BC SCIENCE
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

It is astonishing that most of cognitive science ignores an obvious reality. That there are two kinds of humans.

 Tomasello has a very credible hypothesis that what distinguishes humans from the great apes is the inclination towards shared intentional behavior. What is innate is the disposition and like personalities, it is what defines our cognition as we grow.
If cognitive preference is so critical in cognitive development then why is it that we seem to have completely ignored the difference in cognitive preferences between men and women?
Humans are that species of primates that wandered out into the savannah. The savannah is different enough from a dense jungle to exert the evolutionary pressures that encourage the development of planning and forecasting skills.
Furthermore, human infants required a disproportional amount of effort to rear. This meant the specialization of roles between women who were responsible for rearing offspring and men who were responsible for bringing home the bacon. Failure in either implied death.
To be competent in child rearing, one is constantly challenged in trying to understand the needs of a child. A good mother is one that best understands the needs of a child and how best to accommodate those needs. Needs here isn't confined to immediate needs.
In contrast, the male human in the savannah needs to figure out where the next meal is coming from. In the savannah a human is one of the least physically gifted animals. Humans are relatively slow bipedal mammals.
The only animal perhaps with an approximate speed as humans are bigger mammals. The kind of mammals that can gore and kill a human. So when humans went hunting, there was a real possibility that it would be their last hunt.
So how does a human conjure up the courage to attack another animal that can kill them? They need to develop a kind of cognitive skill that is the opposite of empathy. That is, apathy. A detachment from knowing the consequences of being killed or maimed for life.
So what we thus have are primates a inclination towards shared intentional behavior (i.e. cooperation) that is also differentiated by a preference for empathy or a preference for detachment.
I use the word preference here because humans are complex enough not to be completely devoid of empathy or completely devoid of the ability to detach themselves.
Humans like dogs, dolphins and killer whales hunt as a group. The most cognitively sophisticated of animals are the kinds that need to coordinate a group that seek out energy resources that are also other autonomous things.
Well, it turns out that the most important gender of a social species are the females. We can make an analogy with the human body. Our reproductive cells are encapsulated away from the other cells in the body that is doing all the work.
Biologically, the males of the species are the venturers and also the sacrificial lambs of the species. The females are the ones that are to be protected at all costs. The information to replicate individuals is only available to females.
Organic social groups therefore tend to be matriarchal in nature. Even in human experience, it is usually the women in the family that ensure the maintenance of bonds between other relatives.
But an unnatural thing happened with the scaling up of social groups into much larger societies. The power dynamics of the group changes because the mechanisms of social cohesion has to change from the order of O(n^2) to O(n log n)
Human shared intentionality is made more effective through the use of language. The standardization of languages allows larger groups to communicate. The codification of language allows for information to transcend generations.
The initial usefulness of the codification of language (i.e. writing it down) is to preserve legacy. Legacy in the form of ownership. Writing information of ownership on paper is necessary for resolving future disputes. In fact, going meta means writing down the rules of dispute.
Civilizations scale because norms are written down and agreed upon by their citizens. Not everything can be expressed and written down. These are the tacit norms of society that is carried from one generation to another through practices and rituals.
Now one can make the case that the switch in power dynamics from women to men is a consequence of the written word. See: https://t.co/z5S17hY5Zu
The written word emphasizes detachment instead of empathy. In C.S.Peirce formulation of signs, symbols are detached from individual grounding and are instead understood through norms shared by a collective.
The symbol grounding at the level of the collective is different from the symbol grounding at the level of the individual. The effect of abstraction is that the concerns of the individual are coarse grained away in favor of the concerns of the collective.
Because our thought processes are so dependent on the language that influences our thoughts, modern humans are unable to intuit what they've lost through the habit of using symbols to express thought.
What was lost was empathy. But here's the rub, language is not the core of general intelligence but rather empathy is at the core of general intelligence. Humans by virtual of being shared intentional beings require empathy to find meaning in this world.
Humans who commit suicide are the ones who momentarily discover the lack of meaning in this world. How does that happen if not for the same mechanism that allows for the detachment from this world?
Side note: The danger in American society is that the culture is verbal in nature and has a propensity to favor symbols over empathy. What happens when those symbols are discovered to be lies?
Humans are innately equipped with two kinds of minds. The empathic mind and the symbolic mind. The former addresses complexities of human relationships and the latter abstracts away the complexity the arises from combinatorial explosions of states of affairs.
Computers have shown that we can mechanize the symbolic mind. However, as GPT-3 has shown, the mechanized symbolic mind is devoid of meaning. It requires the empathic mind to discover meaning in the words.
That is because it is the empathic mind that is actually embodied, embedded, extended, enactive and affective in this world. The purpose of things that are digital is to transcend our legacy into the futire. The purpose of things that are analog is to live in the present.
Join me in this journey here: https://t.co/CKl7IvNWys
@threadreaderapp unroll

More from Carlos E. Perez

Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
"Three modes of evolution have thus been brought before us: evolution by fortuitous variation, evolution by mechanical necessity, and evolution by creative love." - C.S. Peirce 1893

These words were spoken prior to the discovery of quantum mechanics and computation. What if Peirce knew of these discoveries? If so, how would he have conceptualized these evolutionary modes differently?

I believe there is an extreme benefit in revisiting the writings of great minds in the past and refining them based on scientific discoveries that occurred only in their futures.

wrote the book "A New Kind of Science" that speculated how science would be different if computers existed prior to calculus.

In the same way, let me explore C.S.Peirce ideas of evolutionary philosophy from the vantage point of knowing of the discoveries of quantum physics and universal computation.
HISTORY
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
I suspect that Emergentism and Enactivism have very little appeal in a world dominated by Reductionists.

To get funding one must present a reductionist idea. A perfect example of this is the European Blue Brain project.

I also suspect that pitches that show how one can get a competitive advantage over the rest of humanity has a much greater appeal than pitches that show how one can that has a unified view of humanity.

My book 'The Deep Learning Playbook' out sold my other book 'Artificial Intuition' by a metric mile. I am however more proud of the latter book.

That's because the word 'playbook' conveys a thing that once possessed gives one new power. In contrast, the word 'intuition' does not feel like a think but more of a process (a thought process). Processes don't appear like things that can be owned.
GOVERNMENT
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Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Conscious and conscience are two words that share the same origin but mean two different things. The bias against explanations of consciousness comes from the conflation of these two words.

In addition, the question of free will is also adjacent to the notion of both consciousness and conscience. The ideas of consciousness, conscience, and free will serve as the foundation of justice in our civilization. (care to add another?)

So when we see people fail to condemn an act that is morally repugnant, we wonder if they have a conscience. But we don't wonder if they are conscious. When we incarcerate a person, we ask if they had "free will" but we inquire if they were 'conscious' during the crime.

The presence of consciousness and free will imply sentience. Which is the same as conscious and sounds just like a conscience. Our biases have muddled all the words together to likely mean the same thing.

The words that we use today continue to evolve. The same word can have a different meaning in the past. The word empathy is a recent word invented in the early 1900s. Originally it meant to place oneself from the viewpoint of a thing. Today we don't use it in this way.
LIFE
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
The Nature versus Nurture is a debate about scientific doctrine. It is a debate about the correct way of explanation for cognition.

The Representation versus Non-Representation shares the same debate. It is also about the correct way of explanation for cognition.

It is also the difference between thinking in nouns versus thinking in verbs. Nature and Representation have deep roots in Western thinking. It is a functionalist and reductionist way of thinking that meets its limits when analyzing complex adaptive systems.

It is perhaps due to this Western bias that concepts from the study of complex systems have had little traction in modern society. It is of course, more than a Western bias, but a human bias to seek out simple causal explanations of this world.

But the world is complex and messy. Spiral dynamics which is an evolutionary model of individuals and society explains how models of the world shape ourselves and our civilization.
SCIENCE
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Star Wars has a simple dichotomy between good and evil. But as the stories have evolved, the nuances between these distinct poles also has acquired a richness that is hard to dismiss.

In the latest trilogy, we discover a dysfunctional civilization even after the defeat of the empire. The argument that the remnants of the empire make is that the galaxy stills seeks a need for order. Order and chaos are at seperate poles where evil is aligned with order.

We know however from D&D alignment charts that good and evil, order and chaos can exist in many combinations:


It is also interesting that the Sith (the Evil sorcerers) only come in pairs as opposed to the Jedi that can be entire communities. Apparently, to sustain evil one has to restrict agency and individuality to just a few. A community of evil-doers very quickly turns on itself.

So at one extreme we have evil, order, individuality and at the other we have good, chaos, collective. Which brings up the question, what is the definition of evil and good? Something that we took for granted ever since the first Star Wars movie.
MOVIE

More from Science

Corey Lynn \U0001f64f\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
Corey Lynn 🙏🇺🇸...
@CoreysDigs
1) OBSERVATION: The frequencies are changing. I would have to assess stats on the electromagnetic field to see its fluctuations. All I know is, I am highly sensitive to energy/frequencies, and they are changing, because…

2) 2 Weeks ago, my dog was effected by it as well. He is hearing things that aren’t technically audible. I can tell by his body language and sounds. One week ago I began feeling a pressure in my head and ears. It wasn’t painful at all, but it was intense for a bit.

3) It reminded me of taking off in an airplane a bit. I felt like I was in a vacuum. It went on and off for a couple of days. I’ve picked up on frequencies and high pitched sounds (not audible to most) for 30 years, and today my right ear began to ring for longer than usual.

4) This is nothing unusual for me, with exception of the duration. This happens often with me. No, it’s not tinnitus. Only this time, when I spoke, there was reverb creating a high pitch in my ear from my voice. This lasted for about 30 minutes. It did not hurt, just annoying.

5) So yes, the frequencies are changing. What this means exactly, I am unsure of at the moment. Some will say electromagnetic fields, others will say ascension, and some will say pole shift. I honestly can’t say at this very moment.
SCIENCE
Stephen Barlow
Stephen Barlow
@SteB777
1) Science denial is destroying our societies, our civilization. Various vested interests, usually right wing ideologues find various scientific facts and information contrary to their agenda, so through propaganda they are orchestrating the public into denying this science.

2) We are seeing this with regard to the COVID virus, where a range of denial is being promoted, ranging from absolute denial the virus exists, to different levels of denial, such as only some people are vulnerable to the virus, to facilitate business as usual.

3) For a long time, to promote business as usual, vested interests have been promoting the denial of the climate and ecological crisis through propaganda. The aim being to create a large enough body of public denial to prevent action which can change anything.

4) We have seen similar patterns over a long time, such as when tobacco companies promoted denial of the emerging scientific evidence of how harmful and addictive tobacco smoking was. This further denial uses exactly the same methods.

5) Understandably, the public can't be educated about everything and have to rely on experts to inform them of concerns about threats to public safety. Malicious vested interests take advantage of this by using pseudo-experts to misinform the public.
SCIENCE
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Jason Hickel
Jason Hickel
@jasonhickel
Here's more on the new mitigation scenario for 1.5C. How does it work? What would society look like? Are we willing to do what's required to stop climate breakdown? See thread.


1. Most models assume we need to keep growing the economy indefinitely. The problem is this makes it impossible to transition to zero emissions quickly enough; so they speculate on geoengineering and negative-emissions technologies to save us. Scientists reject this as too risky.

2. By contrast, this scenario proposes that high-income countries don't *need* more growth, and can scale down unnecessary production and consumption. This reduces energy demand (from 140 EJ in 2020 to 40 EJ in 2050), and enables a rapid transition to renewable energy.

3. What does it require? In the global North (Annex 1 countries)
•a shift from private cars to public transportation
•reduction in flights
•smaller average house size

Meanwhile, consumption in the global South (non-Annex 1 countries) rises to converge.


4. Significant reduction of aggregate material use. How? Longer product lifespans; regionalization of production and consumption; ban on advertising; a shift in taxes from labour to resources. All of this allows us to reduce ground freight, which cuts energy use.
SCIENCE
Benedikt Kuhnhaeuser
Benedikt Kuhnhaeuser
@BenKuhnhaeuser
The calamoid palms 🌴 have over 500 species spread across the world, but their higher-level relationships were a bit of a mystery. Until now.

Out today in #MolecularPhylogeneticsAndEvolution:

A robust phylogenomic framework for the calamoid palms https://t.co/JiCbSUlheH

1/10


First some background info, so that you know what we are talking about:

Calamoid palms look a bit like snakes 🐍 (don't they!?!), because their fruits are covered in overlapping scales. And with their often fierce spines, they are equally fearsome. 😱

2/10


They are classified into 17 genera, 10 subtribes and 3 tribes. They have an amazing variety of growth forms, from stemless to climbing to tree habit. 🌱🌴

3/10


But as I said, their relationships have been a bit of a mystery. Here's the varying relationships previous studies found over the last 20 years.

4/10


We tackled this mystery with a phylogenomic approach: we sampled almost a thousand genes (a hundred times more than previous studies!) of 75 species representing all calamoid tribes, subtribes and genera.

The resulting data matrix is pretty massive...

5/10
SCIENCE
Dr Mark D. Scherz
Dr Mark D. Scherz
@MarkScherz
It's another stunning Malagasy #dartfrog/#poisonfrog for today's #FrogOfTheDay, #42 Mantella cowani Boulenger, 1882! A highly threatened, actively conserved and managed frog from the highlands of central #Madagascar
#MadagascarFrogs
📸D.Edmonds/CalPhotos


This thread will cover only a tiny fraction of the work on Mantella cowanii because, being so charismatic and threatened, it has received quite a bit of attention.
#MadagascarFrogs

We start at the very beginning: the first specimens, two females, were collected by Reverend Deans Cowan in East Betsileo, Madagascar, and sent to London, where George Albert Boulenger described the species in 1882.
#MadagascarFrogs


Boulenger placed the species in his new genus, Mantella, along with ebenaui, betsileo, and madagascariensis. He recognised that the other Malagasy poison frogs were distinct from the Dendrobates of the Americas, although he did keep them in the Dendrobatidae.
#MadagascarFrogs

As more specimens were collected, it became clear that the species was highly variable. In 1978, Jean Guibé wrote with interest about this variability, describing a new subspecies, M. cowani nigricans—today a full species. #MadagascarFrogs
https://t.co/dwaHMbrYbj
SCIENCE

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Andy McCabe has some explaining to do.


Andrew McCabe was reported to the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs for making an unauthorized leak of classified info to the media about @GenFlynn in early February 2017.

If you’ve wondered exactly who it was who leaked the classified info from that intelligence report on @GenFlynn’s phone calls with then-Russian ambassador Kislyak to the media, you are right now seeing a huge honking clue who it was.

To those responding to this info by sneering "Nothing's gonna happen":

Up.

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You just might be too stupid to be following me.

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Dr. Jane Clare Jones
@janeclarejones
So, on the subject of bonkers hyperbolic pretzeling over the Bell judgement, Grace 'destroy books I don't like & make inappropriate jokes about sterilising teenage girls' Lavery has some thoughts.

Tell me why my feminism is wrong Grace.

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A high court in the UK made a delimited judgment about teenager's ability to consent to puberty blockers. This puts all trans people everywhere in the world at risk.

Because if any human anywhere has any thoughts that deviate in any way from the rote line dictated by

the trans rights movement, this puts all trans people everywhere in mortal danger.

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necessary material evidence of the ontology of gender identity.

That is, children are being medicalised to provide evidence to underwrite adults identities.

Nothing to see here.
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Anshul Pandey
@Anshulspiritual
BRAHMA VAIVARTA PURAN: IMPORTANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS.

This Puran introduces us to way of Vedas. On the request of Narad Muni Bhagwan Saavarni had preached this Puran. It is a summary of Dharma, Arth, Moksha etc.


Listening to this Puran one gets automatically attached to Vishnu and Shiva and realize that there is no difference between them. Vyasji divided this book into four parts. It has eighteen thousand shlokas. This whole book is in the form of dialogue between Suutji and Maharishi's.

The first part Brahmkhand, consists of Shrishti description. Here Shri is known as Para Brahma and description of Gokul is also mentioned, It also narrates the argument between Brahma and Narad in which both were defeated, and then Narad went to Shiva to attain more gyan.

Shivji advised him to go to Bhagwan Saavarni for this. Narad goes to Saavarni ashram to seek Knowledge and is totally amazed by the sorroundings.

Next is Prakriti khand which consists of dialogue between Narad and Saavarni where they discuss the

Importance of Shri Krishna through various stories. Then there is the discussion of Prakriti and its various hues. Listening to this gets you wealth.
Next is Ganesh Khand which describes the Punyak vrat done by Parvati ji. After this it narrates the birth of Kartikeya and Ganesh.
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Kaspars Ozolins
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THREAD: Meditations on marriage metaphors in Ruth

The book of Ruth is, of course, a story about a beautiful marriage. But even before the courtship and the wedding and the important genealogy at the end, we find interesting language that is strikingly reminiscent of Genesis 2:24


That important verse reads:

'Therefore a man shall leave [יַֽעֲזָב] his father and his mother and hold fast [וְדָבַ֣ק] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'

The verb עזב can be quite strong in force. For example, Joseph leaves behind [וַיַּעֲזֹ֤ב] his garment as he flees from Pharaoh's wife's sexual advances. Countless times, Israel is depicted abandoning the LORD, for example in Judg 2:12 [וַיַּעַזְב֞וּ], and going after other gods.

Likewise, the verb דבק is rather striking. Lot is mortified of disaster overtaking him [תִּדְבָּקַ֥נִי] as he flees from Sodom. Israel is commanded in Deut 10:20 to cling fast [תִדְבָּ֔ק] to the LORD and serve him and swear by his name.

Together they illustrate how radical God designed marriage to be. Marriage is a real severing of family relations in order to form a new, permanent bond with another human being.

Something very similar to this takes places in Ruth's life.
HISTORY