Human Mini-Brains Growing Inside Rat Bodies Are Starting To Integrate (inverse.com) 193
At the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience starting November 11 in Washington D.C., two teams of scientists plan to present previously unpublished research on the unexpected interaction between human mini-brains and their rat and mouse hosts. "In the new papers, according to STAT, scientists will report that the organoids survived for extended periods of time -- two months in one case -- and even connected to lab animals' circulatory and nervous systems, transferring blood and nerve signals between the host animal and the implanted human cells," reports Inverse. "This is an unprecedented advancement for mini-brain research." From the report: That mini-brains can even be grown in the lab is a huge advancement in the first place, as they have many of the same characteristics as living human brains that are in the early stages of development. Though they're not "alive" in the same sense that you and I are, they grow and are organized into different layers like our brains are. They even react in similar ways to stimuli like psychedelic drugs. Organoids are poised to revolutionize research on the human brain since scientists can perform tests on them that would be unethical to attempt on living humans. STAT also reports that a third lab, in addition to the two presenting at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, has successfully connected human brain organoids to blood vessels. This attempt veered into such challenging ethical territory, though, that the lab reportedly paused its efforts.
Ethics or morals? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethical is informing someone of the risks, not misrepresent anything for the purpose of obtaining consent.
Moral is can't do it at all because of some taboo.
Mini brains in mice are a clever workaround. As long as we can pretrnd its like growing vegetables, its ok.
Scientists should be careful to ensure they can't communicate meaningfully with these minibrains, because the instant one of those things signals that it's hurting or wants the pain to stop, the ethics and morals will apply again and we will be having strange discussions about whether those mini brains come with souls or not.
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...failure to understand what is real. Common symptoms include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking...
Surely that applies to quite a lot of people who object to such research, especially for the I-have-this-dusty-old-book kind of reasons.
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Many humans are not self-aware
Excuse me?
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Many humans are not self-aware
Excuse me?
He's got a point, have you seen some of the stupidity in this world? Anything self-aware wouldn't be this stupid.
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I'm pretty sure that those people know the concept "I", since that's what they're usually all about
Anything Goes Apparently (Score:1)
I could have sworn there were laws against this kind of experimentation, but I guess in the face of the threat of being "left behind" all that stuff is out the window and anything goes now?
So I'm allowed to grow a giant human brain in a jar now if I like? It's ok apparently because 'they're not "alive" in the same sense that you and I are'.
I know how this ends (Score:5, Funny)
http://data.whicdn.com/images/... [whicdn.com]
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#fakenews
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Actually, it ends with Ben, the king of rats. [slashdot.org]
suggested tag for this article = whatcouldgowrong
Re: I know how this ends (Score:2)
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Actually it ends with Ben, the king of rats. [youtube.com]
Suggested tag - whatcouldgowrong
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I loved that movie. A young Meredith Baxter...
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whatcouldgowrong
The mice will invade Australia, rename it to Mousetralia, and then make Sydney (henceforth known as Disney) her new capital?
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Change colour to yellow from red.
Change Maple Leaf to Banana.
Rename Country Banana.
Lock changes into law and give the country.
Still 50% A, eh
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I was thinking more along the lines of:
http://kaiju.wdfiles.com/local... [wdfiles.com]
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Actually, I was thinking of this. [creative-assembly.com]
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Oh, it's a lot worse than that, I am afraid!
Frankie and Benjy are calling the Vogons - the experiment is a failure!
http://villains.wikia.com/wiki... [wikia.com]
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NIMH
another incarnation of Project B.R.A.I.N. (Score:3)
Pinky: Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!
Science safety tip: (Score:5, Funny)
If it sounds like the intro to a horror movie / game, maybe you should think twice about proceeding....
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If it sounds like the intro to a horror movie / game, maybe you should think twice about proceeding....
Why? We've had this for centuries and millennia in reverse form, rat brains in human bodies, we call them politicians.
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Look how well that has worked out......
Do smarter sharks still act like sharks? (Score:2)
Me quoting a movie review a decade ago of "Deep Blue Sea" (spoiler) as reasons colleges need to be careful about how they educate humans (including about morals): http://www.pdfernhout.net/read... [pdfernhout.net]
"Some scientists are out in the middle of the ocean, trying to reproduce proteins in shark's brains. These proteins are the cure for Alzheimer's, and one character even gives a half-assed speech about how she's driven by memories of her father's mental illness. Well, to harvest more protein, that scientist makes th
Rat Multiborgs (Score:2)
I for one... (Score:3)
Welcome our new hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional overlords.
Drugs? Wtf? (Score:1)
So scientists create brains in rats and then give them drugs?
Wtf kind of science are we doing nowdays?
Life is not a binary switch! (Score:1)
Life is a gradient!
Something can be just a bit alive!
These brains certainly aren’t dead, now are they?
Single atoms are less alive than chemical compounds.
Normal chemical compounds are less alive than prions, but more alive than single atoms.
Prions are less alive than complex proteins, but more alive than normal chemical compounds.
Complex proteins are less alive than viruses, but more alive than complex simple prions.
Viruses are less alive than bacteria, but more alive than complex proteins.
Bacteria ar
Where's Pinky? (Score:1)
Rats of NIMH (Score:3)
Please tell me one of the rats was named Nicodemus.
Says Who? (Score:5, Interesting)
Though they're not "alive" in the same sense that you and I are, they grow and are organized into different layers like our brains are. They even react in similar ways to stimuli like psychedelic drugs.
Who's to say what they experience or feel? That they're not alive? Seems to me they're making them as close to a live brain as possible, so...
Jesus H. Christ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Growing extra organs in or on animals is already pretty grotesque, but at least that has obvious and practical applications. But this? This is some shit, man...
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Probably after tucking the rats in and reading them a bedtime story, because all of a sudden they've started complaining when you get ready to leave the lab if you don't.
Re:Jesus H. Christ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fine, all the humans who died of treatable nervous diseases because it took decades to get the medicines properly tested....their blood is on your hands."
That''s assuming that anything comes of the research, which is just that, an assumption. You' re offering a false choice and tagging it with phony morality. You could make the same arguments to justify nazi experimentation too--" hundreds died to save thousands"--so spare me your "calm down".
And you are offering *nothing* (Score:2)
offering *nothing* is not a argument on itself (Score:3)
However, there is no denying there is *some* moral/ethical issue at play here, whether one likes it or not. I note you like C.Sagan's works too, so I'll go easy and not evoke the Nazis, but...
At some point, you do have ethical issues. You bring up alternatives like 'higher cephalic animals', but surely you're aware there already is an ethical/moral issue there as well? One can say: it's too small to be of any importance. But how small is too small? When does it become an issue? I'd like to note that there a
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So? There's not a defining border or limit to lots of things. What's a big pile of sand? How many sand grains or kilograms or whatever do you want for a lower limit? Now, I put one sand grain onto three others: is that a big pile of sand? Are you willing to say it's not, even without a clear defining border?
Borders tend to be stretchy and vague, but in many cases there's cases that are clearly on one side or another.
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Cases that are clearly on one side or another are cases where a general consensus exist, or that can be logically and objectively argued from a commonly accepted premise. The former - seen all the comments - is clearly not the case here, and for the latter I'm still waiting to hear your first logical reasoning why an insects' size would not matter, but a walnuts' size (etc.), for instance, would. So the point remains you didn't argue in a logical way why your criteria would be the only valid one, and why, i
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I'm not putting something forth, I'm disagreeing with your argument. A lack of a defining border is irrelevant. It's possible to classify things as "large enough", "small enough", and "somewhere in the middle", bearing in mind that those borders are fuzzy. You were using a slippery slope argument.
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You are misinterpreting the argument. The fact that there is not a defining border was not an argument pro or con the experiment itself, it was to establish the fact the parent poster did not give an objective reason why a certain size would matter. It is relevant, therefor, to establish the size was arbitrarily chosen. Yet, his argument to not see an ethical issue in it, was based on the fact it was of "an insects' size" - a size he arbitrarily chose (or at least, to which he didn't give any objective rea
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Proof by blatant assertion.
I jumped into this thread just like you did, except that I didn't claim that, since larger sizes might have an ethical issue, this has an ethical issue. That is a slippery-slope argument, and needs support you didn't give.
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"Proof by blatant assertion."
----> "Borders tend to be stretchy and vague, but in many cases there's cases that are clearly on one side or another."
Well, maybe you just wanted to give general truths, then, a bit like saying "the earth revolves around the sun"... in the middle of a debate that clearly was discussing a specific topic.
I know where this is going; in a while, you're going to argue about semantics, and what this word or that word means to you versus what it means to me, in endless repeat. I h
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Exactly.
This was a bit what I meant with my comment "offering nothing is not an argument on itself" as well. The question here, was if there can be some validity in finding the experiment an ethical/moral issue. Claiming it is definitely not, because one can't imagine other alternatives, is a very weak argument. Would it become unethical the moment another alternative is discovered, then? Even if it had *no* (as was claimed) ethical dimension at all before? This seems absurd.
And if one takes the very same p
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There's a lot of that going on lately. Self-bestowed moral superiority provides all kinds of nifty benefits and group advantages. One could be the justification to preemptively commit violence on others based on perception of pending danger.
"I had to bash that guy in the skull because his words were going to be violent to me."
differentiation (Score:4, Funny)
Any brain can integrate; wake me up when they can find derivatives.
Please don't make rats any smarter. (Score:2)
they are smart enough. I'm glad they destroy these experiments.
Frankie? Benjy? (Score:2)
Algernon (Score:2)
I guess I need to hurry and buy some flowers wile I stil kan kount.
God help us all (Score:5, Funny)
"Human Mini-Brains Growing Inside Rat Bodies Are Starting To Integrate"
Big deal. So they've invented vat-grown lawyers.
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If only I had mod points....But I would be torn between:
+1 Funny
+1 Insightful
I think Insightful wins....even though you coated my screen with Mr Dew...
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Love your sig!
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Good news for calculus, I guess (Score:2)
Human Mini-Brains Growing Inside Rat Bodies Are Starting To Integrate
Frankenstein (Score:3, Interesting)
There is prior art (Score:2)
Rat Scratch Fever (Score:3)
Comforting ... Discomforting (Score:3, Insightful)
Comforting: one lab paused it's efforts because someone somewhere raised ethical challenges. Excellent as it indicates someone is giving some thought to what is going on.
Discomforting: these things aren't 'alive' in the same sense as you and I so they can be experimented upon in ways that would be deemed unethical. Chilling that someone somewhere sees this as a loophole.
One of the most frightening developments to appear in /. in a while.
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I would not consider not being alive as a loophole, but rather as a valid distinction. There are plenty of experiments involving human tissue. Do you object to all of them, or just some of them?
yet we should we worried about AI? (Score:3)
Starting to integrate (Score:2)
Let's step back a bit... (Score:2)
People find this "icky" because we're growing neurons in a glass, but they have no problem with liver cells or muscle cells. Why, exactly?
A clump of neurons is not sentient, nor is it going to be sentient. Not even if it develops in layers. Without external influence and control, it is going to be basically unstructured. It's just a bunch of cells.
Maybe, someday, scientists will be able to provide the stimuli necessary to make a clump of neurons into something more. That day is not yet, and these clumps are
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Because neurons are essential to the process of thinking itself, while liver-cells etc. don't. I'm not saying I personally see an issue here, but I DO understand why (some) people find an ethical/moral issue in it.
After all, what one (well, you) do here, is subjectively and arbitrarily deciding a certain size to be a moral issue, and when not. Is a 'clump' the defining standard to speak of an ethical issue? What about two clumps? What about 10? 100? 10 million? Can you give objective criteria from what size
Oh... but (Score:2)
Best SD headline ever! (Score:2)
double u tee eff, /. (Score:3)
Seriously, the title is from the dystopianest of dystopias. I am sure it's much mlless sinister than this.
Re:When Will This Work On Republicans? (Score:5, Interesting)
When you have to choose between two people trying to ruin your life, and one of em is very smart and talented and the other is a complete dumbass, i don't think you would choose the more capable one.
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However influences for leaders is more important than intelligence or skill. If the dumbass is more influential there will be more poeople trying to turn your life.
Re: When Will This Work On Republicans? (Score:2)
Re: When Will This Work On Republicans? (Score:5, Interesting)
The typical Political archetypes are psychopaths as the leaders with narcissists as the minions, willing to do anything for anyone for empty compliments about how great they are
For what we can see politics has become so dis-functional with the identity game that it is precisely what attracts psychopaths and narcissists. The image of competence. Meanwhile, the competent are subject to all of the games psychopaths and narcissists play, manipulating people.
Your example of Tesla and Edison is a good one, especially considering that when Einstein was asked, What's it like to be the smartest man in the world? he replied: "I don't know, you would have to ask Nicola Tesla." It's a good example of what this sickness costs our species.
I'm only pointing it out because I think that sickness overshadows politics and we have to fix politics to prevent psychopaths spreading their corruption throughout our society.
Re: When Will This Work On Republicans? (Score:2, Insightful)
Current societal evolution does not favor kind, intelligent, thoughtful, passionate, respectful, people. The best we can hope for is that it never selects AGAINST these traits.
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Nice word vomit. Did a fake research paper alogrithm write that for you?
Translation: I disagree with you but I can't be arsed to respond to your points so I'll throw out a general insult instead.
Re: When Will This Work On Republicans? (Score:4, Funny)
Are you sure about your IQ? Because you might want to get refund on the test.
You have to admit, he made the perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect
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“People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.”
Stephen Hawking
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“People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.”
Stephen Hawking
Well screw you. I can kick a ball.
-- Some Guy on the old Fires of Heaven boards whose name I can't remember.
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And when the Internet is invented, I think it will be really cool if people on it misquote me.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Re: When Will This Work On Republicans? (Score:4, Insightful)
That might have to do with who you hang out with and where you live.
I have found that the smartest Republicans are at least as smart as the smartest Democrats. And I have found that both Democrats and Republicans lie about the same.
But I have also found that the smarter the Republican is, the more likely he is to lie to the public and tell the truth to his allies, while the smarter the Democrat is, the more likely he is to lie to his allies and tell the truth to the public.
Personally, I would rather have someone lie to their ally and tell the public the truth.
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All humans are swayed by illogical things. Though you can mitigate it, there's nothing you can do to prevent it.
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Agreed as a matter of fact statement, but of course, that shouldn't stop us from mitigating it as much as we can. The only proper tool we have for that, is the scientific methodology - and more broadly, indeed, logic.
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as someone with too high of an IQ to be swayed by ideological (as opposed to logical) arguments
Well, it's an improvement on the normal slashdot "as someone with an IQ too high to be measured by your puny sheeple methods" I suppose.
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There's no such thing as a non-ideological person, but there are ideologically blind people. You're one of them, despite your supposedly high IQ. I also have you marked as a science denialist, so I'll add to the calls for you to get a refund on that test.
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There's no such thing as a non-ideological person, but there are ideologically blind people.
Not the OP, but your statement is veering close to the terrible atheism is a religion argument.
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Actually that is pretty much the argument I'm making and it does apply well to ideology. There is no ideological equivalent of atheism or "none of the above." If you ask a supposedly non-ideological person their opinion on a large number of issues, you can match them to an ideology which closely aligns with their beliefs. If you ask an atheist about which supernatural beings and/or forces they believe in, there is no religion for "none."
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Actually that is pretty much the argument I'm making and it does apply well to ideology. There is no ideological equivalent of atheism or "none of the above." If you ask a supposedly non-ideological person their opinion on a large number of issues, you can match them to an ideology which closely aligns with their beliefs. If you ask an atheist about which supernatural beings and/or forces they believe in, there is no religion for "none."
I'm still trying to get my head around the concept that abstinence is a sexual position.
I'm a pragmatist, which means I tend to gravitate toward things that work. Idealogues show time and again that they will stick to their "solutions" even when they are shown not to work. Me? If something doesn't work, I'll look for and adopt something that does. A compilation of my opinoins would show me to be center right, but with wildly veering outlier opinions that are sometimes considered far right or fairly far l
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I think I see your problem. You're suffering from a less severe form of ideological blindness. You see some axis of the political landscape as being ideological/pragmatic. You see yourself as being stuck against the pragmatic limit around the center-right position, and because you're against the pragmatic zero line, you're not ideological. This is quite wrong.
Now let's look at the ideological universe as a cube. What you think of as the ideological/pragmatic axis is actually the idealistic/pragmatic axis. T
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I think I see your problem.
Your issue is that you insist that others fit in the pigeonhole that you decide they fit into. And when they don't accept that, you demand the world know that they have a problem.
Sorry muchacho, I utterly reject your rigid outlook. I have no ideology, and atheism is not a religion. And your thoughts on the matter are.
Regardless, you are now to have the last comment reply.
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Well then I'll use this last reply to make one last attempt to cure you of your ideological blindness: It seems to me that you hate the idea of "ideology," because you see yourself as so purely pragmatic that any hint of ideology seems far too dogmatic for your tastes. But why did you arrive at the positions you did on all of those issues? It can't all be based on hard scientific evidence because there isn't enough to make science-based decisions on most topics.
Since I was very interested to see the politic
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I think you're both right to some extend. If your claim is, that no-one is outside the human experience, this is right. And yes, that also means humans can never FULLY extract themselves from ALL ideological or subjective considerations.
However, it's also true that a specific claim, for instance "Atheism is also a religion" is still invalid. Having no religion is not a religion, just like not collecting stamps is not a hobby.
It's also true that, while it's mayhaps impossible to completely avoid any ideology
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See my response at https://science.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org]
I'm another person, btw, not the one you told to have the last reply too. ;-) Just thought I would chime in, since the topic is rather interesting.
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You can't be a pragmatist without some sort of ideology.
Being pragmatic means that you favor measures that work well towards a goal without too may ill effects. However, you have to have some idea what the goal is and what effects are ill. If you have no idea of what you want to have happen, you can't be pragmatic about it.
If you criticize a policy for not being effective at reducing the crime rate, you're saying that reducing the crime rate is important to you. If you further criticize it for impri
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You can't be a pragmatist without some sort of ideology.
Okay, I like Sophia Vergara. So she's my ideology. Now we can all be happy! ;^)
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" If you have no idea of what you want to have happen, you can't be pragmatic about it. "
That's not necessarily true. One could leave the goal to others, even. Or one can give the best solution to whatever goal it is.
For instance, take someone who doesn't take a stance on it himself, but just say: "Well, you have a group of people there: 1)if you want to eliminate them the fastest, you should proceed such and such, 2)if you want to save the most of them, you should do such and such."
It is, thus, perfectly p
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What does your IQ have to due with following or not following an ideology.
We are creatures of our environment. So if we were exposed to an ideology, many aspects link to you as true. And logical counter arguments will either be considered irrelevant, immoral, or just over simplistic. As we have created an idea on how the world should work in our heads inspired by our environment.
People who think they are not affected by ideology are often more likely to be more ingrained then those who realize their tend
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People who think they are not affected by ideology are often more likely to be more ingrained then those who realize their tendency. This may stop and listen to the counter argument a bit more. Then using their brain power to create a counter argument.
Is existential nihilsm an ideal?
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Funny you should mention that; as someone with too high of an IQ to be swayed by ideological (as opposed to logical) arguments, I've found that smartest Republicans I've never met tend to be measurably more intelligent than the smartest Democrats (of course, they're still all idiots to me).
Liberals and Conservatives are both equally likely to reject science when it doesn't fit with their ideals;
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550617731500
As a wildly reviled pragmatist, I can NetCraft level confirm that.
I would add however, that the liberal version of science denial provably pales in comparison to the crypto-conservative version.
But as a non-idealist, I'm willing to accept what science tells me. Whatever I "believe" or not "believe" is based on my support or lack of for various theories or hypotheses.
Ratios are relevant (Score:5, Interesting)
If you grew a brain twice as large as a persons brain would it be twice as intelligent?
Very serious answer :
size plays some role, but only in relation of other metrics.
- You need to compare the ratio between the size of the brain and the overall size of the body that said brain needs to control.
The more body you need to control, the more primary motor and sensory zone you need inside the brain to control it.
i.e.: the more you needs cells in the brain whose primary role is to be connected to part of the body.
A human has a brain of around a kilogram. An elephant's is a bit under 5kg, a whale is a bit 8 kg.
That doesn't mean that whales laugh at our "inability to come with a good theory of everything and struggle with string theory instead". It's just that whales have a lot more "whale" to move around and thus need the corresponding brain parts to control it.
- You need to compare the amount of neurons (the actual brain cells doing the work) to the amount of other cells (the support cells that help the whole thing work out). (It's an approximation but you got the thing).
Part of the reason why dolphins aren't winning Nobel prizes yet (apart from obvious specie-ism) is also because they have brain better adapted to their harsh environment (cold seas). Part of their brain size isn't due to neurons working to make them intelligent, but to all the other support cells making sure that the brain keeps working without any problem under circumstances where a human would have been frozen.
- You need to have a look at the brain surface. The more intelligent species (great apes, cetaceans, etc.) have found way to cram more brain power in tighter volumes by wrinkling and crumbling the surface : we tend to have deeper sulci.
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In this case the big difference seems to be in network topology:
"However, the layered structure of the whale neocortex is known to be simpler than that of humans and most other mammals. In particular, whales lack cortical layer IV, and thus have five neocortical layers to humankind's six. This means that the wiring of connections into and out of the neocortex is much different in whales than in other mammals."
( https://blogs.scientificameric... [scientificamerican.com] )
The source also mentions that (some) cetaceans have (much) lar
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Part of the reason why dolphins aren't winning Nobel prizes yet (apart from obvious specie-ism) is also because they have brain better adapted to their harsh environment (cold seas). Part of their brain size isn't due to neurons working to make them intelligent, but to all the other support cells making sure that the brain keeps working without any problem under circumstances where a human would have been frozen.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
So, people get smarter when they lose weight? (Score:2)
And ants are far smarter than people? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I think so,Brain, but how do we get the Attorney General into the wetsuit?