Discovery could lead...

David Brin said in some interview the URL of which I can't find just now, something to the effect of "Science has become a spectator sport...". He said this in context of the internet and all the science news sites (and blogs, I'm sure). And it certainly seems true. Even Topolog is a commentator on this new "sport".

Now, my idea on this post was not so much to discuss this philosophical concept as the frustration of trying to follow all the stuff that gets continuously thrown up by so many commentators. Kurtzweil's singularity is taking it's time and we seem to be stuck in the event horizon of "...discovery could lead...blahblahblah". Try googling for the title of this post and you'll find

Results 1 - 10 of about 46,300 for "discovery could lead". (0.16 seconds)

entries.

It is a self-appointed task of this author to follow some of these discoveries and find out if any of them do actually lead to...whatever they promised (or carefully didn't promise but definitely hinted towards.) Or at least try to trace a path into the above mentioned singularity...but that may be a bit of a...stretch. Oh dear....

Duckbill dinosaur mystery finally solved

One for Thomas the tyrannosaur...

Duckbill dinosaur mystery finally solved:

"From the brain case, there's no indication that the nerves curled upward into the crest, as we would expect if the crest was used for the sense of smell," Evans says. "It appears the brain changed very little from their non-crested dinosaur ancestors, and the primary region of the sense of smell was located right in front of the eyes -- and, coincidentally, that's where it is in birds, crocodiles, mammals and basically all four-legged animals."

The title is a bit misleading. They only rule out one of several theories. Still, they do it quite thoroughly

Technorati tags: paleontology, dinosaurs, hadrosaurs

Politics and reasoning

Emory study reveals the political brain:

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory who led the study. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up.

Nothing new, really, but nice to have a scientific basis for my understanding of politics, to have my suspicions confirmed.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," he said.

Technorati tags: neurology

Title 1 of 3

I have no idea why, all of a sudden (geologically speaking), I get three titles to each entry. All in different styles and colours. I only type the title in once...really...

First Impressions Of Beauty May Demonstrate Why The Pretty Prosper

First Impressions Of Beauty May Demonstrate Why The Pretty Prosper:

"Research has demonstrated time and again that there are tremendous social and economic benefits to being attractive," Olson said. "Attractive people are paid more, are judged more intelligent and will receive more attention in most facets of life.

"This favoritism, while poorly understood, seems to be innate and cross-cultural. Studies suggest that even infants prefer pretty faces," Olson said.

Go figure...

Technorati tags: neurology

Social and cultural evolution

Just a thought on cultural evolution (completely unrehearsed and with no quotable or linkable evidence):

Evolutionary list one of two:

• Approximately 300+ million years ago (please correct me if I'm wrong on any of these details, but it's not overly important just yet) amphibians were the dominant organisms on earth.
• Somewhere in the late Triassic dinosaurs came to prominence and "ruled" for, say 150 million years
• Then came mammals and they were the dominant organisms, since 65 million years ago (roughly; and I know insects have been around for most of this time, but somehow they don't get recognised as dominant organisms at any particular stage, go figure).
• Then, roughly (and I'm making a very wild stab in the dark here) 10000 years ago human culture came to dominate. Doesn't really matter when exactly, but human culture, as an organism, have certainly been the dominant and most influencial organism for the last 100 years. Surely?

Evolutionary list two of two:

• Humans are pretty unique in the evolutionary scheme of things for their adaptability (which is an attribute intricately and self-referentially linked to various other attributes, such as language, use-of-tools and culture).
• Western culture, as an organism, is very similar to humans in its evolutionary adaptability

I'm not making value judgements here, okay, so any comments on morals or ethics will probably be ignored. This is just a pattern I've noticed and anyone with some insight is welcome to comment. I'll do some more research and will have more to say about the matter in time.

Some links so long, garnered by a simple google search for "Cultural Evolution". Haven't done any reading of it yet...

• Social and cultural evolution
• Daniel Dennet:

  Cultures evolve. In one sense, this is a truism; in other senses, it asserts one or another controversial, speculative, unconfirmed theory of culture. Consider a cultural inventory of some culture at some time--say 1900AD. It should include all the languages, practices, ceremonies, edifices, methods, tools, myths, music, art, and so forth, that compose that culture. Over time, that inventory changes. Today, a hundred years later, some items will have disappeared, some multiplied, some merged, some changed, and many new elements will appear for the first time. A verbatim record of this changing inventory through history would not be science; it would be a data base. That is the truism: cultures evolve over time. Everybody agrees about that. Now let's turn to the controversial question: how are we to explain the patterns to be found in that data base? Are there any good theories or models of cultural evolution?

Technorati tags: evolution, cultural evolution, philosophy

Machines and objects to overtake humans on the Internet: ITU

BREITBART.COM - Machines and objects to overtake humans on the Internet: ITU

In a report entitled "Internet of Things", the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) outlined the expected next stage in the technological revolution where humans, electronic devices, inanimate objects and databases are linked by a radically transformed Internet.

Technorati tags: science, science fiction, artificial intelligence

Light is slowing down. E doesn't equal MC square

Treading the light fantastic: Einstein challenged - Science - Specials

Thought I'd start the year with something fundamental:

He believes that not long after the Big Bang light hit a "speed bump" and is, in fact, slowing down.

And I'll tell you what, if it had hit any of the speed bumps here in Grahamstown you can bet it'd be standing still. Which, come to think of it, time is certainly doing around here...

Technorati tags: physics, cosmology