Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 1h

Of course I disagree completely that the issue of physical determinism is not relevant for free will (as Dennett often argued, exasperatedly). Just because many people are compatibilists doesn't make that actually a viable position.

Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 1h

I'm glad to see his description of the Many Worlds Hypothesis as effectively NOT deterministic: "the underlying laws are perfectly deterministic, but what happens along any specific history is irreducibly probabilistic"

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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 4h

I think pain is a kind of "primitive story of self"! In that it's a homeostatic signal that is about the state of the body. But it also seems like it must have a raw feel to it. (And I agree it's almost impossible to know this for sure!)

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PallasLab @pallaslab.bsky.social · 8h

The time machine is flying backwards at an accelerating pace.

NPR @npr.org · 9h

In South Carolina, more than 150 unvaccinated schoolkids are under quarantine after being exposed to measles. Across the U.S., total case counts could be even higher than the official number. n.pr/4obbfnK

U.S. measles cases continue to climb, with outbreaks across the country

In South Carolina, more than 150 unvaccinated schoolkids are under quarantine after being exposed to measles. Across the U.S., total case counts could be even higher than the official number.

n.pr

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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 5h

This requires some underlying randomness to generate variation. Then you automatically get selection for configurations that persist better, which favors complex functionalities under dynamic conditions

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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 5h

This is spot on, in my view. George Ellis has been saying something similar for many years - you get complexity from selection for macroscopic functionalities.

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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 5h

I think he's right about innate categories and they're both right that these can get interpreted in learned and culture-specific ways

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Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 12h

Your reminder—or maybe no one ever told you—that complications from a measles infection include immune amnesia (where you lose immunity to everything), vision and hearing loss, brain damage, and a fatal brain disease called Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis that can show up years later.

Miranda 🖤🤍💜 @doomscroling.bsky.social · 1d

Hundreds of children in multiple states are in quarantine and on remote learning due to measles outbreaks.

The decline in MMR vaccinations has resulted in the US experiencing an increase of measles cases with 1563 total cases & 3 deaths since January.

#Pinks

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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 5h

We definitely interpret our affective signals as being about something or referring to something. But a baby experiencing its first painful stimulus is not thinking "I'm late for school". It's experiencing pain (based on its behavior)

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Alexey Tolchinsky @tolchinsky.bsky.social · 13h

If you watch a 2-part debate between Solms and Barrett, you'll hear when he asked her pointedly if human babies feel pain - she avoided an answer. In her world everything is constructed individually and there is no more or less universal feeling of "pain" in humans

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Huw C. Davies @huwcdavies.bsky.social · 17h

Reading Thiel, Yarvin, Peterson et al. makes you realise what passes for intellectual iconoclasm these days is all absolute bollocks. Why anyone gives any of these people the time of day let alone credibility is baffling.

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Old White Nepo Hat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 16h

“WHOAH! Be careful not to step in that pile of shit there!” exclaimed the man pulling his pants back up.

The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) @theserfstv.bsky.social · 17h

Fascinated how the guy who made superstars of Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Jordan Peterson, and Michael Knowles thought that unfettered racism and every phobia in existence wouldn't eventually include anti-semitism

Ben Shapiro warns that conspiratorial right is taking over social media

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Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 16h

#SIlentSunday #Photography

Swan in water with bright sparkles of light behind as the sun reflects off the water.

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CajunBlueAZ ⚜️🇺🇸 🇺🇦 @cajunblue.bsky.social · 16h

🚨🚨🚨WA Governor Bob Ferguson responds to a letter he received from AG Pam Bondi in which she threatened to place him in jail. 🧯He is on fire! 1/2

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 22h

okay I think Peter Thiel might actually have brain damage

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 1d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 16h

Also lying:
- your own eyes
- every bit of video evidence
- the fabric of reality itself

The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 16h

“I … met with the governor, met with the mayor, met with the chief of police, and the superintendent of the highway patrol. They’re all lying, and disingenuous, and dishonest people,” Noem said, because they wouldn’t back up her baseless claims that the streets were overrun with terrorists.

ICE Barbie Says an Entire State’s Worth of Officials Are “Lying”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is convinced, against all evidence, that Portland is a war zone.

trib.al

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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 18h

You can define a set of behaviors that match what would be induced by a painful stimulus, without implying a subjective feeling of that state. But it seems pretty hard to deny - looking at an infant that just got hurt for the first time - that they're *in pain*...

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John Wilkins @wilkinspsych.bsky.social · 18h

This is your field, not mine, but I would have thought that pain being innate was necessary. Pain thresholds can be altered, but unless I’m mistaken pain can’t be learned? I share your interest from a lower knowledge base. As with other senses, pain is linked to consciousness. Unconscious pain??????

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Martin - Oh... @martinoh.bsky.social · 18h

Idiot with Internet access here, so dumb question: what does "*like that*" actually imply - is there a knowledge and understanding of what pain is that stage, or are there simpler underlying mechanisms that lead to reflex arcs, which can act as training inputs to further neural path development?

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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 18h

Oh, no. I'm not expressing sympathy for the poor little babies. I'm expressing amazement at how the subjective *feeling of pain* is somehow wired into their nervous systems!

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Rian Nejar 🦋 @riannejar.bsky.social · Aug 28

Researchers confirm that PKMzeta, a so-called 'memory molecule,' working with another, KIBRA, is critical to making memories encoded in the strengths of synapses last a long time [via Scientific American] 🧪🧠

www.scientificamerican.com/article/brai...

#memory #neuroscience #neurons #synapses

Brain Scientists Finally Discover the Glue that Makes Memories Stick for a Lifetime

A long-running research endeavor reveals key chemical players that cement memories in place—and still more have yet to be discovered

www.scientificamerican.com

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David Cooper @davidbcooper.bsky.social · 23h

Rosie the Ribbiter

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Brett "Solidarity 2025" Banditelli @banditelli.org · 1d

May I offer you a borb in these trying times? 🪶

maybe a bushtit flying directly towards the camera , extremely puffed out

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Dr Neutopia @oceanclub.bsky.social · 19h

The Iona Institute are a think tank that have stumbled on the grift that if your opinions are awful enough, the media will pay you to promote them rather than vice versa.

Aidan Fitzmaurice @fancyvegaspro.bsky.social · 1d

All the talk about how many column inches would be dedicated to her, had overlooked that they could just give her a column of her own.

It's cool though. Now if I want the Iona Institute's view on things I can read Steen or Quinn in the Indo, or O'Brien in the Irish Times

Maria Steen: Significant spoilt vote in presidential election would embarrass the Government
After Jim Gavin’s exit, there is no good reason not to restart this lacklustre contest

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 20h

"Concerns over an AI bubble bursting have grown lately, with analysts recently finding that it’s 17 times the size of the dotcom-era bubble and four times bigger than the 2008 financial crisis." futurism.com/artificial-i...

Bank of England Warns of Impending AI Disaster

The Bank of England has sounded the alarm, warning of an intensifying risk of a "sudden correction" due to an AI spending frenzy.

futurism.com

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