Autor: tstadmin
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Scientists put 3D glasses on cuttlefish and showed them film clips. The results were surprising
The researchers successfully demonstrated that, like humans, cuttlefish brains can compute distance using incoming information from both eyes at once. However, they write in the paper, «Cuttlefish stereopsis is likely afforded by a different algorithm than in humans, and not just a different implementation. Read more
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Parrots using currency
❝ The birds’ generosity has animal scientists intrigued. It’s one thing to pass a partner a piece of grub; it’s another to give them the currency to purchase it. Such acts of charity have long been thought to be restricted to primates like humans, orangutans and bonobos. Few, if any, other mammals were thought capable…
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The HHHHHMM (H5M2) Quality of Life Scale
«The HHHHHMM (H5M2) Quality of Life Scale provides guidelines for the assessment of a pet so that pet owners can maintain a rewarding relationship that nurtures the human–animal bond, while being confident that the pet is well enough to justify prolonging life. This Quality of Life Scale will relieve guilt feelings and engender the support…
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A biomaterial that arrange itself
«Using DASH, the Cornell engineers created a biomaterial that can autonomously emerge from its nanoscale building blocks and arrange itself – first into polymers and eventually mesoscale shapes. Starting from a 55-nucleotide base seed sequence, the DNA molecules were multiplied hundreds of thousands times, creating chains of repeating DNA a few millimeters in size. The…
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What are the different types of elements that constitute reality in its most essential aspect?
«If we want to develop a sentience simulation project, that admits as many hypotheses and theories about sentience as possible, we will find that obviously in such an environment it will not be enough to represent the sentience alone, but surely we will have to include other types of substances that may be related to…
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God or consciousness?
A quote from Max Planck: “All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix…
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Opportunities for an astronomical reduction of suffering
This is a list of situations, projects or initiatives in which there could be an “astronomical” (huge) reduction in the amount of suffering compared to what currently exists or is expected. Many of these situations (but not necessarily all of them) involve a high risk in the sense that they are difficult projects whose probability…
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The “Eternal-Playlist” thought experiment
Privileged beings (students) of the privileged species (human) at privileged time (XXI c.) and privileged space (Germany) ranked only 30% of the recent experiences as «worth living». The “Eternal-Playlist” thought experiment, by Thomas Metzinger: «At Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, we began a first series of small pilot studies with a group of advanced philosophy…
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The Sad Truth About Happiness Scales: Empirical Results
«We replicate nine key results from the happiness literature: the Easterlin Paradox, the ‘U-shaped’ relation between happiness and age, the happiness trade-off between inflation and unemployment, cross-country comparisons of happiness, the impact of the Moving to Opportunity program on happiness, the impact of marriage and children on happiness, the ‘paradox’ of declining female happiness, and…
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Are suffering and enjoyment measurable?
In Simon Knutsson‘s words: That happiness and suffering are measurable, in principle, to the extent that is required to talk about the net balance among several individuals is highly controversial and widely rejected. That is, it is controversial that they are (in principle) measurable to the required degree in an objective, non-arbitrary, scientific way that…