The Science Thread

[Louanne Learning]

This thread is for a broad discussion of all science-related topics.

Post about a new discovery or technology (or old ones for that matter), or a question you have.

Read something interesting from the scientific world? Please post it here.

Feel free to use posted content to inspire your writing!

 

[Louanne Learning]

This was my last entry into The Science Thread at the old site:

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos


He’s talking about the interconnectedness of all things.

Even if you are “starting from scratch” – you need your basic ingredients.

It kind of reminds me, too, of how science works, with increased knowledge being built on knowledge that has come before.

Many believe that Isaac Newton was the greatest scientific mind that has ever lived, and he said:

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

― Isaac Newton, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton: Volume 5, 1709–1713

 

[Louanne Learning]

There’s always been a lot of curiosity about what goes on in the minds of (non-human) animals.

Is language the window into the mind? AI researchers and biologists hope so. They are using AI to reveal information about animal communication.

For example, AI has been used to show that sperm whales have a “phonetic alphabet” from which they construct complex communications (a dictionary of whale sounds is being compiled).

AI’s power lies in “its ability to recognize, parse and replicate patterns” - and language is very patterned.

Perhaps the broadest of these research programs is the Earth Species Project, which uses large language models, the same kinds of AI tools that power ChatGPT, applied to animal communications. Earth Species Project scientists hope that such models can ingest communication signals from other species, learn to find patterns and perhaps meaning, and convey that understanding back to humans.

In the future, quite possibly, we will be able to answer philosopher Thomas Nagel’s famous question: What is it like to be a bat?

Nagel wrote about an animal’s umwelt – its “specific experience of the world, informed by its senses and brains, and inaccessible to other animals.”

Inaccessible? Maybe not.

AI Could Help Humans Understand Animals​

 

[Louanne Learning]

information about animal communication.

I've always liked the videos of dogs saying "I love you."

 

[Naja Noir]

I would love to understand animals, I wonder if they would want us to though? Perhaps there's a few that wouldn't. Interesting nonetheless.


This is the most recent article I was reading. Time has always fascinated me. I love it. I hate it. I dont understand it the way I long to. But it rides roughshod over us no matter.

We won't be taking a ride back to the future because of time mirrors, but I think they'll show us more about the universe, ourselves even, than we can have imagined.

Physicists confirm the incredible existence of 'time mirrors'

 

[Zmar]

There’s always been a lot of curiosity about what goes on in the minds of (non-human) animals.

Is language the window into the mind? AI researchers and biologists hope so. They are using AI to reveal information about animal communication.

For example, AI has been used to show that sperm whales have a “phonetic alphabet” from which they construct complex communications (a dictionary of whale sounds is being compiled).

AI’s power lies in “its ability to recognize, parse and replicate patterns” - and language is very patterned.




In the future, quite possibly, we will be able to answer philosopher Thomas Nagel’s famous question: What is it like to be a bat?

Nagel wrote about an animal’s umwelt – its “specific experience of the world, informed by its senses and brains, and inaccessible to other animals.”

Inaccessible? Maybe not.

AI Could Help Humans Understand Animals​

It's truly exciting. The simple fact that I can say, without appearing wholly deranged, that it is possible that I will be able to have an actual verbal conversation with a non-human animal in the near future.

Many of us have obviously got complex communications and relationships with non-humans, but to go beyond that will be... eye opening. Possibly horrific, too.

I'd love to have a proper conversation with my longstanding animal friend, but I'm worried that I wouldn't like the things I might hear! Hopefully he'll live to see the technological singularity, though!

Note - The Earth Species Project was the inspiration for my entry into the last month's flash competition on the old site.

 

[DLC]

I used to write about boring things like carbon cycles and nutrient displacement.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Time has always fascinated me

Me, too.

Einstein said, "the distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion".

The idea that time is an illusion is a difficult concept for me to grasp. It seems that all of time is stored in the present, and the present inevitably becomes the future. I've got memories from long ago, stored in my mind. I'm going swimming in a little while. Past and future.

A book that did wonders for me when I was going through a hard time is The Power of Now, by Eckart Tolle. The basic premise is that there is only the present. But I think that's more of a coping mechanism that a reflection of reality?

So, from a man of science, and from a man of spirituality - that there is only the "now" -

But then there's the idea that we know time is passing, since the entropy of the universe is increasing.

 

[Louanne Learning]

The Earth Species Project was the inspiration for my entry into the last month's flash competition on the old site.

That's wonderful to hear!

 

[Louanne Learning]

I used to write about boring things like carbon cycles and nutrient displacement.

Doesn't sound boring to me. Was it for your job?