background preloader

Consciousness could be a side effect of 'entropy', say researchers

Consciousness could be a side effect of 'entropy', say researchers
It's impressive enough that our human brains are made up of the same 'star stuff' that forms the Universe, but new research suggests that this might not be the only thing the two have in common. Just like the Universe, our brains might be programmed to maximise disorder - similar to the principle of entropy - and our consciousness could simply be a side effect. The quest to understand human consciousness - our ability to be aware of ourselves and our surroundings - has been going on for centuries. Although consciousness is a crucial part of being human, researchers still don't truly understand where it comes from, and why we have it. But a new study, led by researchers from France and Canada, puts forward a new possibility: what if consciousness arises naturally as a result of our brains maximising their information content? Entropy is basically the term used to describe the progression of a system from order to disorder. This is what many physicists believe is happening to our Universe. Related:  a lire et classermetaphusis

intelligence artificielle : la révolution de l'apprentissage profond Les ordinateurs ont suscité beaucoup d'enthousiasme et d'attentes dans les années 1950, quand ils ont commencé à battre au jeu de dames certains amateurs de bon niveau. Dans les années 1960, les chercheurs espéraient reproduire les fonctions du cerveau humain avec un ordinateur et des programmes informatiques. L'« intelligence artificielle » égalerait alors les performances humaines pour tous les types de tâches. En 1967, le spécialiste Marvin Minsky, du mit (l'Institut de technologie du Massachusetts), affirmait que les défis de l'intelligence artificielle seraient résolus en une génération. Cet optimisme était prématuré. Au milieu des années 2000, le rêve de construire des machines aussi intelligentes que des humains avait presque été abandonné par la communauté scientifique. Les choses ont commencé à basculer en 2005. Ces progrès ont ouvert la voie à de nouvelles réalisations de ces techniques, à des applications commercialisées, et l'intérêt ne cesse de croître.

Pourquoi dormons-nous Dormir fait perdre du temps et augmente le risque de se faire dévorer (du moins pour les animaux !). Alors pourquoi cette fonction a-t-elle été préservée au fil de l’évolution ? La clé du mystère se trouverait chez les reptiles et les amphibiens, selon le biologiste Paul-Antoine Libourel. Pourquoi dormir ? Définir le sommeil, une tâche ardue Pour comprendre, il devient nécessaire de savoir si toutes les espèces dorment et si les mécanismes de leur sommeil ont été conservés au cours de l’évolution. Ce koala assoupi semble vulnérable aux prédateurs... Il semblerait que tous les animaux, incluant les insectes, scorpions et araignées dorment, même si des exceptions ont été rapportées. Mais l’affaire s’est compliquée avec l’avènement de l’enregistrement de l’activité cérébrale, apportant une définition supplémentaire : la définition éléctrophysiologique. Les amphibiens et les reptiles, des modèles de choix

Harvard scientists think they've pinpointed the physical source of consciousness Scientists have struggled for millennia to understand human consciousness - the awareness of one's existence. Despite advances in neuroscience, we still don't really know where it comes from, and how it arises. But researchers think they might be closer to identifying its physical origins, after a study pinpointing a network of three specific regions in the brain that appear to be crucial to consciousness. Published in November 2016, the research could be a huge deal for our understanding of what it means to be human, and it could also help researchers find new treatments for patients in vegetative states. "For the first time, we have found a connection between the brainstem region involved in arousal and regions involved in awareness, two prerequisites for consciousness," said lead researcher Michael Fox from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre at Harvard Medical School back in 2016. Awareness has been more elusive.

How Did the "Smile" Become a Friendly Gesture in Humans? Anthony Stocks, chairman and professor of anthropology at Idaho State University, responds: "The evolution of smiles is opaque and, as with many evolutionary accounts of social behavior, fraught with just-soism. Among human babies, however, the 'tooth-baring' smile is associated less with friendship than with fright--which, one might argue, is related to the tooth-baring threats of baboons. On the other hand, a non-toothy, not-so-broad-but-open-lipped smile is associated with pleasure in human infants. Somehow we seem to have taken the fright-threat sort of smile and extended it to strangers as a presumably friendly smile. "All cultures recognize a variety of mouth gestures as indexes of inner emotional states. Frank McAndrew, professor of psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., has done extensive research on facial expressions. "Baring one's teeth is not always a threat. "In the primate threat, the lips are curled back and the teeth are apart--you are ready to bite.

Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being A client sits before me, seeking help untangling his relationship problems. As a psychotherapist, I strive to be warm, nonjudgmental and encouraging. I am a bit unsettled, then, when in the midst of describing his painful experiences, he says, “I'm sorry for being so negative.” A crucial goal of therapy is to learn to acknowledge and express a full range of emotions, and here was a client apologizing for doing just that. In my psychotherapy practice, many of my clients struggle with highly distressing emotions, such as extreme anger, or with suicidal thoughts. In recent years I have noticed an increase in the number of people who also feel guilty or ashamed about what they perceive to be negativity. In fact, anger and sadness are an important part of life, and new research shows that experiencing and accepting such emotions are vital to our mental health. Meaningful Misery Positive thoughts and emotions can, of course, benefit mental health. Adler and Hal E.

A robot has just passed a classic self-awareness test for the first time A researcher at Ransselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US has given three Nao robots an updated version of the classic 'wise men puzzle' self-awareness test... and one of them has managed to pass. In the classic test, a hypothetical King calls forward the three wisest men in the country and puts either a white or a blue hat on their heads. They can all see each other's hats, but not their own, and they're not allowed to talk to each other. The King promises that at least one of them is wearing a blue hat, and that the contest is fair, meaning that none of them have access to any information that the others don't. In this updated AI version, the robots are each given a 'pill' (which is actually a tap on the head, because, you know, robots can't swallow). There's silence for a little while, and then one of the little bots gets up and declares "I don't know!" You can see the adorable test in the footage from Motherboard below:

La lamproie, ce poisson primitif qui aide à comprendre le cerveau humain Avez-vous déjà pensé que le cerveau d’une lamproie pouvait avoir des similitudes avec le cerveau humain ? A l’aide d’archives radiophoniques, de 1951 à 2009, éclairage sur la manière dont la connaissance du cerveau de cet animal a apporté des clés de compréhension pour le cerveau de l'homme. La lamproie, cet animal aquatique vieux d'environ 530 millions d'années, sans nageoires et sans mâchoires qui se nourrit des sang des autres poissons en s'accrochant à eux, est l'un des vertébrés les plus primitifs appartenant aux agnathes (ou cyclostomes). Le cerveau de ce poisson a pourtant des similitudes avec celui de l'être humain. Ecoutez : Voyage au centre du cerveau, une série documentaire de Lydia Ben Ytzhak et Anna Szmuc L’homme et la lamproie : le cerveau des vertébrés Nous sommes en 1951 dans l’émission l’Heure de Culture Française. Écouter “Comparons le cerveau humain à celui d’un des vertébrés les plus primitifs : la lamproie.” Durée : 10'41 • Archive INA - Radio France Durée : 2'33

Are You Ready for a Computer That Reads Your Mind? The first computers cost millions of dollars and were locked inside rooms equipped with special electrical circuits and air conditioning. The only people who could use them had been trained to write programs in that specific computer’s language. Today, gesture-based interactions, using multitouch pads and touchscreens, and exploration of virtual 3D spaces allow us to interact with digital devices in ways very similar to how we interact with physical objects. This newly immersive world not only is open to more people to experience; it also allows almost anyone to exercise their own creativity and innovative tendencies. My own research hopes to develop the next phase of human-computer interaction. Reducing the expertise needed From those early computers dependent on machine-specific programming languages, the first major improvement allowing more people to use computers was the development of the Fortran programming language. Simpler tools became commercially available for consumers.

Here are the 25 richest, healthiest, happiest, and most advanced countries in the world Norway has topped the list for seven consecutive, but there's a new number one in 2016.Getty The Legatum Institute, a London based research institute released on Thursday its 10th annual global Prosperity Index, a huge survey that ranks the most prosperous countries in the world. The amount of money a country has is one factor of prosperity, but the Legatum Institute considers much more than that in its ranking. The organisation compared 104 variables to come up with its list. The variables are then split into nine subindexes: economic quality, business environment, governance, education, health, safety and security, personal freedom, social capital, and natural environment. The index looked at the 149 countries in the world that have the most available data. Find out the results below.

Beyond the Mountains of Westworld: Part 3a – The Emergence of Consciousness in Natural and Artificial Forms of Life | Lovecraftian Science A technician re-programming one of the hosts on HBO’s Westworld. Before we compare and contrast the origins of consciousness in both H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” and HBO’s show Westworld, we should spend a little time on discussing what exactly is consciousness. A very simple definition of consciousness is “a State of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings as well as other people / organisms.” It can also be thought of as “self-awareness.” In the case of artificial life, would consciousness immediately “turn on” as is the case in the Terminator? Shoggoth by Manzanedo (www.deviantart.com) In many instances the term “sentience” is thought to be interchangeable with consciousness but as I found out in these investigations this is not the case. From an evolutionary point of view sentience is developed through living systems interacting with the environment (Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith, 2016). Like this:

Le Prêtre-Roi Melchisédech Le Prêtre-Roi Melchisédech ... Derrière Moise se tient le prêtre sans parents, le roi de justice, Melchisédech, fils du Soleil rouge ... Depuis des temps immémoriaux, cette énigmatique figure, qui apparaît dans l'Ancien Testament pour disparaître aussitôt, a maintenu en éveil la sagacité des exégètes et alimenté la méditation des esprits religieux. Melchisédech est mentionné à trois reprises dans la Bible. 1 Au chapitre XIV de la Genèse, il est dit que Melchisédech, roi de Salem et sacrificateur de Dieu, bénit Abraham, victorieux de ses ennemis, 2 Au psaume CX, verset 4, il est écrit : Le Seigneur a juré et il ne s'en repentira pas: Tu es prêtre éternellement, à la manière de Melchisédech. 3 Dans l'épître aux Hébreux, il est déclaré que Melchisédech est la préfiguration du Christ Lui-même. un être parfaitement saint pouvait être appelé directement par Dieu à la vocation d'un sacerdoce ne relevant d'aucun pouvoir humain. 14. Objections : 1. 2. 3. Solutions : 1. 2. 3. Éditions du Cerf

Ancient Egyptian deities in popular culture - Wikipedia Anubis[edit] Bastet[edit] Horus[edit] Khonsu[edit] The Marvel Comics character Moon Knight gained his powers after being resurrected by Khonsu (Khonshu).In second book of The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan, the protagonists gamble with Khonsu to win three extra hours.In an episode of the TV series Stargate SG-1, Khonsu is one of the Goa'uld, a race of parasitic aliens who set themselves up as the gods of human mythology and have ruled the galaxy for thousands of years. Ra[edit] Set[edit] Literature[edit] Animation[edit] Film and television[edit] Video games[edit] Music[edit] Thoth[edit] References[edit]

Related: