Science news to briefly consider

Discussion of science, technology, politics, and other topics that aren't strictly philosophical.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Science news to briefly consider

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Sometimes there's some news on scientific of psychological research which can be food for further thought. Anything on psychology, evolution and brain science really, not just any remarkable story about people found to have a dozen pencils stuck in their stomach please.

Male faces 'buttressed against punches' by evolution
  • A new theory suggests that our male ancestors evolved beefy facial features as a defence against fist fights. The bones most commonly broken in human punch-ups also gained the most strength in early "hominin" evolution.

    "[Our paper] does address this debate of whether our past was violent or peaceful," he told the BBC. "That's an argument that's been going on for a very long time."

    "The historical record goes back a short time, the archaeological record goes back a few tens of thousand years more... But the anatomy holds clues to what selection was important, what behaviours were important, and so it gives us information about the very distant past."
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Brain imaging shows enhanced executive brain function in people with musical training
  • A controlled study using functional MRI brain imaging reveals a possible biological link between early musical training and improved executive functioning in both children and adults, report researchers at Boston Children's Hospital. The study, appearing online June 17 in the journal PLOS ONE, uses functional MRI of brain areas associated with executive function, adjusting for socioeconomic factors.
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Shardrol
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Many prefer an electric shock to thinking

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http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014 ... says-study

The link is to an article about an experiment in which people were asked to sit alone in a room for 6-15 minutes with nothing to occupy them but the contents of their own mind. Apparently a fair number, when given the opportunity, preferred to self-administer an electric shock than to sit there with no external stimulation. They had all previously experienced the shock and had stated that they would pay money not to have it again. But apparently the tedium of their own minds was way worse.


Shardröl
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong This Whole Time?
  • To some researchers, the experiments suggest that quantum objects are as definite as droplets, and that they too are guided by pilot waves — in this case, fluid-like undulations in space and time. These arguments have injected new life into a deterministic (as opposed to probabilistic) theory of the microscopic world first proposed, and rejected, at the birth of quantum mechanics.

    Sheldon Goldstein, a professor of mathematics, physics and philosophy at Rutgers University and a supporter of pilot-wave theory, blames the “preposterous” neglect of the theory on “decades of indoctrination.” At this stage, Goldstein and several others noted, researchers risk their careers by questioning quantum orthodoxy.
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Cahoot
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“Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and that’s not a joke”

http://www.science20.com/writer_on_the_ ... oke-139982

… therefore, according to scientists a self-proclaimed atheist would be delusional.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Sleep Deprivation May Increase Susceptibility to False Memories.
The researchers found that only those students who had been sleep deprived for all parts of the experiment — that is, they viewed the photos, read the narratives, and took the memory test after having stayed up all night — were more likely to report the false details from the text narrative as having been present in the crime photos.
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Cahoot
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How Movies Synchronize the Brains of an Audience
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/cinema-science-mind-meld/

Since stimulation of only two senses can synchronize brain activity in a majority of participants, it’s no wonder that cult activities which engage all five senses are effective at brain synchronization among a larger majority of participants. Arrogance allows for the assumption of immunity from the causes affecting the majority, which is not to dismiss causality of immunity to groupthink.
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Cahoot
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A common neural code for similar conscious experiences in different individuals
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/ ... 1.abstract

“Thus we demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, that a neural index based on executive function reliably predicted every healthy individual’s similar conscious experience in response to real-world events unfolding over time.”

We should know the study’s distinctions between “healthy” and “conditioned.”
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Cahoot
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1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon
the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters.
1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Water on Earth is older than the sun, scientists say
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencen ... story.html

Heaven, earth, water, then light.
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Cahoot
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Saudi cleric rejects that Earth revolves around the sun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLfwudUJqCk

Just focus with me.

*

I wonder if this is a bogus setup.
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Cahoot
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Anti-Science

“The former vice president focused on the need to “punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should pay a price for rejecting ‘accepted science,'” said the Chicago Tribune.”
http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/16/al-gore- ... e-deniers/


Since long-term programming has been woven into mandatory school studies, there has been a marked increased in the docile acceptance of conditioning that permits the public mind malarkey that leads to totalitarianism.

Next step, an executive order decreeing that the punishment be followed by shunning, followed by a rehab program to get the scientist’s mind right about global warming, but only after he declares a full public allocution under oath.

Give the offending scientist a new name, too. Winston Smith sounds good.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Detection of mini black holes at the LHC could indicate parallel universes in extra dimensions
  • "Normally, when people think of the multiverse, they think of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where every possibility is actualized," Faizal told Phys.org. "This cannot be tested and so it is philosophy and not science. This is not what we mean by parallel universes. What we mean is real universes in extra dimensions.
Big Bang theory could be debunked by Large Hadron Collider
  • And if the holes are found at a certain energy, it could prove the controversial theory of ‘rainbow gravity’ which suggests that the universe stretches back into time infinitely with no singular point where it started, and no Big Bang.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Science news to briefly consider

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the psychology behind your worries about the environment

Systems thinking on Wikipedia

Contrary to popular opinion I do not think system thinking is the great thing commonly proposed like here above. Especially ecological thinking on that scale has been discredited to some degree. A good documentary on that would be All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Adam Curtis. While the holistic aspects and general causality are the sane part of system thinking, it nowadays leads to a fantasy view of nature and humanity overall, broadly supported by the alienated modern mindset. It's a typical case of the hammer who starts to see everything as a nail. It ends up being quite damaging.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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This seems like an interesting development. Perhaps even more so this general linkage between (brain) inflammation and long term effects on cell and nerve structures causing localized and more general conditions which we call disease or mental affliction with some symptoms to fight or repress. Clinical inflammation has links to diet and air quality as well. For example sugars or fine dust.

We may finally know what causes Alzheimer’s – and how to stop it - New Scientist 24 January 2019
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Science news to briefly consider

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Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind
For Tegmark, the universe is a “set of abstract entities with relations between them,” which “can be described in a baggage-independent way”—i.e., without matter. He attributes existence solely to descriptions, while incongruously denying the very thing that is described in the first place. Matter is done away with and only information itself is taken to be ultimately real.
I'd say it's just like saying that there's only information causality, which is not that different from saying causality is real and all matter just informing you on what you think you know about something. Note that this does not have to change any meaning or relevance material physics or objects might have obtained in some, often still material (you as physical) context. Some people like to use it that way though.
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Eric Schiedler
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Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 11:59 pm Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind
For Tegmark, the universe is a “set of abstract entities with relations between them,” which “can be described in a baggage-independent way”—i.e., without matter. He attributes existence solely to descriptions, while incongruously denying the very thing that is described in the first place. Matter is done away with and only information itself is taken to be ultimately real.
I'd say it's just like saying that there's only information causality, which is not that different from saying causality is real and all matter just informing you on what you think you know about something. Note that this does not have to change any meaning or relevance material physics or objects might have obtained in some, often still material (you as physical) context. Some people like to use it that way though.
It is a type of insult to the careful thought and dedication used to create a model of part of reality to claim that it makes truthful claims about all of reality.

This topical news came up in my local philosophy discussion forum as well. Bernardo Kastrup apparently wrote an essay/book about his belief in "universal consciousness" using poorly structured academic ideas. Clearly the whole of reality can not be conscious as consciousness requires an object of consciousness and there is nothing left over if all of reality is a "universal consciousness."

From what I can tell, Kastrup doesn't ever get down to fundametal cause and effect or causaility or duality/non-duality. He seems to require his metaphisics to have an additional layer.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Eric Schiedler wrote:It is a type of insult [to the careful thought and dedication used to create a model of part of reality] to claim that it makes truthful claims about all of reality.
It's unavoidable for any main principle like causality. The only way it would not apply to all of reality is to abandon any current notion of reality, including any notion of "having a notion". Which draws a blank really!
Clearly the whole of reality can not be conscious as consciousness requires an object of consciousness and there is nothing left over if all of reality is a "universal consciousness."
My understanding of that view is that self-consciousnesses is often defined like that: when the object is the subject, like the reflective mirror informing the eye about the eye via indirect means. Like thoughts can reflect on some having passed. It prevents having "nothing left over" by simply not having any omniscient power: not having the ability to see all the self-aspects in all the possible relationships all of the time.

Therefore it would be illogical if the theory would indeed claim that reality could have perfect and full knowledge of itself all at the same moment. One could compare our own brain where consciousness is supposed to reside but it's not conscious of all brain processes or body functions. And yet the "human" is called conscious or the brain. I believe the linguistic term is synecdoche.
From what I can tell, Kastrup doesn't ever get down to fundametal cause and effect or causaility or duality/non-duality. He seems to require his metaphisics to have an additional layer.
You're probably right. But any truth principle acts on all layers and levels in very much the same way. That's its fundamental nature, to not even allow for any core fundamental or origination; to interconnect all possible layers as such.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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This case has been going on for some years now and I've been following the developments of this topic quite closely.

Havana Syndrome: 'Emotional trauma' caused illness at US base, not sonic attack (Sky News)

The interesting part for me was that it's now potentially a case were neurological complaints from an overstimulated nervous system or other strong psychological effects were at first dismissed but instead secret agencies using sonic weapons were selected and offered as a way more likely explanation. All without motive, means or actual solid evidence supplied.

Initially various scientists of note were openly fuelling the theory of some Cuban/Russian microwave strikes, including attribution at times. Generally, the US government kept maintaining that it needed to be at least caused by some device, as if the idea that people could be influenced by some other effect at that scale was some kind of undesired thinking. Two Cuban diplomat were even expelled for it and Trump was already openly suggesting that Cuba was responsible, of course.

There are also studies suggesting extensive fumigation of the premises could have contributed to having issues with the nervous system.

All in all, a very interesting story and I believe it shows a bit more on how we are all "wired" to think about causality when it collides with politics or religion. This is not different from how the original witch hunts started, where politics of competing beliefs or practices collided with some kind of conspiratorial desire.

See further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome
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