Scientists are abandoning conventional thinking to search for extraterrestrial creatures that bear little resemblance to Earthlings
Scientists Discover Planet Has Everything to Host ‘Earth-Like Life’ In Breakthrough
For the first time, scientists found that a rocky planet in the habitable zone of its star has an atmosphere. It’s the best place to look for alien biosignatures, scientists say.
What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools
Those who are convinced that there is more to things spend their time chasing it and not finding it often as not, and those who are convinced there isn't find themselves frustrated at the abyss.
Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research
Scientists are enthusiastically imagining ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) tools might improve research. Why are AI tools so attractive and what are the risks of implementing them across the research pipeline? Here we develop a taxonomy of scientists’ visions for AI, observing that their appeal comes from promises to improve productivity and objectivity by overcoming human shortcomings. But proposed AI solutions can also exploit our cognitive limitations, making us vulnerable to illusions of understanding in which we believe we understand more about the world than we actually do. Such illusions obscure the scientific community’s ability to see the formation of scientific monocultures, in which some types of methods, questions and viewpoints come to dominate alternative approaches, making science less innovative and more vulnerable to errors. The proliferation of AI tools in science risks introducing a phase of scientific enquiry in which we produce more but understand less. By analysing the appeal of these tools, we provide a framework for advancing discussions of responsible knowledge production in the age of AI.
Planetary Sapience & Planetary Stupidity: a Bildungsroman for the Baby Noosphere | Antikythera
That is, the faculty of recollection and foresight? Until recently, I would argue, our planet was amnesiac. That is, no part of it was reflectively aware of the place of the present relative to the established past nor the expected future. But then peculiar animals emerged, capable—no matter how imperfectly—of cooperation, abstraction and invention. In the last blink of geologic time, through the collaboration of these animals with their increasingly cunning artifacts, this state of planetary amnesia has faltering begun being cured. That is, through our artifacts, our planet is becoming aware of its own unfolding biography. In our fallible attempts to model our world—alongside our growing legion of sensors—The Earth system has developed a way of recollecting its deepest past and tracking the changing complexities of its present so as to forecast its furthest future.
Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter
A forthcoming investigational report from an office of the Pentagon has found no evidence of aliens, only allegations circulated repeatedly by UFO claim advocates
As UFOs go mainstream, the jury is out on what the existence of alien life might mean for religion
Steven Spielberg's new film “Disclosure Day” explores extraterrestrial life and its impact on religion. UFOs, now also called UAPs, are gaining mainstream attention.
Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus
Nature - Artificial intelligence boosts individual scientists’ output, citations and career progression, but collectively narrows research diversity and reduces collaboration, concentrating...
All Possible Views About Humanity's Future Are Wild
If humans will eventually spread out across the galaxy, then we are among the earliest living beings, with remarkable opportunities to shape the future
The Anthropic Hive Mind
As you’ve probably noticed, something is happening over at Anthropic. They are a spaceship that is beginning to take off.
The Anthropic Hive Mind
As you’ve probably noticed, something is happening over at Anthropic. They are a spaceship that is beginning to take off.
How and When to Involve Crowds in Scientific Research | James Evans
The lone academic in a basement lab is an endangered species. Years ago I asked Paul Ginsparg, who founded arXiv, what features his machine-learning filter used to flag speculative submissions. The top three: single-authored, submitted on a weekend, and heavy citation of Newton and Einstein. Science is a contact sport now. Marion Poetz and Henry Sauermann's How and When to Involve Crowds in Scientific Research (https://lnkd.in/g5pwVbfD) is the field manual. What crowds can do: Volume. Zooniverse mobilizes 2.7 million people to classify galaxies and court records. Galaxy Zoo's co-founder hand-classified 50,000 galaxies in one week before concluding that isolation would break him. Reach. NASA spent years failing to predict solar flares, then broadcast the problem. The winner was a semi-retired radio engineer in rural New Hampshire who swapped satellite data for radio data. Experience. Patients and caregivers asked to generate research questions produced 826 that scientists had missed, including the link between aging and wound healing. Bench-to-bedside runs backward. One caution the book underplays: an open call is not an inclusive one. Participation costs in time, money, and access screen people out. Self-selection can narrow the very diversity that makes crowds thrive. As AI floods the labor supply of routine, homogeneous cognition, human crowds become more valuable, not less. Machines process. People notice what nobody thought to ask. Check out my review @ https://lnkd.in/gkzvWrRC and the book @ https://lnkd.in/g5pwVbfD!
Predictive processing frameworks for perception can explain recent drone sightings in the United States
We draw on the predictive processing theory of perception to explain why healthy, intelligent, honest, and psychologically normal people might easily misperceive lights in the sky as threatening or extraordinary objects, especially in the context of WEIRD (western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic) societies. We argue that the uniquely sparse properties of skyborne and celestial stimuli make it difficult for an observer to update prior beliefs, which can be easily fit to observed lights. Moreover, we hypothesize that humans have likely evolved to perceive the sky and its perceived contents as deeply meaningful. Finally, we briefly discuss the possible role of generalized distrust in scientific institutions and ultimately argue for the importance of astronomy education for producing a society with prior beliefs that support veridical perception.
NASA
Imagining the Voyager 1 probe's journey through space when humanity no longer exists
More photos at www.flickr.com/elentir
The Origins Of <br>‘Planetary Realism’ And <br>‘Whole Earth’ Thinking | NOEMA
There is no escaping an interconnected world.
I Wanted to Create “The Most Human Gathering”—and Created a Monster
What my failed attempt at curation says about the next “intelligence explosion” “The word for world is forest“ – Ursula K. Le Guin With everyone now a coder, you’d think this would be a good time for curators like me.
