Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Becoming a Man + Cosmic gorilla effect could blind the detection of aliens

#1
C C Offline
Becoming a Man
http://quillette.com/2018/04/09/becoming-a-man/

EXCERPT: There are commonalities of human behavior that extend beyond any geographic or cultural boundary. Every known society has a sexual division of labor – many facets of which are ubiquitous the world over. Some activities are universally considered to be primarily, or exclusively, the responsibility of men, such as hunting large mammals, metalworking, and warfare. Other activities, such as caregiving, cooking, and preparing vegetable foods, are nearly always considered primarily the responsibility of women. In my last article for Quillette, I noted that in every known society males are more likely to kill another person than females are, and that this pattern is ultimately fairly predictable in light of some basic sex differences in reproductive biology. Here, I want to explore the functions of socialization, and ideology, as they contribute to the differing sex roles of males and females across cultures. In particular – how boys become men, and what the social demands of masculinity often entail...

MORE: http://quillette.com/2018/04/09/becoming-a-man/



A cosmic gorilla effect could blind the detection of aliens
http://www.agenciasinc.es/en/News/A-cosm...-of-aliens

EXCERPT: . . . The authors state that our own neurophysiology, psychology and consciousness can play an important role in the search for non-terrestrial civilizations; an aspect that they consider has been neglected until now. In relation to this, they conducted an experiment with 137 people, who had to distinguish aerial photographs with artificial structures (buildings, roads ...) from others with natural elements (mountains, rivers ...). In one of the images, a tiny character disguised as a gorilla was inserted to see if the participants noticed.

[...] "It is very striking, but very significant and representative at the same time, how our brain works," says De la Torre, who explains how the results were similar in the case of his experiment with the images. "In addition, our surprise was greater," he adds, "since before doing the test to see the inattentional blindness we assessed the participants with a series of questions to determine their cognitive style (if they were more intuitive or rational), and it turned out that the intuitive individuals identified the gorilla of our photo more times than those more rational and methodical".

"If we transfer this to the problem of searching for other non-terrestrial intelligences, the question arises about whether our current strategy may result in us not perceiving the gorilla," stresses the researcher [...] Another example presented in the article is an apparently geometric structure that can be seen in the images of Occator, a crater of the dwarf planet Ceres famous for its bright spots. "Our structured mind tells us that this structure looks like a triangle with a square inside, something that theoretically is not possible in Ceres," says De la Torre, "but maybe we are seeing things where there are none, what in psychology is called pareidolia”.

MORE: http://www.agenciasinc.es/en/News/A-cosm...-of-aliens
Reply
#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
Similar to the Cosmic Gorilla effect, I once started a thread on super intelligent organisms, would they need to be mobile? Meaning do they need to make tools that make machines,cities etc. ? Would future human planetary explorers recognize a super intelligent creature if for instance it looked like and outwardly behaved something like a tree? Not sure if we could associate such an immobile creature with having more smarts than us.
Reply
#3
C C Offline
(Apr 12, 2018 04:19 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: . . . Would future human planetary explorers recognize a super intelligent creature if for instance it looked like and outwardly behaved something like a tree? Not sure if we could associate such an immobile creature with having more smarts than us.


With a monitor and speaker system disconnected from it, a caveman probably wouldn't deem anything interesting to be transpiring in a box (computer) running a simulated reality game that could internally play itself.

A "Fantastic Voyage" journey through the human brain probably wouldn't indicate to an exotic, microscopic exploring species that there was a conscious intelligence emerging from all those electrochemical spasms in the fibrous tissue.

~
Reply
#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Apr 12, 2018 03:25 PM)C C Wrote:
(Apr 12, 2018 04:19 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: . . . Would future human planetary explorers recognize a super intelligent creature if for instance it looked like and outwardly behaved something like a tree? Not sure if we could associate such an immobile creature with having more smarts than us.


With a monitor and speaker system disconnected from it, a caveman probably wouldn't deem anything interesting to be transpiring in a box (computer) running a simulated reality game that could internally play itself.

A "Fantastic Voyage" journey through the human brain probably wouldn't indicate to an exotic, microscopic exploring species that there was a conscious intelligence emerging from all those electrochemical spasms in the fibrous tissue.

~

So I guess the question is: How do we look for intelligent life? The easy answer would be toolmaker-like evidence but that doesn't necessarily mean life needs it as a prerequisite to intelligence. IMHO
Reply
#5
C C Offline
(Apr 12, 2018 03:48 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: So I guess the question is: How do we look for intelligent life? The easy answer would be toolmaker-like evidence but that doesn't necessarily mean life needs it as a prerequisite to intelligence. IMHO


Let's face it: Intelligence as originally delineated in the sci-tech domain was abstracted from the human example. As such, that's arguably or momentum-wise still the parameters which should designate something being intelligent. Rather than, say, the characteristics / abilities of a diagnostic expert machine or a process that evaluates information, engages in statistical inferences, etc.

But today we seem to desire not just degrees for designating a fuzzy spectrum of sapience ascending to the specificity of ours, but heterogeneous or utterly different sub-categories in which some broader concept of "complexity with purpose" might be speculatively, variably, and particularly instantiated in. The latter might be labeled the territory of "para-intelligence" or something to signal it being distinct from "intelligence" as in the template of such modeled on ourselves.

The idealized, formal reasoning which older philosophy attributed to "rational agents" alternatively seems to have been the first semblance of an artificial intelligence scheme. That was part of the genealogy of the path to AI. It didn't truly reflect real people or how everyday, "non-conditioned by institution" humans think, create, decide, and act (what informally falls out of an added recipe of habits, emotions, allegiances, conflict, and contingent events, among other items). Whereas "intelligence" as referenced or delineated elsewhere on sci-tech turf (like the initial narrow or biased ponderings about space-aliens) seemed, again, more abstracted from non-ideal humans. A lived be-ing in contrast to the "on paper" existing of the classic "rational agent".

~
Reply
#6
Zinjanthropos Offline
CC....I'm not even sure if right now there is a person alive who can 100% honestly judge the intelligence of another human being. When I was young and my father was alive, there were many who considered him less intelligent because he dropped out of school in Grade 9. Yet he was able to start a thriving business and become a multi property owner, raise 8 kids and take care of mom. He was real smart in our family's eyes.  Whereas I've seen lab coat draped scientists who can't figure their way around a grocery store, dealt with engineers who don't know the difference between insulating & conducting material, but they have a degree. Is that the Wizard of Oz response to a scarecrow I hear playing? That billowing bale of bovine fodder didn't need a diploma to tell us he was smart but how many of us recognized that?...lol.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Article These are the mental processes required to tell a convincing lie + Cosmic aloneness C C 2 127 Oct 7, 2023 05:47 AM
Last Post: Syne
  Can’t draw a mental picture? Aphantasia causes blind spots in the mind’s eye C C 0 160 Dec 28, 2020 08:09 PM
Last Post: C C
  Ready for the mind eraser? + Man who could read letters but not numbers C C 1 116 Aug 3, 2020 12:23 AM
Last Post: Syne
  ‘We have a blind spot about how the pill influences women’s brains’ C C 1 287 Oct 22, 2019 10:56 PM
Last Post: Syne



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)