Amira's notes (amipress)'s Public Profile in the Diigo Community

Member since Mar 18, 2009, follows 0 people, 0 public groups, 1954 public bookmarks (2021 total).

More »

Tags

Recent Tags:	mind & brain(0), psychology(0), Human being(0), science(0), Kapuscinski(0), Religions(0), Evolution etc(0), Age of informations(0), Atheism(0), culture(0), Self improvement(0), Neuroscience(0), Memory(0), future(0), anthropology(0), Cultural differences(0), Islam & muslims(0), emotions(0)
Top Tags:	Poland(292), IVRP(229), USA(217), psychology(199), Religions(116), China(99), islam(99), cultural(100), differences(97), People(88)

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

The Big Muslim Problem! By Malise Ruthven | The New York Review of Books Volume 56, Number 20 · December 17, 2009 about 16 hours ago
All In The Mind: You are NOT a Self! Thomas Metzinger... by Natasha Mitchell about 16 hours ago
- "the Ego Tunnel" is Metzinger's metaphor for our conscious experience.
  
  "Conscious experience is like a tunnel; extremely selective, what we see, hear, feel, smell is only a small fraction of what exists out there", he says. "The ongoing process of conscious experience is not so much an image of reality as a tunnel through reality".
  
  "..The brain constantly creates the experience that I am present in the world outside my brain..." and "...ultimately our Ego is an activation pattern in your central nervous system".
The Outsider Effect by Roger Dooley | Neuromarketing on 2009-11-26
- Trying to juice up your next ad campaign? Develop a clever new product strategy? Research shows that adding an outsider to the mix can improve the thinking of your team and produce better results. According to a study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
  Better decisions come from teams that include a “socially distinct newcomer.” That’s psychology-speak for someone who is different enough to bump other team members out of their comfort zones…
  Researchers noticed this effect after conducting a traditional group problem-solving experiment. The twist was that a newcomer was added to each group about five minutes into their deliberations. And when the newcomer was a social outsider, teams were more likely to solve the problem successfully. [From Kellog School of Management News - Embracing the ‘socially distinct’ outsider.]
- The good news is that the “outsider” doesn’t have to be an expensive consultant or an external facilitator. The important thing is that the newcomer is distinct in some way from other group members.
The Experience of Reading by Eric Schwitzgebel | The Splintered Mind on 2009-11-26
- What kinds of imagistic or sensory experiences do you normally have when reading prose? Here are three possibilities, not exclusive:
  (a.) Inner speech. You "hear" (or more accurately auditorially imagine) a voice -- maybe your own voice, or the voice of the author, or the voice of a character, or some other voice, saying the words you are reading.
  
  (b.) Visual imagery. You experience visual images of the events described or hinted at in the text, or maybe images in other modalities (auditory images besides those of the words you are reading, maybe tactile images, olfactory images, motoric images).
  
  (c.) Sensory experience of the text. You visually experience the text on the page, that is, the black and white of ink on paper or pixels on the computer screen.
- Bernard Baars seems to assume the near-universality of inner speech, writing: "Human beings talk to themselves every moment of the waking day. Most readers of this sentence are doing it now"
What the web is teaching our brains by Anastasia Stephens | The Independent on 2009-11-26
- Dr Small, one of
  America's leading neurologists, has written a book, iBrain – Surviving the
  Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, that describes what he believes
  is the profound impact of new technology on our brains and behaviour. His
  research indicates that internet use and web-browsing has a marked effect on
  our brains, which, he argues, are much more changeable than most of us
  think, especially in the case of young people.
- Repeated daily actions such as web research and browsing direct the growth of
  neurons and connections within the brain, affecting thinking and behaviour.
  While the internet enhances our brain function in some ways – his study
  found it boosted decision-making and complex reasoning in older people – it
  can also lead to memory loss. Some research suggests there may be links
  between excessive computer use and conditions such as attention deficit
  disorder, depression and anxiety in younger people.
- 8 more annotations...
- - Research at UCLA has revealed that just one hour
    of internet use per day can measurably boost brain function.
  - "As our brain is plastic and remoulds itself in accordance to our daily
    activities, prolonged computer use can have a profound effect on the way we
    think, feel and behave," says Professor Small. "We can learn to
    react more quickly to visual stimuli and improve many forms of attention. We
    develop a better ability to sift through large amounts of information
    rapidly and decide what's important and what isn't. In this way, we adapt to
    cope with the massive amounts of information appearing and disappearing on
    our mental screens from moment to moment."
  - "Qualitatively, high-speed decisions are not the same as the type of
    decision that you slowly contemplate and make over time," says
    Professor Small. More pondered decision-making has "a depth that speedy
    thinking cannot grasp".
  - Benefiting most from computers and technology is all about balance: "It's
    common sense. You should aim to balance internet time with real social time
    as much as you can. If you work all day at a computer, make sure you mix
    with real people in the evening, rather than using social-networking sites
    on the internet or playing computer games."
  - And "If you never use computers, then start," Professor Small
    recommends. "As we found, even an hour a day can vastly improve your
    information processing skills, even in people aged 55 to 60."
  - What it does: Boosts the ability to integrate and process information
    as well as enhancing decision-making skills.
    
    Using rapid spurts of directed concentration for internet research enhances
    our ability to focus our attention, analyse information and make instant
    decisions. Assessing these skills, Professor Pam Briggs at Northumbria
    University found web surfers spent two seconds or less on any particular
    website before moving on to the next. She found they sifted information
    accurately, despite operating at high speed, stopping only at sites that
    contained relevant information.
  - These "high-speed" research skills can be learnt at any age and
    actively enhance brain function. Professor Gary Small compared the brains of
    middle-aged people who rarely use the internet to those of experienced
    internet users, as they conducted web searches for an hour each day.
    
    With the inexperienced users, "After five days, areas of the prefrontal
    cortex that control our ability to make decisions and integrate complex
    information had become markedly more active," says Professor Small. "These
    areas were fairly inactive at the beginning of our experiment. But after
    five days they were as active as regular internet users. This indicates that
    brain function can change and improve with internet use quickly, even when
    you are older."
  - The key to maintaining true connection and self-esteem, he says, is balance.
Concentration - Self-help leaflets | Cambridge University Counselling Service on 2009-11-20
War Is Peace: Can Science Fight Media Disinformation? by Lawrence M. Krauss | Scientific American December 2009 on 2009-11-20
- “The increasingly blatant nature of the nonsense uttered with impunity in public discourse is chilling. Our democratic society is imperiled as much by this as any other single threat, regardless of whether the origins of the nonsense are religious fanaticism, simple ignorance or personal gain.”
In the Muslim world, creationism is on the rise By Drake Bennett | The Boston Globe October 25, 2009 on 2009-11-19
- That, at least, is what one discovered by following the coverage in the Western press, or by reading the scientific papers themselves, published in the journal Science. If you learned about Ardi on the Arabic-language version of Al Jazeera’s website, however, you discovered something else: The find disproved the theory of evolution.
  “Ardi Refutes Darwin’s Theory,” Al Jazeera announced, in an Oct. 3 article not available on the English version of the website. “American scientists have presented evidence that Darwin’s theory of evolution was wrong,” the article opened. “The team announced yesterday that Ardi’s discovery proves that humans did not evolve from ancestors that resemble chimpanzees, which refutes the longstanding assumption that humans evolved from monkeys.”
- Americans familiar with the long and bitter battle over the teaching of evolution in our schools likely have a set of images of what creationism looks like: from the Scopes trial, and its dramatization in “Inherit the Wind,” to more recent battles over textbooks on school boards in Kansas and Georgia and in federal court in Pennsylvania. The doctrine of creationism, and its less explicitly religious cousin intelligent design, are extensively developed counter-narratives of the origin of life on Earth, fed by Christian concerns and shaped by Christian beliefs. In its more extreme forms, creationist thought is guided by a faith in the inerrancy of the language of the Book of Genesis, so that some creationists see in the fossil record evidence that Noah must have herded dinosaurs onto his ark along with the rest of creation.
- 1 more annotations...
- - Islamic creationism. Campaigners in countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, and Indonesia have fought the teaching of evolution in schools there, sometimes with great success. Creationist conferences have been held in Pakistan, and moderate Islamic clerics are on record publicly condemning Darwin’s ideas. A recent study of Muslim university students in the Netherlands showed that most rejected evolution. And driven in part by a mysterious Turkish publishing organization, Islamic creationism books are hot sellers at bookstores throughout the Muslim world.
Evolution, the Muslim world & religious beliefs by Razib Khan | Gene Expression on 2009-11-19
- It's hard to say exactly how much support the theory of evolution enjoys in the world's Muslim countries, but it's definitely not very much. In one 2006 study by American political scientists, people in 34 industrial nations were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the idea that human beings evolved from earlier life forms. Turkey, the only Muslim country in the survey, showed the lowest levels of support - barely a quarter of Turks said they agreed. By comparison, at least 80 percent of those surveyed in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and France agreed. (The United States ranked second lowest, after Turkey, at 40 percent.) Turkey is widely seen as the most culturally liberal Muslim nation, and on attitudes about evolution, other polling has borne this out: A recent study of religious attitudes found that only 16 percent of Indonesians, 14 percent of Pakistanis, and 8 percent of Egyptians believed in evolution.
Ghost in the Shell: Why Our Brains Will Never Live in the Matrix | h+ Magazine on 2009-11-19
- When surveying the goals of transhumanists, I found it striking how heavily many of them favor conventional engineering. This seems inefficient and inelegant, since such engineering reproduces slowly, clumsily and imperfectly, what biological systems have fine-tuned for eons, from nanobots (enzymes and miRNAs) to virtual reality (lucid dreaming).
- “Brain cells are nothing but leaky bags of salt solution,” and “I don’t need a grand theory of the mind to fix what is essentially a signal-processing problem.”
- 9 more annotations...
- - And it came to me in a flash that many transhumanists are uncomfortable with biology and would rather bypass it altogether for two reasons, each exemplified by these sentences. The first is that biological systems are squishy — they exude blood, sweat and tears, which are deemed proper only for women and weaklings. The second is that, unlike silicon systems, biological software is inseparable from hardware. And therein lies the major stumbling block to personal immortality.
  - Theoretically speaking, how could we manage to live forever while remaining recognizably ourselves to us? One way is to ensure that the brain remains fully functional indefinitely.
  - Recall that a particular mind is an emergent property (an artifact, if you prefer the term) of its specific brain –- nothing more, but also nothing less. Unless the transfer of a mind retains the brain, there will be no continuity of consciousness. Regardless of what the post-transfer identity may think, the original mind with its associated brain and body will still die –- and be aware of the death process. Furthermore, the newly minted person/ality will start diverging from the original the moment it gains consciousness. This is an excellent way to leave a detailed memorial or a clone-like descendant, but not to become immortal.
  - What I just mentioned essentially takes care of all versions of mind uploading, if by uploading we mean recreation of an individual brain by physical transfer rather than a simulation that passes Searle’s Chinese room test. However, even if we ever attain the infinite technical and financial resources required to scan a brain/mind 1) non-destructively and 2) at a resolution that will indeed recreate the original, several additional obstacles still loom.
  - To recreate a brain/mind in silico, whether a cyborg body or a computer frame, is equally problematic. Large portions of the brain process and interpret signals from the body and the environment. Without a body, these functions will flail around and can result in the brain... well, losing its mind. Without corrective “pingbacks” from the environment that are filtered by the body, the brain can easily misjudge to the point of hallucination, as seen in phenomena like phantom limb pain or fibromyalgia. Additionally, processing at light speed will probably result in madness, as everything will appear to happen simultaneously or will change order arbitrarily.
  - Finally, without context we may lose the ability for empathy, as is shown in Bacigalupi’s disturbing story People of Sand and Slag. Empathy is as instrumental to high-order intelligence as it is to survival: without it, we are at best idiot savants, at worst psychotic killers. Of course, someone can argue that the entire universe can be recreated in VR. At that point, we’re in god territory… except that even if some of us manage to live the perfect Second Life, there’s still the danger of someone unplugging the computer or deleting the noomorphs. So there go the Star Trek transporters, there go the Battlestar Galactica Cylon resurrection tanks.
  - It's true that our somatic cells recycle, each type on a slightly different timetable, but there are two prominent exceptions. The germ cells are one, which is why both genders — not just women — are progressively likelier to have children with congenital problems as they age. Our neurons are another. We’re born with as many of these as we’re ever going to have and we lose them steadily during our life. There is a tiny bit of novel neurogenesis in the olfactory system, but the rest of our 100 billion microprocessors neither multiply nor divide. What changes are the neuronal processes (axons and dendrites) and their contacts with each other and with other cells (synapses).
  - These tiny processes make and unmake us as individuals. We are capable of learning as long as we live, though with decreasing ease and speed, because our axons and synapses are plastic as long as the neurons that generate them last. But although many functions of the brain are diffuse, they are organized in localized clusters (which can differ from person to person, sometimes radically). Removal of a large portion of a brain structure results in irreversible deficits, unless it happens in very early infancy. We know this from watching people go through transient or permanent personality and ability changes after head trauma, stroke, extensive brain surgery or during the agonizing process of various neurodegenerative diseases, dementia in particular.
  - The most common ecological, social and ethical argument against individual quasi-eternal life is that the resulting overcrowding will mean certain and unpleasant death by other means unless we are able to access extraterrestrial resources. Also, those who visualize infinite lifespan invariably think of it in connection with themselves and those whom they like -- choosing to ignore that others will also be around forever, from genocidal maniacs to cult followers, to say nothing of annoying in-laws or predatory bosses. At the same time, long lifespan will almost certainly be a requirement for long-term crewed space expeditions, although such longevity will have to be augmented by sophisticated molecular repair of somatic and germ mutations caused by cosmic radiation. So if we want eternal life, we had better first have the Elysian fields and chariots of the gods that go with it.

Recent Visitors (9 visits)

Gianto Widianto

on 2009-08-23
hitoshi shintani

on 2009-08-21
Bartosz Golabek

on 2009-05-28

Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »

Join Diigo

Amira's notes's Profile

More »

Tags

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

More »

Groups

Recent Visitors (9 visits)

Me elsewhere

Amira's notes's Profile

More » Tags

More » Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

More » Groups

Recent Visitors (9 visits)

Me elsewhere

More »

Tags

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

More »

Groups