Clipmarks | Sentience OR sapience Clips

Вера в Бога

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:04:22 GMT

clipped by: nester1980
clipper's remarks: Иначе и быть не может

ЛОНДОН, 7 сентября. Подлинную сенсацию в мировых научных и интеллектуальных кругах вызвало открытие ученых из британского Бристольского университета. Как сообщает ИТАР-ТАСС, исследователи установили, что современный человек рождается с верой в Бога.

«Мы установили, что ход мышления ребенка включает интуитивную веру в сверхъестественное», — заявил руководитель исследований профессор Брюс Худ.

новейшие исследования научного коллектива из Бристоля показали, что без веры в Бога ни Homo Sapience, ни современное общество не могли бы появиться на свет.

По мнению специалистов, на заре человечества те группы людей, которые верили во Всевышнего, в справедливость и упорядоченность миропорядка, создавали более крепкие социальные связи и тем самым повышали степень своей выживаемости. Именно они заложили основы современной цивилизации и дали ей импульс развития.

Соответственно племена и группы людей, лишенные понятия и веры в Бога, распадались и исчезали, не оставив после себя следов.

Smart-Braking Cars Save Fuel

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:55:21 GMT

clipped by: A53GG4

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Smart-Braking Cars Save Fuel

Eric Bland, Discovery News

Drivers willing to turn braking and acceleration over to a computer could save nearly 25 percent on their annual gas bills, say the British developers of an advanced new cruise control system.

Known as Sentience, the system uses GPS technology coupled with detailed topographical information to control the gas pedal and brakes. If alone on the road, all the driver has to do is steer.

"The car speeds up, slows down at speed humps, and stops at all the junctions without the driver having to intervene," said David Overton of Ordnance Survey, the U.K. government agency that provided the map information for the Sentience Project.

"All the driver has to do is stick the phone on the dash and off you go," said Overton.

Tags: technology

The Sentience of the Prophet Obama Expounded

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:16:20 GMT

clipped by: Alexian
clipper's remarks: Chant this in your madrases. Let it resound full as the rolling sea.

Clip Source: thepeoplescube.com

¹⁹"You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'We are responsible for ourselves,' but we in truth rise or fall as a collective; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper - unless he lives in a hut in Kenya.

²⁰"And I say to you that whoever goes to war or tortures another without a progressive cause, shall be in danger of the judgment by the rest of the world. And whoever says to another the word 'unilaterally' shall be in danger of the judgment by the UN council.

²¹Therefore if you bring international aid to the altar of appeasement, and there remember that those nations' rulers are against you, ²²leave your aid there and go away. ²³Agree with your adversary quickly, without preconditions, lest your adversary accuses you of crimes against everything and deliver you to the judges of The Hague.

Tags: hoshienu

Will the Internet Evolve into a Lifeform?

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:40:48 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: One route is the evolution of electronic intelligences in situations like the internet-arms race between spammers and shielders. It might sound silly, the idea that new life could be created in an attempt to offer you a great deal on C1@Lis!!, but have you tried registering for a forum recently? Even gaining access to the lowest level of interaction online now requires elementary Turing tests to tell the humans from the robots.

Another option is the idea of the net itself becoming sentient, a vast self-modifying array of connections and information storage with limited connections to the outside world (kind of like that glob of grey goo you carry around in your skull). If that happens then Gibson help us all - remember that the net is made of about 90% spam, 9% porn, and quite a lot of whining blogs. If that mixture ever becomes self-aware we're not quite sure what it'll do, but the odds are against it being anything good.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Some think that sentience could emerge from any sufficiently complicated system. By the way, you're reading this on a massively-crosslinked network built from millions of routers, allowing any of a billion individual units to access, modify and reply to the others. Interested?

Computer programs are already exhibiting many of the characteristics of organic lifeforms, up to and including evolution - hilarious, since they're the only things that really are "Intelligently Designed" - and there's no reason to believe that life or awareness are exclusively organic attributes. You could say we've only ever seen chemical-based constructs which are alive, but in the past the same argument could have been applied to things moving under their own power, flight or the ability to count - and it turns out we've built machines that are sort of far better at all those things than the fleshy equivalents. If there is a magic "life-chemical" mixed in with all the blood and guts, we haven't found it.

Tags: evolution, internet, life

Ethics of Groups

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:54:19 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: humanknowledge.net

Groups. Groups of individual beings do not have volition or sentience, and cannot be subject to coercion or torture except insofar as their individual members are so subject. Thus groups per se have no separate right against coercion or torture. There is a sense in which some groups -- species -- are alive, and so species have the right not to suffer extinction.

Tags: groups, ethics, entity, species, rights

What is Ethics?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:52:39 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: humanknowledge.net

Ethics: the study of how individual persons should affect other persons and other beings.

Ethics consists in identifying the rights that each kind of entity has. A right is an entitlement of a being that persons will or will not affect it in a specified way.

Extropian Ethics

A being is any entity possessing life, sentience, or intelligent volition, and are the only entities that have rights. There are two classes of beings: persons and organisms. A person is any intelligent being with significant volitional control over how it affects other beings.

All persons have the right to life and liberty.
All beings have the right not to suffer torture or extinction.

Thus persons are obligated to minimize the incidence of

deaths of persons;
extinctions of species;
aggression; and
torture.

Tags: ethics, extropian ethics, rights, entitlements, humanity, humane, higher order

" Pangea Day was a monumental success",

Sat, 10 May 2008 13:32:54 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks:
"People from everywhere tuned in to watch the live broadcast in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro and grassroots events flourished in cities, communities, and private homes."
http://www.pangeaday.org

Clip Source: www.ted.com

On May 10, 2008, join the world on Pangea Day

Get more details at PangeaDay.org. Here on TED.com

Clip Source: www.cthings.com

Chris Anderson, Curator of the TED Conference

What is your dream vision for TED?

It's becoming a global community of remarkable people who believe in the power of ideas to change the world.

I'm an idealist. I really think people can change the world... and I'm awed, beyond awed, at nature's scale, grandeur, and ingenuity. I love life's mystery. Science doesn't deliver all the answers... it still has no compelling language to begin to address sentience, for example. But the truths we're discovering about nature seem to me infinitely more inspiring than anything offered by the traditional religious myths. Alas, as a society, we haven't yet figured out a good way to celebrate these truths... or even communicate them broadly. I think that will change.

Clip Source: www.beautyofpeople.com

A Vision for TED" gives you a good idea of what TED is all about:

This page has an interview with Chris Anderson on the Charlie Rose

Duality of Man & Our Responsibility to Our Species

Tue, 06 May 2008 06:22:15 GMT

clipped by: fleshcanvas
clipper's remarks: The careful task of becomming unbiased allows the course of balancing the self to run smoothly & unfettered. Those whom endeavor to seek only the positive (or negative, for that matter) will find disappointment in the face of objective truth. Pain is not an enemy to be evaded or eradicated. Suffering will come regardless of efforts to avoid it. Rather than to circumvent suffering, detaching the ego to step outside the self allows one to surpass it & learn from their mistakes, lest they foolishly relive them. Remember that the universe is impersonal, & will continue to unfold as it will with or without you. Only then can the subject detach from the moment holding them back (stasis) & develop into a more appropriate, thus more comfortable state. This is nature’s objective. Rising above the situation awakens our ability to create our own reality.

Clip Source: www.fleshcanvas.net

But to live only this truth, ignorant of evolutions insistence, is to invite torment from the darkened corners of our perception. To over identify with our animal self is to ensure that we are going nowhere. The human whom chooses the Path of Least Resistance can only passively react to stimuli. They are doomed to perpetuate a static cycle of woe which will never end until true sentience is employed. Taking responsibility & choosing to act can be our only salvation. This expression of cognizance is how we survived the Ice Age & it is also the only hope for Transhumanism to become a reality. Being enamored of negativity ensures entropy & eventually leads to the death of the life force. If you must be validated, try coping with the commitment to the quest for your own tranquility.

Peace is not the objective, objectivity is peace.

Do Humans Maintain a Consequential Stance Within the Context of the Universe?

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 03:58:16 GMT

clipped by: fleshcanvas

Clip Source: www.fleshcanvas.net

It is precisely because we take this fact for granted that our anomalous species is headed towards what is most probably an unfavorable destiny. One need observe no further than our educational system. The human is as yet vulnerable to the same primitive mentality as our furrier cousins. Free will in these circumstances can only be imagined, as it cannot be claimed by any beast which shan’t be held accountable for how it enacts its decisions. We must seize our sentience & direct our own evolution. For only the human has ever boasted such dexterity.

This is the dream from which blossoms Transhumanist philosophy. Our species is steadily reaching an epoch, & ironically we will be forced to choose: We may either live up to our pre-supposed significance, realizing humanity’s most daring & creative dreams upon a canvas of flesh.

we are only here because our ancestors dared to take risks. Thanks to them we inherit the ingredients for becoming the true Masters of our own Destiny.

The History of Writing

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:33:52 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Revisiting & re-clipping some of my old stuff. (I recommend the source article for an illustrated history of abstract thought and writing, with the evolution of alphabets.)

Clip Source: www.historian.net

Language existed long before writing, emerging probably simultaneously with sapience, abstract thought and the Genus Homo.

As long ago as 25,000-30,000 years BP, humans were painting pictures on cave walls. Whether these pictures were telling a "story" or represented some type of "spirit house" or ritual exercise is not known.

Around 4100-3800 BCE, the tokens began to be symbols that could be impressed or inscribed in clay to represent a record of land, grain or cattle and a written language was beginning to develop. One of the earliest examples was found in the excavations of Uruk in Mesopotamia at a level representing the time of the crystallization of the Sumerian culture.

For the next step toward the development of an alphabet, we must go to Egypt where picture writing had developed sometime near the end of the 4th millennium BC.

One of the earliest examples is the name of NAR-MER, either the first or second Pharoah of an united Egypt in 3100 BCE.

Tags: history, alphabets, writing, scripts

Do Plants Have Feelings?

Thu, 10 May 2007 21:42:04 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: If plants do have some sort of "feelings", what are all the vegans and vegetarians going to do? After all, you can't live on love alone...

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Hormonal sentience

Acacia trees produce tannin to defend themselves when they are grazed upon by animals. The airborne scent of the tannin is picked up by other acacia trees, which then start to produce tannin themselves as a protetction from the nearby animals. When attacked by caterpillars, some plants can release chemical signals to attract parasitic wasps that attack the caterpillars.

A similar phenomenon can be found not only between plants and animals, but also between fungus and animals. There exists some sort of communication between a fungus garden and workers of the leaf-cutting ant Atta sexdens rubropilosa. If the garden is fed with plants that are poisonous for the fungus, it signals this to the ants, which then will avoid fertilizing the fungus garden with any more of the poisonous plant.

In theory even an organism with a hormonal system instead of a nervous system could be intelligent in some degree, but it would be an extremely slow brain, to say the least.

Tags: plants, communication, vegans, vegetarians, hormones, intelligence

Extract from "The Mystery of Consciousness" by Steven Pinker

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 18:15:53 GMT

clipped by: Wilhelmina
clipper's remarks: I found that last bit particularly interesting (the whole article was good too) because I had never thought of it that way.
"The biology of consciousness offers a sounder basis for morality than the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul."

Clip Source: www.time.com

As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to deny that other people have feelings is not just an academic exercise but an all-too-common vice, as we see in the long history of human cruelty. Yet once we realize that our own consciousness is a product of our brains and that other people have brains like ours, a denial of other people's sentience becomes ludicrous. "Hath not a Jew eyes?" asked Shylock. Today the question is more pointed: Hath not a Jew--or an Arab, or an African, or a baby, or a dog--a cerebral cortex and a thalamus? The undeniable fact that we are all made of the same neural flesh makes it impossible to deny our common capacity to suffer.

Tags: mystery, consciousness, steven, pinker, shylock, materialism, soul, brain, cruelty

The Transhumanist Declaration

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 18:56:00 GMT

clipped by: deusdiabolus
clipper's remarks: The manifesto of the World Transhumanist Association

Clip Source: transhumanism.org

The Transhumanist Declaration

(1) Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet earth.

(2) Systematic research should be put into understanding these coming developments and their long-term consequences.

(3) Transhumanists think that by being generally open and embracing of new technology we have a better chance of turning it to our advantage than if we try to ban or prohibit it.

(4) Transhumanists advocate the moral right for those who so wish to use technology to extend their mental and physical (including reproductive) capacities and to improve their control over their own lives. We seek personal growth beyond our current biological limitations.

(5) In planning for the future, it is mandatory to take into account the prospect of dramatic progress in technological capabilities. It would be tragic if the potential benefits failed to materialize because of technophobia and unnecessary prohibitions. On the other hand, it would also be tragic if intelligent life went extinct because of some disaster or war involving advanced technologies.

(6) We need to create forums where people can rationally debate what needs to be done, and a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.

(7) Transhumanism advocates the well- being of all sentience (whether in artificial intellects, humans, posthumans, or non- human animals) and encompasses many principles of modern humanism. Transhumanism does not support any particular party, politician or political platform.

Tags: transhumanism, evolution, technology, enhancement, biotechnology, augmentation, modification

Sentience - quick wiki def

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 15:56:26 GMT

clipped by: jeffreyj

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Sentience refers to possession of sensory organs, the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness. The possession of sapience is not a necessity. The word sentient is often confused with the word sapient, which can connote knowledge, consciousness, or apperception. The root of the confusion is that the word conscious has a number of different usages in English. The two words can be distinguished by looking at their Latin roots: sentire, "to feel"; and sapere, "to know".

Sentience is the ability to sense. It is separate from, and not dependent on, aspects of consciousness.

Tags: physiology

Sapience - quick wiki def

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 15:55:05 GMT

clipped by: jeffreyj

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Sapience is the ability of an organism or entity to act with judgment. Judgment is a mental facility that is a particular form of intelligence or may be considered an additional facility, above intelligence, with its own properties. Robert Sternberg ^[1] has segregated the capacity for judgment from ordinary meanings of intelligence, which is closer to the sense of clever than to wisdom. Good judgment in making decisions about complex life or social decisions is a hallmark of being wise.

Tags: psych