computer, shouldn’t a conscious mind start to emerge?” Not really: “The difference between simulated thinking and conscious thinking can be illustrated by thinking about the difference between a computer-simulated boat and a real one.”
Artificial Feline Intelligence: IBM Simulates A Cat’s Brain
“IBM announced this week that it has a computer system that can simulate the thinking power of a cat’s brain with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses. At just 4.5 percent of a human brain, the computer can sense, perceive, act, interact and process ideas without consuming a lot [of] energy.”
Crowdsourced Animation Through Facebook
With dozens of animators pitching in through a specially built Facebook application, the slick clip from the crowdsourcing specialists at Mass Animation is a rare “art by committee” success story.
How Will Religion Evolve? Maybe Into ‘The Church Of Green’
John Tierney: “Does religion have a future? Who looks more like an evolutionary dead end: the religious American or the agnostic European? Or will both give way to some sort of compromise? … One possibility that occurs to me is a version of environmentalism, but with better music and with rituals that are more elegant than sorting garbage.”
Better-Looking Athletes More Likely To Win
“Elite athletes distinguish themselves through hard work, grit and, most importantly, raw talent. However new research, along with a study conducted by New Scientist, points to another trait of the most accomplished jocks: a handsome face.” It seems that “the same genetic variations could influence both traits.”
Umberto Eco Considers The Nature Of Lists
The author sees lists as falling into two (very Eco-ist) categories: “those that evidence the ‘poetics of ‘everything included” and those that express the ‘poetics of the ‘etcetera’.” The former covers a finite number of items (as with a phone book) and aims for completeness; the latter (as with a medieval writer’s list of devils) “is limited only by the imagination’s disinclination to invent more.”
In Brains, Is Bigger Really Better? Consider The Insect World
Bees and ants, to name two, have famously complex behaviors and social structures governed by their tiny cerebella. “Instead of contributing intelligence, big brains might just help support bigger bodies, which have larger muscles to coordinate and more sensory information coming in. Like computers, … size might add storage capacity but [not] necessarily speed or usefulness.”